Investments continue to pour into startups tackling healthy eating and meal subscriptions. Last month, Real Food Works, a healthy meal delivery startup, announced it had raised $175 thousand from Benjamin Franklin Technology Partners and $200 thousand from the city of Philadelphia’s $6 million Startup PHL Seed Fund, managed by First Round Capital, among other angel investment.

Essentially a tech and logistics company, Real Food Works partners with local restaurants to make deliveries of nutritious, “real food” meals to users, 3 times a day, 5 days a week. Users sign up, decide what to order and pay through the platform’s user interface, and the platform’s back end database manages the supply chain.

At our October Food+Tech Meetup “The Business of Meal Kit Subscriptions,” the startup’s founder and CEO Lucinda Duncalfe presented her company’s model and goals (video above). I subsequently spoke with Duncalfe to learn more about what makes her company innovative, the challenges her team has faced and their plans for growth. Our interview has been edited slightly for clarity.

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Food+Tech Connect: What’s your background and what was the inspiration for Real Food Works?

Lucinda Duncalfe: I’m a cereal entrepreneur and have done a wide array at of ventures, including TurnTide and ClickEquations, which I sold in 2011. The inspiration [for Real Food Works] was my own personal transformation. I watched Forks Over Knives, did a ton of research, and I was shocked at how little I knew about nutrition. I started eating a real food diet. [And while] it was easy to stick to from a motivation standpoint, it was incredibly inconvenient. I met so many people who were eating the same way, and I saw an opportunity there to make it easier to eat more accessibly and healthfully. The real problem was the actual food on the plate. Uber was coming into Philly, and I had that model on the brain. Why couldn’t [I apply a similar model and] get restaurants to cook healthy and delicious food?

FTC: What’s your business model?

Customers sign up for a subscription, and they can pause or cancel at any time. They receive deliveries Sunday and Wednesday night. They manage their menu in advance. There is zero waste in the system. The menus come from 19 restaurants, and each item is worked through and certified as both nutritious and tasty. On the back end, the system aggregates customer orders and sends them to the restaurants, so that restaurant staff can order provisions for those meals. Every customer gets dishes each week from many restaurants and our courier partner, Wash Cycle Laundry, delivers the orders by bicycle. The price ranges from $89 a week to $299 for weight loss (at the high end).

[In terms of the restaurants], they go through approvals. They receive orders, cook them, label, package and send them out [via courier]. We deliver in the evening – our customers receive meals between 6 and 9pm. Packaging and storing is a huge problem [for restaurants in general]. We judge the capacity of the restaurants, [and suggest a] greater number of fewer dishes. We have both core providers and specialized restaurants. We have everything from single proprietor little guys to bigger places.

Users can choose “healthy living” or “weight loss.”[In weight loss, they receive] snacks and healthy coaching every week, and on-going education online. [Coaches] respond and help them. When we decided to launch weight loss, I went back to the research, and asked, what does science know and not know? What works for people? [I noticed] ridiculously low success rates. The other food prep companies, help people loose weight, but there is no education about how to eat better. When you stop you don’t know what to do. Coaching and logging were huge elements [for us]. The foundation of the program is a tie between food and health. We just launched weight loss [two months] ago, and have had great results from a business standpoint.

FTC: What was your fundraising strategy and why was it was successful? How long did it take you to fundraise?

LD: Fundraising took 4 months from beginning to end. Our strategy was to start with angels and to prove the elements of the model as quickly as possible. When we started, we had no idea if the base model would work, [and were uncertain about the ] economics, restaurant partnerships and getting food from here to there. I just tweeted initially, and we got the first set of customers. And to our great pleasure that worked. [The second question was], could we scale? A local newspaper article helped with that. [Our third area of focus was] retention. We have outrageous retention, so that was great. [Our fourth focus will be] multiple geographies, [and we plan to expand] next year. Our internal team is extremely confident. We also need a way to know we can scale customer acquisition.

[We had an] objective of getting seed stage venture money, and had a lot of luck getting meetings and then “the come back when” line. But these were legitimate “come back whens,” not “I’m just being nice to you.” The Startup PHL fund came into existence, and it [the venture money] gave its team the comfort to come in earlier then they normally would have. I was going to finish out the round with angels only, but it made sense to add them into the round as well.

FTC: How do you plan to scale?

