Looking to launch a kick-ass food, food tech, ag or agtech crowdfunding campaign of your own? Take our Crowdfunding for Food Entrepreneurs Bootcamp e-course, taught by Lisa Q. Fetterman, who raised $1.3 million through two Kickstarter campaigns for her sous vide startup, Nomiku.

Got suggestions for other rad campaigns? Share them in the comments below. Hungry for more? Be sure to check out other food crowdfunding projects we’ve covered in the past here.

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The Fresh Connection, the NYC-based local food logistics company that works with sustainable producers and startups like Norwich Meadows, Quinciple and FarmerWeb, launched a Kickstarter campaign to help buy a delivery van (it currently leases its trucks). With the hope of increasing capacity, scaling its operations and expanding its customer base, The Fresh Connection is looking to raise $49,000 on Kickstarter. It has raised $11,000 so far and has 15 days to go.

Home-growing startup Cloud Farms launched a Kickstarter campaign to bring NIMBUS, its personal farm system, and BIOME, its window greenhouse to market. Together, the products allow you to grow full size vegetables with automatic watering and natural light. Cloud Farms hopes to raise $100,000 to fund the final tooling of BIOME and NIMBUS and to secure a commercial space in Brooklyn for assembly, packing and shipping.

After 14 years of community building and farming, City Slicker Farms is hoping to create a permanent home in West Oakland, CA. It’s looking to raise $25,000 on Barnraiser to transform a 1.4 acre vacant lot into a thriving community space complete with a community garden, fruit tree orchard, playground and greenhouse. It has raised $14,000 of its $25,000 goal and has 2 weeks left in the campaign.

Insect protein continues to gain steam. Crik Nutrition launched an Indiegogo campaign to produce the world’s first cricket protein powder. It’s raising $10,000 to help finance packaging, micro testing, raw ingredient procurement and the manufacturing deposit for its nutritionally dense and eco-friendly bug-based protein powder. With 20 days remaining in the campaign, Crik has raised 150% of its goal.

SaloonBox wants to deliver the makings for craft cocktails right to your door. Its looking to raise $40,000 on Kickstarter to launch its curated cocktail subscription service. It will feature recipes from some of San Francisco’s best mixologists (to start) along with all the ingredients you need to make them. The campaign has raised almost $36,000 and has 11 days left.

The sustainable alternative to the electric kettle, MIITO seeks to reduce energy and water waste with a sustainable, simple and adaptable device that heats liquids directly in its vessel. With 3,500+ backers, MIITO has exceeded its Kickstarter campaign goal of $167,383, raising a whopping $475,931. It will use the funding for an alpha test series, initial manufacturing and preparation for mass production.

Feather Coffee is a mobile-coffee startup that donates a percentage of profits to support rare disease organizations. All funds from its Kickstarter campaign will go towards purchasing the first Feather Coffee trailer and working to prove that its ’cause-brewing’ model is a profitable and scalable business.

Hivemind makes a bee hive scale with satellite communication links and a web interface that helps commercial beekeepers become more efficient. And now, it has launched an Indiegogo campaign to raise $74,000 to integrate WiFi connectivity and build a compatible smartphone app for backyard beekeepers, educators and hobbyists. Funding will go towards R&D, which includes electronics design and firmware, compliance testing and  app development.

Beer tech startup ManCan recently launched a Kickstarter campaign to take its new product, the ManCan 128, from prototype to production. Self described as a brewery in your fridge, the ManCan 128 is a one-gallon personal keg system that keeps beer fresh and carbonated. With two weeks left in the campaign, ManCan has exceeded its $70,000 goal and raised $143,457.

The post Food Crowdfunding: From Cricket Powder to a Craft Cocktail Subscription Box appeared first on Food+Tech Connect.

For the past 2 months, we’ve hosted the Internet of Food Series with Seeds&Chips to explore the question: “How might we use technology, new business models and design to guarantee healthy, safe and sufficient food for everyone?”. We’ve had 21 submissions from food tech innovators.

Today, we are thrilled to close the series with an interview with Josh Tetrick, CEO of Hampton Creek, a food startup that’s on a mission to make affordable, sustainable and delicious food available to the masses. The maker of plant-based products has seen unprecedented growth and made a ton of noise over the past year and a half. In less than one year, the startup’s Just Mayo product was being sold in 20k stores. Food giant Unilever brought a lawsuit against Hampton Creek, which was later dropped but reportedly tripled the food startup’s sales. Hampton Creek also raised a $90M Series C led by Khosla Ventures and Horizons Ventures and announced a partnership with Compass Group, the largest foodservice provider in the world.

Check out our interview below to hear more about how technology enables Hampton Creek to create better, more affordable products, the impact its Compass Group partnership hopes to have and why an IPO may be in its future.

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The post How Hampton Creek Aims to Guarantee Healthy, Safe & Sufficient Food For All appeared first on Food+Tech Connect.

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

Food cultures and technology have always been intimately linked. We used technology to grow tomatoes in winter and peas in the fall. We used technology to develop our current food system, which maximizes for calories and efficiency through centralization. Centralization has benefits, but it also means we can’t have a say in what we eat or where it comes from.

Today’s technologies can finally tackle the least transparent part of our food system: the supply chain.

The locavore and organic movements are often seen as elitist and expensive, but in the distant past, everything was local. It was only with the advent of modern technologies – transportation, refrigeration, and new crops – that we gained access to a variety of food in all seasons and climates. Centralized distribution systems made it possible for producers to specialize in one product, which they could then raise with maximum efficiency. This lowered prices for the consumer, but it came with a hidden cost.

Our current, centralized system is efficient and inexpensive. It is also opaque. How and where your produce is grown is extremely difficult to track. The system developed to move large orders of homogenous products, not to maximize for the health of produce, consumers, farms or the environment.