LD: We will scale like Uber. We will drop a team in [a new location]. All the centralized software is designed to scale, we just have to go get restaurants. We’ll drop in, hire a couple of people and one chef in each city. We will announce a new city early next year. The candidates are San Francisco, Los Angeles, Washington DC and Boston. [In terms of New York City], it’s really different logistically. It’s also has a very different [extremely active] takeout and delivery culture. It’s a one-off, but we will get there and we can’t wait.

FTC: How many restaurant partners do you currently work with and what does the process look like for getting them on board?

LD: We grow it in a step function. We went from 12 to 19 in the past month. We go through certification screening, [make sure they have the proper] insurance and are licensed, and we run an educational session with them. They then create a sample item, based on their own flavor profile. Typically the first dish we don’t like. It will either be good nutritionally but doesn’t taste good, or vice versa. Every single dish goes through same process. [Restaurants] are constantly coming up with new dishes. But it is very time consuming and expensive for them, so in the holiday season we won’t see anything new, but right now we’re getting a lot [of new dishes].

FTC: How do you differentiate yourself from others in the meal subscription space?

LD: We differentiate ourselves by offering 100 percent real food that is restaurant grade.

FTC: What are some of the challenges you’ve faced with Real Food Works?

LD: Funding was definitely tough. But 4 months is not bad, and we got great people to invest. Learning restaurants was challenging. Many restauranteurs are not great business people. It’s just a very different culture, so that was challenging. Also, you’re dealing with a perishable, artisinal product. Everything about food is challenging.

The post Real Food Works Partners with Restaurants, Brings Healthy Meal Subscriptions to Philly appeared first on Food+Tech Connect.

What does a next generation Food Network look like? Tastemade, a food video startup that launched with a multichannel Youtube channel last year, thinks it’s online, social video programming. And the company is off to a great start, with over 100 YouTube food channel partners in the Americas, Europe, and Asia that get 12 million unique visitors from more than 200 countries, all in just one year.

Until now, the company has focused on producing programming for its YouTube network geared towards “Tastemakers,” the people who create the content for its global community of food lovers. In addition to curating food-focused videos from around the world, the company films live programming at its Santa Monica-based studio (a la the food network).

Earlier this month, the company announced it has raised a $10 million Series B round, led by the Raine Venture Partners, to expand its reach and gain traction through other channels and devices, like AOL, Yahoo and Roku. The company also plans to use the new round of funding to develop its recently launched iOS app.

The app, also named Tastemade, aims to provide a quick and easy format for creating 1 minute food videos. It walks users through instructions for how to film a compelling beginning, middle and end to their food story. The company hopes the app will help its digital community generate short episodes of their favorite restaurants, meals, lobster boils, canning parties, food festivals and other food experiences.

We spoke with Tastemade co-founder Steven Kydd to learn more about the company’s fundraise and recent app launch.

Food+Tech Connect: Why do you think you were able to double the amount of money you raised from your Series A raise?

Steven Kydd: The food category is a massive, global opportunity. This new round of financing helps us capitalize on that opportunity. Twenty years ago in the early days of cable, the Food Network forged a path in TV and now it has created a multi billion dollar brand–the defining brand of its time. We want to be the defining food brand of the digital age, by focusing on four pillars, mobile, global, social and video. Our fundraise was aimed at scaling our business and growing the network of creators. We believe in creative leverage, meaning that, our software will help people tell more interesting stories through video.

FT C: What was your fundraising strategy, and why do you believe it was successful?

SK: Quite simply, we looked for investors who share our vision, liked our technology-led approach, and who were food lovers. Raine Ventures & Redpoint Ventures are perfect match for Tastemade.

FTC: What are your key learnings from launching the app?

SK: The app has only been live a few weeks but the biggest learning is exactly what we had hoped for — that there are amazingly talented people around the globe who are embracing the app as a way to share their passion for food through the shows they create. Food bloggers have been the largest group to embrace the app. The vast majority of bloggers are not adept at video, and the app provides a turnkey solution for them to get into the video game. One great example is the blog Backyard Bite– author, Amy T. Shuster, has been able to shoot beautifully produced 1 minute videos to share with her fans very easily.

FTC: Why is video a good medium for restaurant reviews and food stories?

SK: To clarify, these are not critiques of restaurants as much as a celebration of places and dishes people love. Unlike photo apps, video captures the full experience — sight, sound and motion — and shares that experience via mobile/social platforms in a way that makes you feel like you are there. The 1 minute videos on the app are shot in HD and tell a story in a specific format (which is just our initial version). For many people video production is too difficult, expensive. There is too much friction and too many steps in the process. Through the app, we are providing a way to help people tell their stories through a video studio in their hand. No matter where you you can shoot and upload a fully produced video.

FTC: Why did you go with one minute videos?

The Tastemade app does not create videos or clips, it allows users to create their own episodes of a show. To create a show, we developed a very structured and specific format. Just like on the Food Network, this format allows users to tell a story. We tested a lot of different formats, but through trial and error we found that you could really capture an interesting experience and tell a story in one minute. A little episode of a show, if you will. If you and your friend are trying to figure out where to go for dinner, as a member of the app community, you can find places near you and get a feel for the ambience, sound and motion of the eatery from other users’ uploaded videos.

FTC: Have people been using the app for critical review?

No one has critiqued anything yet. We have a featured tab, that is curated by our staff and users have a friends tab (similar to following on Instagram). We only feature things that are high quality and consistent with our brand. If somebody does something that is negative, you simply don’t need to follow them. The Tastemade community is self-believing and we are aiming to connect the world through food.

FTC: What is next on the horizon in terms of platform expansion?

SK: We will continue to develop the Tastemade App for iPhone and a Android version will be released later this year.

You can download the initial version of the app on iTunes.

The post How Tastemade Plans to Become The Food Network of The Digital Age appeared first on Food+Tech Connect.

From home cooking to the restaurant experience, technology-focused food startups are enhancing the way consumers engage with food. These startups are creating significant value for consumers and notable opportunities for restaurants and brands to better understand and provide value to their customers. As the food tech sector matures, we are seeing an increasing number of these companies being funded or acquired by industry players. This monthly column highlights the most interesting acquisitions, financings and partnerships within the Food Tech & Media ecosystem – digital content, social, local, mobile, e-commerce, payments, marketing and analytics – to give you insights into the latest funding and growth trends.

There is an interesting race heating up in the payments and POS arena, with major players including Square, Paypal and Groupon unveiling new solutions to own the register of the local merchant. As Mobile Commerce Daily points out, although mobile is key for the future of payments, these companies are all “looking to gain a foothold in physical locations with traditional point-of-sale solutions because their mobile POS strategies are growing slowly.”

Square announced the Square Stand, new hardware that turns an iPad into a digital POS system plus additional accessories like a cash drawer and receipt printer, which creates an opportunity for the company to gain a stronger foothold in restaurants (esp. higher-volume ones) and the big brick-and-mortar commerce ecosystem. Conversely, rather than building its own new hardware, Paypal has taken a collaborative approach with its Cash For Registers program which was launched to encourage merchants to switch to PayPal-powered point-of-sale solutions and leverages the POS partnerships it has been building over the past year. Paypal gave its program a jump start by covering the processing fees for the first six months of the program. Groupon re-branded its merchant payments offering to be called Breadcrumb POS, which broadly expands the restaurant-focused tablet POS system that Groupon acquired last year (previously called just Breadcrumb, the more robust restaurant-specific app will now be called Breadcrumb Pro). The new Breadcrumb POS is a free iPad app, and as TechCrunch notes, in addition to luring new merchants with competitive commission and deposit rates, the company is also bundling the app with a variety of relevant physical hardware (stand, cash drawer, etc.), called the “Bread Box.”

As seen in the deals detailed below, there has been an overall flurry of activity in the crowded payments space as pressure increases for companies to expand and accelerate growth through partnerships and capital deployment. Incumbents have been looking to startups to add new features and functionality to legacy systems such as loyalty, marketing and data insights to secure merchant relationships, while young companies have benefited from the immediate scale and ability to piggyback on an established sales force.

M&A

Seamless and GrubHub announce merger.  The combined platform of the two food-delivery services providers will have over $100m in revenues, and serve diners and companies in more than 500 American cities from more than 20,000 local takeout restaurants. It is reported that GrubHub’s CEO will assume the CEO role of the combined company, and shareholders in both companies will have significant representation in the combined company’s Board of Directors. Once fully integrated, the new company will be well-positioned for an IPO, which would further validate the space among investors. Additionally, as we discussed leveraging existing systems last month, an open API and additional technology could position this new company as a powerful platform for other innovators in the food tech landscape looking to tap into a huge restaurant network (without the expense of a huge sales force).

Announced: 5/20/13  Terms: Not Disclosed  Previous Investment: GrubHub – $84.1m. Institutional investors include: Origin Ventures, Leo Capital Holdings, Amicus Capital, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Benchmark, DAG Ventures, Greenspring Associates, Mesirow Financial.  Seamless – Not disclosed (since spin-out from Aramark in October 2012). Institutional investors include: Goldman Sachs Capital Partners, CCMP Capital Advisors, J.P. Morgan Partners, Thomas H. Lee Partners, Warburg Pincus, Spectrum Equity Partners (which invested $50m in June 2011).  Founded: GrubHub – 2005; Seamless – 1999.