Sourcing is especially hard for restaurants, which deal with multiple suppliers. According to the National Restaurant Association, Americans spend $709.2 billion dollars in restaurants every year or 47 percent of the food dollar. Helping restaurants control their sourcing is key to changing the way our supply chains works. Finding local, responsible producers who chefs trust may not add significantly to the cost of a single tomato order, but the overhead in terms of time at scale makes it extremely expensive.

A restaurant that accepts whatever produce is offered them, without asking questions, can meet almost all of their needs through three or four vendors.

In comparison, a restaurant in the farm-to-table model may have to pay 100 invoices a month from 15 different suppliers, each operating on different payment terms.

Foodservice businesses are incentivized to consolidate back of house operations. They cut back on ingredients and the number of suppliers they order from, even when local farms are available. A restaurant in Sacramento could end up buying produce from the farm next door without even knowing it, only to have it sent to a distributor in San Francisco and hauled all the way back. In the centralized model, the logistical cost at scale trumps all others.

A number of things are coming together to make tracking and selecting our food easier.

First, a growing desire for transparency is motivating more consumers to seek out the food they want. Consumers want information about where their food comes from and how it was produced, so they can make informed decisions. Transparency, quality, and value are important. Food producers and distributors are beginning to see that transparency is marketable.

At the same time, technology is making new, decentralized business models possible. Disruptive technology is reducing the cost of many loosely connected parts. Sourcery lowers the cost to restaurants of sourcing their food from a variety of producers. Sourcery connects restaurants with their local farms and handles the entire overhead – a kitchen can order from 100 suppliers, but they’ll only have to pay one invoice.

Our modern food system involves a complicated supply chain, but we have the technology to make sure the healthy choice is also the easy, affordable choice.

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

The post Food Supply Chain Transparency Is Key to a Healthy Future appeared first on Food+Tech Connect.

Guest post by Sidsel Robards, Co-founder, NY Sun Work’s Greenhouse Project. The views expressed here are solely those of the author and do not reflect the views of Food+Tech Connect. 

Modern agriculture has become the largest consumer of land and water on the planet, the cause of most water pollution, and the source of at least a fifth of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions. We have eaten 90% of the fish in our oceans; while at present we raise approximately 50 billion land animals for consumption every year. Too many people don’t think about what goes into the production of the food they eat, the impact it has, and why they should care. We buy, waste and trash more food than we care to imagine on a daily basis and yet globally, people are starving.

Re-imagining the future of dining to focus on eating sustainably is not only critical, but our responsibility. I believe that educating our next generation to think outside the box in terms of technology and design can help us re-imagine the future of our food supply, and in return, have a profound impact on our environment. A real difference will be felt when the majority of people decide to buy not only food that is sourced sustainably, but food that is free from chemicals and genetic modifications. While a portion of global citizens are growing this type of food, more of us need to grow what we call “sustainable minds” by educating both ourselves and the next generation of consumers to make informed choices about the impact our daily lives have on the world.

At NY Sun Works we have set out to build a new kind of science lab for our school. We install rainwater catchment tanks to provide all the water for hydroponic growing systems; we put in a fish farm not just to grow fish, but to start a conversation about the oceans. We built an energy corner where kids can convert their own energy into electricity; we put in composting to begin a conversation about waste; and a high tech computer system that collects greenhouse data.  We call our curriculum ” a world of systems” because all these systems give the students an opportunity to learn not just about individual systems, but about their city and world as a system.  Instead of saying “you have to eat healthy,” we look at the whole body as a system, and ask what that system needs to thrive.

We have set a goal of building 100 hydroponic educational school science labs by 2020. As we reach this goal and go beyond, we envision schools as viable players who will be able to contribute to the supply chain in NYC by partnering with neighborhood restaurants; or, as we are already doing at some NY Sun Works partner schools, growing crops for senior citizens who have limited access to quality produce.

The huge demand for sustainable, local food has arrived, and as more and more people move to urban environments, vertical farming will continue to evolve and become part of the solution to our food supply systems.

We’d love to see restaurants, bars and even private individuals take on this trend by easily growing their own hydroponic crops like micro greens, lettuces and herbs. New technologies will allow people to do so on rooftops, and perhaps — more feasibly for some — in apartment or restaurant basement farms, with grow lights and the ability to produce specialized crops for harvest and immediate use. Massive growing walls could make bars beautiful and green, while providing fresh herbs for garnishing cocktails.

None of these are exactly new ideas, but it is very exciting to see where it is all going as more innovators are working on these solutions. The trick will be to find a way for scientists, business owners, private individuals and most importantly policy makers to come together and make a lasting impact. The solutions we come up with now will dictate the well being of our future as a species. The planet will be fine, but will we?

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

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Sidsel is the co-founder of NY Sun Works’ Greenhouse Project initiative which uses hydroponic farming technology to educate K-12th grade students and teachers about the science of sustainability. Prior to The Greenhouse Project, Sidsel enjoyed a successful career working as an international model. Born and raised in Denmark, she now lives in New York City with her husband and their children, who attend public school.

The post Teaching Kids to Hack Dining Through STEM Education appeared first on Food+Tech Connect.

In honor of World Water Day, which happens tomorrow, we’re highlighting 6 game-changing agricultural technologies (and one funder) that are helping farms of all sizes reduce their water footprint.

OndaVia

OndaVia offers an analysis system that allows for laboratory-grade water testing for myriad compounds in a few minutes. OndaVia, which already provides its services to oil and gas companies, took part in Imagine H2O’s startup innovation competition in order to reach potential clients in the agriculture and food and beverage industries. If farmers want to test for specific, potentially harmful compounds in their water all they need to do is connect OndaVia’s reader to their computer and add a drop of water onto the cartridge calibrated for that compound, then plug the cartridge into the reader to get the results.

Fruition Sciences

Fruition Sciences technology helps winemakers make critical decisions about their grapes, like how much and when to irrigate. The startup’s sensors analyze the vine’s water needs and send text messages to the winemakers when the vines are getting too much or not enough water. Using the startup’s software, winemakers can monitor weather atmosphere, humidity and wind speed and make irrigation decisions base on those factors. One early-adopter, Shafer Vineyards, estimates that it’s saved 160,000 gallons of water in the last year by using the startup’s monitoring sensors and software. Fruition Sciences technology can also be applied to crops like tomatoes and avocados; its technology is currently in trials with crop fields throughout California.

Grove Labs

Grove Labs offers a web connected monitoring and control technology for hydroponic and greenhouse growing operations called Grove OS. The startup’s combination of hardware and software enables farmers to grow plants faster with decreased risk of crop loss. The operating system monitors variables in any growing environment, from air temperature to light wavelength. Grove Labs is also leveraging Grove OS to create a consumer-facing, in-home farming system, which they hope will one day be as common place as the refrigerator is today.

PresisionHawk

PrecisionHawk’s airborne intelligence platform allows the agriculture industry, among others, to gather actionable, remote sensing data through unmanned aircraft. The small robotic plane collects and provides extremely high-resolution real-time data regarding things like field conditions. Once this data is collected, it is transmitted to the processing software, which pieces together a comprehensive picture, or “mosaic,” of the field instantly.

Farm Hack

Farm Hack hosts events and provides an online platform to nurture the development, documentation and manufacturing of farm tools for resilient, sustainable agriculture. Last November, the group hosted a drought resilience Farm Hack, which resulted in the development of two online wikis: a tool to generate new ideas on what is needed for agricultural resilience and the virtual “Coffee Shop” where farmers can share pertinent data, on-farm practices and stories. There are also a number of open source plans for water-related technologies on their tools wiki.

Imagine H2O

Founded in 2007, this non-profit empowers people to solve big water challenges with new innovations. Imagine H2O hosts an annual water technology startup competition and an accelerator program, in which winners have the opportunity to set up pilot projects with growers and food processors. Last week, Imagine H2O announced the winners of its fifth competition, they include: an aerial map service (TerrAvion), a machine that turns organic food waste from supermarkets into liquid fertilizer in 3 hours (California Safe Soil) and a tray technology that creates a personalized greenhouse for individual plants (Tal-Ya Agricultural Solutions).

Bitponics

Bitponics offers a personal gardening assistant. Its device and web service automate, simplify and socialize hydroponic gardening, and provide a step-by-step gardening roadmap, i.e. a Grown Plan. The device’s sensors monitor your garden’s health and send that data to the Bitponics Cloud in real-time. The cloud controls your garden’s growing plan, automatically connects with connected accessories, such as lights and water pumps, and alerts you when you need to make changes or take action. For its social component, Bitponics allows you to share your Grow Plans with the garden community and swap tips and insights.

The post 6 Water-Saving Agricultural Technologies 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.

There are many organizations working to reduce food waste through efforts like food banks, composting, and meal planning. And over the past few years, a number of technologies have emerged to reduce food waste across the supply chain. From restaurant waste tracking to leftover swapping, the following 6 technologies are working to disrupt food waste and decrease the amount of food thrown into landfills.

LeftoverSwap

Perhaps one of the more unique, and highly controversial, new technologies combatting food waste is LeftoverSwap, an online marketplace for leftovers. The iOS app allows users to post a picture and description of their unwanted leftovers on its listing database. Other users in the same geographic region can then trade or simply take the remaining food. Users arrange a mutually agreed upon delivery method. There are a lot of potential health hazards in taking food from unpermitted strangers. However, co-founder Dan Newman tells NPR that the exchange is all about trust, similar to Couchsurfing.

LeanPath 

One of the original players in the waste tracking field, LeanPath offers an automated system for restaurants, universities, hospitals, and other food service organizations. Its integrated scale and touch screen device allow users to easily record the amount, food type, location, loss reason, and other information about the food being discarded. Kitchen staff can record the information in less than 10 seconds, immediately prior to disposal. The data is uploaded to a reporting dashboard where it can be analyzed to find sources of waste. LeanPath goes one step further and offers training and coaching to translate the data into actionable steps. There are a variety of customizable rental and purchase options available, with the most basic starting at $199 per month. Its list of customers include ARAMARK Healthcare, MGM Resorts, Sodexo, and the University of California. Around 150 of LeanPath’s clients have reduced food waste by up to 80 percent after installing the system, co-founder Andrew Shakman told Modern Farmer last month.

FoodStar

Supermarkets lose  an estimated $15 billion annually in fruit and vegetable losses alone. A significant portion of fresh food from farms never even reaches the grocery store because it has cosmetic imperfections, does not meet the grocer’s size specifications, or is already too ripe. That is where FoodStar steps in. The platform organizes and alerts shoppers of flash sales or deep discounts at their local grocery store on imperfect or already ripe produce. Users can sign up for text or email notifications on FoodStar’s website and receive alerts detailing available products, time, and location of sales. These sales are of financial benefit to both consumers and businesses. Additionally, when the flash sales end any produce that doesn’t find a shopping cart is diverted from landfills to compost facilities.

Love Food Hate Waste

Love Food Hate Waste was launched by nonprofit organization WRAP in 2007 to help reduce food waste in the UK. Earlier this year they created a free iOS and Android app that helps users plan, shop, cook and make the most of leftovers. It includes a variety of recipes and tips for utilizing forgotten and leftover food to create new dishes. Samsung has recently partnered with the campaign to raise awareness and combat food waste by educating consumers about storing and organizing food in a more efficient way.

222 Million Tons

 For the many home cooks that struggle to use all of their groceries before they go bad, 222 Million Tons meal planning iPad app offers a compelling solution. The app allows users to create menus and shopping lists based on their household size. The aim is to optimize planning, while still providing enough variety in their home-cooked meals. The app gets its name from the amount of food wasted every year in industrialized nations according to a 2011 UN study. 