HarvestMark acquires ShopWell Solutions.  In order to create a direct channel to reach to grocery shoppers and drive insights on shopper behavior and preferences, YottaMark, the parent of the fresh food traceability platform HarvestMark, acquired substantially all the assets of ShopWell Solutions, the personalized food recommendation app which had over a million downloads.

Announced: 5/30/13  Terms: Not Disclosed  Previous Investment: $4m. Institutional investors included: New Venture Partners, IDEO.  Founded: 2008

FUNDING

FarmersWeb Raises $1m.  The NY-based online B2B food marketplace and platform connects local farmers and producers with wholesale buyers, such as restaurants, corporate kitchens, private schools and retailers. The company provides the payment and commerce platform, while the farms/producers provide all fulfillment and logistics after the order is placed. In addition to the public wholesale marketplace which is currently focused on the NY metro area, FarmersWeb also offers an eCommerce solution for farms/producers who prefer to sell directly from their own websites vs. the marketplace. The proceeds will be used to expand metro areas as well as the technology platform.

Announced: 5/31/13  Stage: Seed  Participating Institutional Investors: Individual angels  Previous Investment: None  Founded: 2011

LoyalBlocks Raises $9m. The NY- and Israeli-based provider of local marketing solutions offers customer loyalty programs by allowing brick and mortar businesses to automatically reward customers when they enter the restaurant/store through a branded app and an in-store base station. The platform is also integrated with Facebook and other social media and review sites. The use of proceeds will go towards expanding U.S. operations and developing the SMB platform.

Announced: 5/23/13  Stage: Series A  Participating Institutional Investors: General Catalyst Partners (lead), Founder Collective, Gemini Israel Funds  Previous Investment: $3.2m Venture Round  Founded: 2011

Swipely Raises $12m. The data-driven payments company has developed a platform that provides local merchants similar tools that e-commerce companies use to better understand customers through shopping data. The platform doesn’t require new equipment for merchants, and works with all credit and debit cards. The team expects to double head count to 80 by the end of the year, and proceeds will be used to expand its network of merchants and to accelerate its nationwide growth.

Announced: 5/21/13  Stage: Series B  Participating Institutional Investors: Shasta Ventures (lead), First Round Capital, Greylock Partners, Index Ventures  Previous Investment: $7.5m Series A, $1m Seed  Founded: October 2009

Marqeta Raises $14m. The loyalty company provides both branded and white-label prepaid loyalty cards, allows multiple loyalty accounts to function on a single card, and also (as revealed in the announcement) powers the technology behind recently launched Facebook Card. As PandoDaily points out, the Facebook partnership is a tremendous coup in terms of scaling in the loyalty rewards space, as “there’s nowhere else you can go to immediately get access to 1 billion consumers, and their real identities.”

Announced: 5/16/13  Stage: Series A  Participating Institutional Investors: Greylock Partners (lead), Granite Ventures, Commerce Ventures  Previous Investment: $5.6m Series A  Founded: 2010

Foodpanda Raises $20m. The Berlin-based food delivery company continues its rapid expansion, focusing on emerging markets in South America, Asia, Africa, and Eastern Europe. This year alone Foodpanda (and its affiliated brand hellofood) have entered 15 new countries, and it is now active in 27 different worldwide markets. The capital infusion will power expansion to additional countries, additional build-out of more cities within existing countries, and customer/restaurant acquisition efforts.

Announced: 5/07/13  Stage: Series A  Participating Institutional Investors: AB Kinnevik, Phenomen Ventures, Rocket Internet  Previous Investment: Rocket Internet (Accelerator)  Founded: 2012

Panna Raises $1.35m.  The video cooking magazine on the iPhone and iPad allows users to cook recipes along with celebrity chefs in a format that resembles television programming, featuring step-by-step instructions, tips and recommendations. The company plans to use the funding to expand its team, produce new content and increase sales and marketing efforts. As TechCrunch notes, before venture funding Panna used crowdfunding through Kickstarter, where hundreds of home cooks donated to get it off the ground.