Wise Up on Waste

Capitalizing on the adage of “knowledge is power,” Wise Up on Waste allows restaurants to track and measure how, when, and where waste is produced. Created by Unilever Food Solutions, the free app—available on iOS, Android, and web-enabled devices—makes it simple for chefs to track the type of waste—spoilage, preparation, or customer plate waste—by meal on a per day and per cover basis. The performance data is then compiled and sent to users by email along with industry comparisons to help them identify cost saving opportunities. Wise Up on Waste also contains a plethora of useful information and tips to help chefs utilize this data and reduce waste.

The post Waste Not, Want Not: 6 Technologies to Reduce Food Waste appeared first on Food+Tech Connect.

From payments to ordering to engagement, the restaurant industry is seeing its fair share of food tech innovation. Much of the innovation seems to be targeted towards large chains who are often earlier adopters of technology, but this innovation foreshadows what could be around the corner for small quick service restaurants (QSR). We decided to take a look at one of the technology companies that’s raised a lot of money to make waves in the restaurant space.

Founded by computer graphic and 3-D animation pioneer Paul Sidlo in 2002, EMN8 offers a selection of customized digital meal ordering and customer engagement services for QSRs. Through online and mobile meal ordering systems, digital kiosks, and call centers, restaurants can update menus universally, suggest add-ons at the point of purchase to increase the average bill per customer, and potentially reduce staff costs by introducing digital menus. EMN8’s technology also lets restaurants track purchase histories so customers can easily reorder previous menu favorites. All of its services create robust data that restaurants can use to analyze customer preferences.

As we noted in our monthly Food Tech Media Startup Funding roundup, in June, ENM8 announced it had acquired Snapfinger, an online and mobile ordering platform for casual dining restaurants. Snapfinger’s latest tool allows in-store diners to open tickets in the restaurant’s point-of-sale (POS) system with their personal mobile devices, which give restaurants more customer data regarding dine-in and take-out meal preferences. Additionally, such technology could reduce service times for customers. The company also announced it had raised $50 million in growth funding, lead by Bass Associates and Allegis Capital, to make the acquisition.

EMN8 was already a major player among the crowded meal-ordering space, working with restaurant giants like Burger King, Domino’s Pizza, Jack in the Box, and Yum! along with smaller chains such as Sizzler and The Counter. By acquiring Snapfinger, ENM8 now provides its services to an increased share of the QSR and casual dining segment. “We really understand the challenges that multi-unit restaurant chains face, including how to balance corporate- and franchise-level initiatives,” says EMN8’s Chief Marketing Officer Hope Neiman in an interview with Food+Tech Connect.

Like MenuDrive and RRT, EMN8 can integrate with the vast majority of POS systems, such as Micros, Radiant, and PAR. What sets the company apart, however, is its ability to act as the sole interface with customers across all channels—web, mobile, in-store, and telephone. “EMN8 helps our clients develop more integrated customer relationship models so that all of their communications are focused no matter which service or platform that customer came through,” says Neiman. This unified touchpoint between the restaurant and customer aims to increase revenue and encourage repeat customer transaction. As such, EMN8 is seeing a lot of interest in its loyalty and offer engines from clients.

Digital ordering accounts for a growing percentage of sales for some companies who have already embraced the technology, representing approximately a third of all Domino’s US orders, for example. Restaurant startups like Sweetgreen are also embracing mobile payment apps and seeing significant adoption and engagement. Ultimately, EMN8 seeks to revolutionize the restaurant industry landscape through further technological enhancements in the mobile payment arena and improved customer engagement models. “I think there’s a big shift in a lot of the technology for ordering really becoming very impactful for guests,” says Nieman.

The post EMN8 Ups Its Digital Ordering and Engagement Game appeared first on Food+Tech Connect.

The National Restaurant Association conducted a survey of professional chefs and members of the American Culinary Federation on predicted food trends for restaurants in 2013. Almost 2,000 chefs were asked to rank 198 items based on popularity in the food industry. Among the questions, the topics of technology, health and food cost were addressed – all with an emphasis on environmental sustainability.

The top-ranking trends for the coming year are encouraging indicators that sustainability is top of mind for ma

ny chefs. Within the first ten items, mindful protein choices appear three times, highlighting the importance of local sourcing (#1), lesser used cuts of meat (#6) and sustainable seafood (#9). Similarly, an emphasis on locally grown and sourced ingredients is seen throughout the top twenty; the phrase “hyper-local sourcing” (#7) suggests that more restaurants will be hosting their own gardens in 2013.

Health and nutrition, especially for children, is a notable theme throughout the report. “Healthful kids’ meals” ranks in third place; “children’s nutrition” in fifth%3

The post Health, Sustainability & Tech Top NRA’s 2013 Restaurant Trends appeared first on Food+Tech Connect.

Guest Post by Haven Bourque of HavenBMedia

Photo Credit: Clare Barboza & recipe by Kim O'Donnel from “The Meat Lover's Meatless Celebrations”

Let’s face it: Meat is complicated. And it’s emotional. Lines can be drawn in the sand and room temperature can skyrocket when the ‘I eat them to save them’ crowd intersects with the ‘I eat no food with a face’ group. Having munched my way through that entire spectrum, I insist that, when it comes to fixing what’s wrong with America’s meat, even vegetarians need to have skin in the game.

Here’s the proof: A few days before Thanksgiving, I convened a group of Bay Area women to honor one of our heroes, journalist, chef, and author Kim O’Donnel, and celebrate her new book The Meat Lovers’ Guide to Meatless Cooking. In the midst of a whirlwind book tour, Kim was the catalyst to bring together people of distinctly different perspectives on meat.

The crowd was an eclectic mix of culinarians, environmentalists and policy experts.  In deference to strong vegetarian sentiments, our potluck skipped the meat. I nervously noted Kari Hamerschlag, the brain behind EWG’s ‘Meat Eaters Guide to Climate Change’ and very close friend whom I know as a staunchly vocal vegetarian, introducing herself to Marissa Guggiana, co-founder of The Butcher’s Guild and author of Primal Cuts. I’m a huge fan of Marissa’s work, which brings artisan butchers into the limelight. Would a dust-up ensue, or would we all eat our Anson Mills grits and Cheryl’s poached pears and get along?

My mother Szari happened to be visiting from the east coast. She fit right in to our hive of contradictions: Mum has shot rattlesnake for her dinner out of necessity, not sport. And her artwork featuring reclaimed cow bones has appeared in high-end fashion magazines and the Smithsonian. Now retired, about 90 percent of her diet consists of vegetables she grows in her garden.  Comfortable in the kitchen, she stirred the grits and eyed the quinoa kale rolls with guarded curiosity.

As I circulated the room, I heard bursts of conversation about the public health and environmental dangers of industrial meat production, the progress of Consumers Union’s ‘Meat without Drugs’ campaign, and conflicting brining techniques for heritage breed turkeys.  The celebration could have turned into a brawl with so many strong-minded, opinionated experts on both sides of the fence. But it wasn’t just the buzz from the mimosas: I found no such tension.

Throughout the afternoon, voice after voice concurred that problems with meat production affect everyone.  Eating less meat, as modeled by Kim’s work, and eating ‘greener’ meat, as modeled by Kari’s work, are critical for personal health and the environment.  Supporting independent small-scale meat producers, and purchasing from butchers who know their sources, modeled by Marissa’s work, strengthens regional economies and farming communiti

es and offers urban populations a sustainable meat supply. I was encouraged to hear culinary writers recognize that policy initiatives are key, as are grassroots efforts to unite communities negatively affected by industrial-scale meat production, whether they be fast-food consumers, slaughterhouse workers or the animals who end up at the end of our forks.  Whether our efforts led to the consumption of more grass-fed burgers or more beet carpaccio, the sentiment was clear that we all must work to make meat better.

We’ve had some big losses. In 2010 I wrote for CivilEats.com about the USDA’s GIPSA rule, reform of which would have given small meat producers fair market access. A year later, the movement to reinstate the rule lost.  Meanwhile, Meatless Mondays became a household name and artisan butchers kept a firm clamp on their rock star status.

I confess I’m confused myself. This autumn I flirted with hosting my neighborhood’s meat CSA, but felt far more comfortable taking on a CSF (Community Supported Fisheries).  I know a fellow scuba diver and ocean lover who disagrees that sustainable seafood consumption is a key to ocean conservation; she refuses to consume fish. She eats quite a lot of meat. This made me all the more inspired to fly from Oakland to NYC, carbon footprint be damned, for the Meat Hackathon. We need to leverage technological innovation as much as we need to honor the potlucks that deepen our connections with each other, in order to solve our current meat dilemmas.

Let’s fix meat. Let’s invite meat lovers to sit at the table with committed vegans and dream up farm-fresh, seasonal meals that anyone would enthusiastically eat. Let’s support small-scale meat producers, as they are our best advocates to lead more conventional farmers and ranchers in their own communities toward change.  Let’s cheer on programmers, business experts, chefs, farmers and all the other attendees who bring unique perspectives on meat to the table. Let the Meat Hackathon begin!

How can we fix meat and help small-scale meat producers?  Share your thoughts in the comments below, on Twitter using #hackmeat, on Facebook or at the Hack//Meat hackathon happening December 7-9 in NYC.

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Haven Bourque founded HavenBMedia in 2010 to bring communications expertise to food system change. Her group develops communications strategies, trains spokespersons, and teaches social media skills for diverse organizations ranging from prestigious non-profits to small businesses, national corporations and community activists working to reform food systems around health and wellness, social justice and environmental conservation. She is proud of her work with IATP's Food & Community Fellows, NRDC, Bon Appetit Management Company and Straus Family Creamery. She is a judge for NASFT's first-ever Leadership awards, a contributor to CivilEats.com and was a co-organizer of the nation's first TEDx conference to focus on farmworkers. Follow her on Twitter: @HavenBourque.

The post Hacking Meat: Why Vegetarians Should Care About Meat Production appeared first on Food+Tech Connect.

Guest Post by Isha Datar, Director of New Harvest

Isha Datar's talk at the fourth annual TEDxToronto conference, which took place on October 26, 2012 at The Sony Centre for Performing Arts. Celebrating the theme of Alchemy, speakers demonstrated that “intellectual chemistry” can be the catalyst for exceptional ideas and profound change.

The future of meat is eating less of it.

North American meat eaters have come to believe that eating meat for most meals, most days makes sense. It doesn’t.

The health benefits of meat are not positively correlated to the amount we eat. And meat requires a lot of environmental resources to produce. When we consider our ever growing population and our planet’s limited resources, we can’t justify the growing trend in meat consumption.

But how are we to know any better?

We know very little about meat at point of purchase. We’ll see on a package of meat the cut, the day it was packaged, a (artificially inexpensive) price. Thankfully, in the US, we’ll see nutritional info on cuts of meat as of this year.

We need more.

Labeling is a powerful tool to inform consumers, yet labels often tr

eat consumers as uneducated and uninformed. We need to see labels with real information on them, not seals of certification from groups we know very little about, with limited credibility.

How much do you know about the meat you eat? What information would you like to see at point of purchase? Share your thoughts in the comments below, on Twitter using #hackmeat, on Facebook or at the Hack//Meat hackathon happening December 7-9 in NYC.