Announced: 5/06/13  Stage: Venture Round  Participating Institutional Investors: Anthem Venture Partners, Lerer Ventures, Crosslink Capital, Maveron, Advancit Capital, RSL Venture Partners, Launchpad LA, BoxGroup  Previous Investment: None  Launched: November 2012

PARTNERSHIPS

Food52 partners with Rap Genius to let users annotate recipes.  Calling the tool “Food Genius,” the partnership will allow users of the crowd-sourced cooking site to annotate recipes and articles. As Food52 simply states, it “adds a crowd-sourced layer to the cooking process by allowing cooks to make small variations on and enhancements to recipes”.

VeriFone and CardSpring partner on card-linked services.  The POS maker VeriFone teamed up with the loyalty and rewards startup to integrate the CardSpring web service platform to its payment gateway in order to enable developers to create card-linked services. The partnership will allow merchants to enable loyalty programs, point-of-sale discounts, and more using customers’ existing debit and credit cards.

Loyalty startup FiveStars partners with Canadian media firm Rogers to launch new loyalty service.  With its first international play and first “Powered by FiveStars” alliance, the new program, called “Vicinity” is the same POS-integrated loyalty platform as FiveStars, and Rogers will offer the program to many of its existing clients, including small and medium-sized businesses that already use Rogers for its phone and Internet service.

Serious Eats partners with Conde Nast’s Ziplist to offer recipe organizing tools.  With the partnership, thousands recipes from Serious Eats’ family of websites will be integrated into Ziplist’s recipe box and shopping list, and users will be able to see relevant local grocery deals as well.

MOGL and Hawaiian Airlines partner to offer a new dining rewards program to frequent flyers.  The new partnership is MOGL’s second airline partner (after Virgin America), and allows Hawaiian Air’s frequent flyer members to earn cash-back when dining out in CA restaurants, while also donating meals to people in need.

LevelUp and NCR partner to bolster mobile payments in restaurant sector.  The partnership will allow the top restaurant POS supplier to offer LevelUp’s mobile payment and loyalty solution seamlessly without requiring operators to implement a new system in order to accept mobile payments.

Tabbedout partners with Google Wallet.  The restaurant mobile payments solution, which allows bar and restaurant patrons to pay for their check using an app on their smartphone, announced Google Wallet is now integrated into its mobile app, adding a new distribution vertical for Google’s payment platform and adding a new mobile payment option for restaurant patrons.

OLO partners with CorFire to create an integrated mobile commerce solution for restaurants. The mobile and online ordering platform for restaurants has recently repositioned itself as a digital commerce engine for restaurants (and accordingly, also announced an investment from Paypal in January), thus this new partnership with CorFire, a provider of mobile commerce technology solutions, provides OLO the ability to offer more sophisticated mobile commerce functionality such as mobile ordering, mobile local offers, mobile payment, mobile gifting, mobile loyalty, and mobile social check-ins.

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: May 2013 appeared first on Food+Tech Connect.

Authored by Hunter Walk and Maya Baratz, two industry veterans, this collection of recipes is inspired by the creative process – a process they believe applies to the kitchen as well as to the white board. With 75 recipes and counting, this work in progress features recipes from founders, investors and writers such as Matt Mullenweg of WordPress, Dennis Crowley of Foursquare and Joanne Wilson of Gotham Gal.

The cookbook is available to purchase on a sliding scale through Leanpub. All proceeds from the book will go to charities that are committed to ending hunger.

The post The Startup Chef: Cook Like a Tech Superstar 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

_____________________________

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.

[Full Disclosure: The first episode of Erik Shirai’s I AM WHAT I EAT features my boyfriend Mike Lee. This article is not about Mike Lee or his supper club Studiofeast, but rather about Shirai’s short films and IndieGoGo campaign.]

Can the human condition be understood through the lens of food?

I AM WHAT I EAT, a new film project by Erik Shirai,  a cameraman on No Reservations and founder of Cebu Osani Films, aims to do just that- and succeeds. Through the series, Shirai tells the stories of people from around the world, using food as a medium for exploring who they are, how they live and what they believe.

“To me, I AM WHAT I EAT is the raw definition of a personal ‘passion’ project,” writes Shirai. “I funded 100% of the first episode out of my own pocket to showcase to the world an idea that I truly believed in; FOOD IS WHAT BRINGS PEOPLE TOGETHER. I’m hoping that if public can help fund this 2nd episode it would be a sign of fate that my idea has true potential.”

A masterful storyteller and cinematographer, Shirai has launched an IndieGoGo campaign in hopes of funding future episodes and creating an interactive platform where viewers can connect with the people featured in his films, follow their stories and learn more about their culture [read about his future project below].