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Isha Datar is the Director of New Harvest, a non-profit research organization for the advancement of meat substituted like cultured meat. She is the author of “Possibilities for an in vitro meat production system”, Canada’s only scientific investigation into cultured meat. Isha’s work has contributed to the development of Canada’s first in vitro meat lab at the University of Alberta, and has been featured in several articles in Canada and abroad. Her advocacy for the responsible use of science to contribute to food security has led to multiple speaking engagements on in vitro meat and agrobiotechnology patent reform.

The post Hacking Meat: We Need Real Labels appeared first on Food+Tech Connect.

Guest Post by Lorraine Lewandrowski of Honeydale Farm

Whitey, a Holstein dairy bull calf chowing down on grass

Rural New York is a vast and beautiful place. In my lifetime, I have seen stunning changes. In the past decade, New York dairy farm numbers dropped from 7,400 to 5,400. Three million acres of New York’s grasslands now stand abandoned or underused. In total, New Yorkers farm 7 million acres, with 1 million acres grazed and 3 million acres in cropland.

New York is one of the more “local” milksheds in the nation. 40 percent of milk produced stays here in the region for fluid drinking milk. Average dairy farm size is smaller than the national average, with 100 cow and smaller farms still commonplace. With increasing Greek yogurt production adding to the products New York already produces such as soft cheeses and ice cream, a significant percentage of NYC’s dairy comes directly from rural New York. NYC consumers matter very much to us Upstate, and hopefully we matter to them! With continued farm losses, though, we are at a point where food-interested consumers in the Big Apple can have a vital role in making or breaking their dairy farmers.

Despite growing demand for the milk we produce, the farmgate milk price paid to us is the lowest in the Northeast. Dairy farms continue to empty out and more “for sale” signs on pretty cow pastures are going up. Driving around Upstate, one typically sees barns caving in, fields growing to brush and farmsteads that are a shadow of their former selves. This abandonment of New York farmland prompted Cornell University to do a study called “Green Grass, Green Jobs” on potential uses for New York’s grasslands. “Local meat” is a key recommendation in this report.

I see “local meat’ as a means of directly supplementing income of New York’s livestock and dairy farmers through the marketplace. “Green Grass, Green Jobs” predicted that if even half of New York’s grasslands could be put back to work, 7,500 new farms and 9,000 related jobs could be created. For dairy farms in particular, I see great potential for dairy rose veal and dairy beef. “Local meat” from the New York meatshed means money put directly into the hands of hardworking farmers and good food for our consumers. If even a small percentage 20,000,000 residents of the New York Metropolitan Area occasionally purchased “local meat”, opportunities for grassland farming would significantly expand in rural New York.

Aside from good old fashioned “local meat”, tasty and fresh, without added fillers, consider long term food security for New York City. I recently met a food security expert who, days after 9/11, was tasked with studying New York City’s food security. New York City has only a 3 to 4 day supply of food on the shelves and its su

pply chains are becoming longer and more global. This is a vulnerability for our region. How can it make sense for NYC food-aware people to sit back and watch as nearby and naturally watered grasslands empty out?

Upstate livestock farmers have the skill sets necessary to raise good meat on our grasslands. However, as “Green Grass, Green Jobs” stated, we lack marketing know-how in selling the great meat that we can and do produce. For example, three small dairy farms, including my own, launched a rose veal experiment this year. About 300,000 bull calves are born annually on New York’s dairy farms. Most are sold a few days after birth and raised in large facilities. Our goal was to instead keep the little bulls and raise them on milk and pasture for at least six months. We were inspired by our Twitter friends from the UK who have begun a Buy British rose veal program to supplement farm income, provide humane lives for little bull calves and great meat for British consumers. We raised all breeds, including the smallest Jersey bulls that cattle buyers tell us are “worthless.” Not to us! Our motto was “no bull left behind.”

We processed our first group of rose veal bulls last month after they spent a great six months grazing out an overgrown farm in the Adirondacks. The first problem that we ran into was explaining to consumers what rose veal is. The second problem was explaining to consumers what buying half or a whole bull means. We had trouble explaining a “cut sheet” and how consumers might design their cut sheet in different ways: ground veal, cutlets, osso buco, and more. We did not know how to help a consumer who wants to focus on “nose to tail” cooking.

My #Hackmeat request would be for a simple app or schematic that would show consumers what rose veal is, where various cuts come from on the animal, and what they are used for. An app could be developed just for rose veal bulls as a prototype, but I could envision eventual development of an app that would cover all livestock. This would help consumers better visualize what a half or whole of an animal contains and how they could get creative in structuring a cut sheet for their family’s needs and tastes. I would see the app as a marketing tool that farmers could provide to customers easily and through the net. This #Hackmeat project would make meat marketing a lot less daunting for the farmer while enabling consumers to take a more active role in creating our future New York meatshed.

Do you have similar issues with marketing to consumers? Would this app be helpful for you? Share your thoughts in the comments below, on Twitter using #hackmeat, on Facebook or at the Hack//Meat hackathon happening December 7-9 in NYC.

Read more hacking meat contributions here. 

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Lorraine Lewandrowski is a fourth generation dairy farmer in the Mohawk Valley of Upstate New York. Her family focuses on grazing and enjoys the extensive wildlife habitat of their farm. Lorraine is also an attorney practicing agricultural law and occasionally works as an apprentice cheesemaker at Three Village Cheese in Newport, New York. Reach out to Lorraine on Twitter @nyfarmer

The post Hacking Meat: Why #HackMeat is Perfect for NY appeared first on Food+Tech Connect.

Hacking Meat is an online conversation exploring how can information and technology be used to hack (or reimagine) a more sustainable, profitable and healthy future of meat. Join the conversation and share your ideas or product requests in the comments, on Twitter using #hackmeat, on Facebook or at the Hack//Meat hackathon happening December 7-9 in NYC.

Guest post by Kara Rota of Cookstr

Photo: CB2

I advocate a shift in how we eat that emphasizes the flavor, the quality and the provenance of meat over its quantity. In order to eat differently, we need to learn to cook differently. Eating less meat is never an eater’s only priority: dietary considerations and nutritional needs, taste preferences and skill level all play a large role. Helping users find tested, trusted recipes that are outside their existing comfort zone is what I focus on.

I work at Cookstr, a technology company focused on food, driven by the power of metadata. Cookstr is powered by a content management system (CMS) created by and for non-technologist food experts. Culinarians use this CMS to apply their expert knowledge to each recipe, providing the context that makes the recipe meaningful: is the dish kid-friendly? Is it gluten-free? Is it good for Thanksgiving, or Valentine’s Day? Is it Cantonese or Szechuan? What are the mood, taste and texture? Cookstr’s nutritional platform then allows full nutritional information to be calculated for each recipe. Recipe (content) + metadata (context) = powerful, customized search, and a seamless user experience around discovering recipes that are just right, right now.

This Italian recipe for Pasta and Lentils uses four ounces of pancetta to flavor a recipe that serves six ­­– a perfect example of meat as a condiment. A Hungarian Goulash Soup stretches a half-pound of beef chuck for a soup that makes eight servings, bolstered by plenty of onions and stock.

Technology is a big part of the answer here, but not in the form of in vitro meat. Creating artificial non-animal meat products doesn’t address the health concerns of eating too much meat, nor does it challenge us to think about ways of cooking and eating that are different from the meat-centric plates we are so used to. In vitro meat pushes eaters even further from th

inking about the origins of their food. Good technology should help us adapt, rather than spending disproportionate resources in order to cling to outmoded and unsustainable systems. When applied to something as tangible and “real” as food, technology can spur incredible positive change on an individual and institutional level.

Cooking together is as important now as it’s ever been. Societies are shaped by how and what they eat. Moving meat away from the center of the plate, treating it as a condiment, a treat, as just another unfetishized ingredient, represents a tremendous cultural shift. It’s intimidating, because many of us don’t know how to cook that way. We never learned.

I’m not the first to say that this country has a tendency to be more than a little all-or-nothing. If crash dieting and bacon sundaes have taught us anything, it’s that we like excess, and we like limitations in excess. The idea of being vegetarian-ish, or flexitarian, or vegan much of the time, challenges the way we’ve identified ourselves as eaters. It’s also a plausible way forward. For the last four years, Americans have been eating less and less meat per person. The shift has started, but eaters need resources to follow it. Adding recipes to home cooks’ everyday repertoires that treat meat as a small percentage of a dish rather than its focal point represents the long-term dietary lifestyle change we need.

How can we use technology to help us cook more and eat less? Let us know in the comments, on Twitter using #hackmeat, on Facebook or at the Hack//Meat hackathon happening December 7-9 in NYC.

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Kara Rota is Director of Editorial and Partnerships at Cookstr, a technology company dedicated to recipes and nutrition and co-founded by Tipping Point Partners, a New York City-based “institutional entrepreneur.” Kara is a board director of Girls in Tech NYC and an Angel Alliance member of the Lower Eastside Girls Club. She earned her BA from Sarah Lawrence College, where she wrote her undergraduate thesis on technoethics, posthumanism, cyborgs and RoboCop. She tweets @karalearota.

The post Hacking Meat: Cook More, Eat Less Meat appeared first on Food+Tech Connect.

Hacking Meat is an online conversation exploring how can information and technology be used to hack (or reimagine) a more sustainable, profitable and healthy future of meat. Join the conversation and share your ideas or product requests in the comments, on Twitter using #hackmeat, on Facebook or at the Hack//Meat hackathon happening December 7-9 in NYC.

Guest Post by Leah Selim of Global Kitchen

Chef Veda Sukhu teaching how to make Guyanese roti

At first impression, I’m probably the last person who should be writing about hacking meat. I am not a techie and I have been a vegetarian since I was 18 (with a few more-than-insignificant relapses in the earlier years). However, I do care deeply about our food system, particularly how it both influences and diverges from food systems elsewhere in the world.

It is this passion that led me, along with two of my friends from graduate school, to start Global Kitchen, a social enterprise that both teaches and preserves traditional, authentic recipes through immigrant-led cooking classes. Often, the dishes that center on meat hold deep social and cultural significance for the people who prepare and share them.

One of our chef instructors, Ragab Rashwan, grew up in Egypt and moved to the US a few years ago with his wife Jennye. They explained to me how eating meat was treated as a special occasion once a week (on Fridays), and the meat was always sourced locally, either raised and slaughtered in the home or purchased from a halal butcher. Jennye and Ragab also described the meat holiday, Eid al-Adha, during which animals are slaughtered and shared with family, friends and those who are less fortunate. “There's a lot of symbolism and meaning, [both] religious and cultural. Meat isn't just something that has to decorate every plate at every meal,” Jennye explained.

Similarly, our friends and chef instructors at Bunna Café emphasized how Ethiopian cuisine and meat consumption reflects the country’s rich history steeped in religious traditions and values, both Christian and Muslim. “Like most third-world countries, meat is eaten primarily on special occasions, especially religious festivals and parties for guests,” said Bunna Café operator Sam Saverance. But fasting is an integral part of religious observance in Ethiopia, and meat is often omitted entirely during fasting holidays. “For most people there, fasting simply means abstaining from any form of animal product,” Saverance explained. However, most Ethiopians do eat meat and are attached to the flavor, so when it isn’t accessible (ei

ther financially or for religious reasons), they rely on a repertoire of dishes that have been developed over centuries of culinary history to emulate the savory flavor of meat. “The spicyness and earthy flavor of Berbere, the most popular spice base in the country, is a big contributor to this savoriness,” said Saverance. (He and his team at Bunna Café capitalize on this aspect as their food is 100% vegan.)

All of this to say that the historical significance and cultural meaning behind traditional recipes is precisely what I’m interested in preserving through Global Kitchen, because I believe it is this aspect of food and commensality that connects us together as people while reminding us of our history and tying us to our unique identities.

So how does technology fit into the picture? Like many of the other guest writers have mentioned, technology is a powerful tool for knowledge and information sharing. At Global Kitchen, we preserve traditional recipes by first writing them down (often these recipes have never before made it onto a piece of paper) and then sharing them on our website. All of the chef instructors we work with are small food business owners, so we use technology to promote their work as well.

But perhaps technology has the most potential in its capacity to make transparent the connections and resources needed for truly authentic ethnic cooking. After speaking with several of our chef instructors about the US meat industry, all of them had similar complaints: as a result of our meat production systems, our meat doesn’t taste good (or rather, doesn’t taste like anything), and we don’t know where it’s coming from. For many people outside of the US, the experience of cooking and eating an authentic meal is not simply a process of manipulating traditional ingredients in a specific way. It encompasses the entire food system in the context of existing cultural norms—from the farm where the animals are raised to the butcher who can prepare the meat in accordance with religious rules and customs. These practices not only affect the taste of the meat, but also play a part in the experience of eating it. There is enormous potential in using technology to connect immigrant chefs and home cooks to the meat purveyors who know how to source and slaughter their meat in a way that stays true to their traditions and values.

And hopefully as Americans who are eager (dare I say hungry) to learn about food and experience other cultures, we can benefit from this connection as well.

Do you have any ideas for ways that technology can help immigrant chefs source sustainable, flavorful meat and preserve authentic ethnic recipes? Let us know on Twitter using #hackmeat, on Facebook or at the Hack//Meat hackathon happening December 7-9 in NYC.

The post Hacking Meat: Meat, Technology and Authentic Ethnic Cooking appeared first on Food+Tech Connect.

Hacking Meat is an online conversation exploring how can information and technology be used to hack (or reimagine) a more sustainable, profitable and healthy future of meat. Join the conversation and share your ideas or product requests in the comments, on Twitter using #hackmeat, on Facebook or at the Hack//Meat hackathon happening December 7-9 in NYC.

Guest Post by Andrew Plotsky

Meat, colloquially, is the skeletal muscle of animals. We'll call this ‘flesh.’ In the more metaphorical context, the one in which this conversation seems to be framed, 'Meat,' is the entirety of the products, processes and cultural attitudes that make up the complex system of raising animals, turning them into food and delivering them to humans. This, we will call ‘Meat.’

The basic assumption of #hackmeat is that there is something wrong with our past and present of Meat. It is Bad. At the very least, it is not Good enough.

I think this Badness is a direct descendant of divorce, a separation between things that were or ought to be connected.

In the over-romanticized “simple” days of yore, a lot more people were directly involved with some or all of the labour that was required of one's Meat. It is a remarkably strenuous process – physically, emotionally and spiritually.

To raise, process, preserve and prepare your own animals is taxing. This is a principal reason why things have changed so dramatically. Meat is hard to do.

This challenge, the labour and the hardship, is the foundation of one's system of valuing Meat. If you have raised a pig on rotated pasture and organic grain and gotten to know their quirks and gurgles, and chased them down in the middle of the night after they escaped your triple electric wired paddock, you understand that cut-and-wrapped pork is a very valuable thing.

This is the case with any of the trades corresponding to Meat. The labour and engagement in any process helps to contextualize the value of the resultant products. This need not a physically strenuous activity. Type designers understand that text types with contextual ligatures are worthy of praise, as furniture makers understand the worth of a table joined with dovetails and tenons. Value is illuminated by both knowledge and labour.

I don't mean to imply that to raise animals is the only way to fully value Meat. Nor do I mean to say that everyone must do everything, for to foster resilient communities, we need specialists who express artful expertise in their respective trades. What I do mean to say is that, on the whole, most of us have been entirely divorced from Meat.

Now is where I’m supposed to define Goodness and how we do it. Beyond being doubtful of it’s existence, I am, unfortunately, neither smart nor observant enough to give a proper definition. Thus, I will take the road of cowardice and dance around the edges.

What we need more than anything in creating technosavvy Good Meat is to recreate and communicate the value of Good Meat and inspire people to Meaty action.

We need more farmers. We need more ranchers and shepherds. We need more abattoirs and butchers and charcutiers and farriers and smithies and coopers and wheelwrights. There are so many trades necessary to a fluid and healthful Meat, and we need more of all of them.

This movement will not be a backwards one. A non-negotiable phenomenon is that our actions and we are a function of our time. Characteristic of this time are information and technology, and subsequent innovations of them. They are often looked to as the means, and increasingly, the ends, of the forward direction. Progress, I think they call it.

We will never replace our world with a digital one. Nor will we replace experience with information, and our hands will not become computers.

Information and technology will unquestionably be one of the legs on which we walk from here on, but we must not lose sight of the roots of Meat, and the trades that make it possible. We must refocus on placing humans in those roles.

Good Meat will be made possible by the labour of craftspeople who have an intimate knowledge, deep love and full pride in their trades. And we need more of all of them.

My contribution is as a Meatsmith and a media maker.

I believe strongly in the power of storytelling. The more stories we tell of the Good people doing Good work, the more we can prospectively inspire more people to do more Good work.

Technologies have never been more accessible to storytellers. All the devices in our pockets shoot hi-res video and take great photos. We can distribute them for free via innumerable avenues on the internet, through which we have access to all of the people in the world.

As much as we need Meaty tradespeople, we need documentors and communicators to help them spread the gospel.

How are you spreading the “Meat Gospel”? Let us know in the comments, on Twitter using #hackmeat, on Facebook or at the Hack//Meat hackathon happening December 7-9 in NYC

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Andrew is the founder of Farmrun, and works as a Meatsmith on Vashon Island in the Puget Sound.

The post Hacking Meat: The Meat Gospel appeared first on Food+Tech Connect.