EPISODE #1: LAST MEAL

The first episode of the series tells the story of  Mike Lee and his culinary collective Studiofeast, a group creating unique gastronomic experiences that connect people and inspire them to cook for themselves. Centered around Studiofeast’s ‘Last Meal Dinner,‘ the film also features New Yorkers of all walks of life responding to the question: ‘If you were to die tomorrow, what would be your last meal?’

EPISODE #2:

With your help, Shirai will tell the story of  Masami Asao, who has specialized in ‘shojin ryori,’ a Japanese ‘temple’ cuisine eaten by monks. At it’s core, shojin ryori is a form of meditation meant to help people maintain balance in their daily lives. For the last 29 years, Asao has been cooking this food for all of the monks at Jokokuji temple in central Tokyo, but it has become more difficult to keep the tradition alive as people increasingly turn to convenience food. Shirai aims to tell her story and help her keeping the tradition of shojin ryori alive.

You can support  the film by spreading the word or by contributing to his IndieGoGo Campaign here. Underground Eats is also hosting a fundraiser this evening, where you will be able to sample shojin ryori and various premium sakes. There will also be a screening of “The Last Meal” and a silent auction filled with lots of delicious items.

The post Innovator Video: I AM WHAT I EAT appeared first on Food+Tech Connect.

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In the video below, TechCrunch’s Anthony Ha talks to chef Roy Yamaguchi and investor Dave McClure about food and tech at the “Aloha Friday” event hosted by McClure’s 500 Startups incubator and early-stage investment firm.

Chef Yamaguchi, founder of Hawaii-based Roy’s and co-organizer of the Hawaii Food & Wine Festival, admits that he is still just “getting his fingers wet” with tech, but sees a huge opportunity to use it to connect with his customers. Yamaguchi using tech to broaden his goals of making Hawaii’s food more sustainable and bringing more international travel to Hawaii.

McClure has invested in 10-12 food tech startups including E La Carte, Farmeron and Craft Coffee. 500 Startups looks “for companies that have a really simple revenue model and provide innovation in areas that are maybe less tech- and innovation-centric and just a regular use case,” he said, hence their interest in food. “Turns out that food is a very big business. It’s a high frequency business. A small bit of innovation goes a long way in really disrupting the opportunities,” he later continued.

Last year, McClure spoke on a panel at the festival about food and tech, which is where he and Yamaguchi initially met. This year McClure will be returning with his food startups to launch a full food tech track at the festival.

The post 500 Startups’ Dave McClure & Roy Yamaguchi on Food & Tech [Video] appeared first on Food+Tech Connect.

The June Food+Tech Meetup featured five startups that are revolutionizing the restaurant industry, including yumspring, Clean Plates, Mirth, Single Platform and BuzzTable. Presenters gave a 5-minute pitch followed by Q&A with attendees. The conversation covered the problems each startup is solving, their business models and their growth plans. Each is taking on a unique slice of the food industry pie:

Until now, there has been no crowdfunding site focused on the needs of food entrepreneurs — enter yumspring. It is a “crowdfunding platform dedicated to foodies” that seeks to improve the success rate of new ventures by helping them:

• raise funds
• connect with customers at an early stage
• find and test new products

The company is pre-launch (with 10 restaurants on deck) and looking for any restaurant owners, food incubators or event spaces that are interested in partnering.

Looking for a vegan, organic brunch? Searching on Yelp might not get you very far. It’s difficult to get granular detail about a restaurant’s menu, including nutrition facts, ingredients, and sourcing — enter Clean Plates. It brings together a food reviewer and a nutritionist to “make it easier and more enjoyable for people to eat healthier,” by:

• publishing a guide to the healthiest, tastiest and most sustainable restaurants in NYC and L.A.
• offering a mobile app that consumers can use to search for restaurants based on select criteria

The company is getting ready to release a new version of its mobile app and looking for beta testers.

Single-proprietor restaurants, bars and retail merchants don’t tend to use daily deal programs and lack a great alternative for rewarding customers — enter Mirth. It offers “rewards for regulars” without the punch cards and:

• helps restaurants reward repeat business from particular customer segments
• is integrated with existing payment infrastructure so customers “sign up” by using their credit cards
• gives businesses an open line of communication with repeat customers

Mirth is piloting the program with 10 venues in Manhattan and Brooklyn and looking for new users (regulars) and participating restaurants.

Single Platform and BuzzTable are also doing some exciting things. There are no videos because they gave information at the meetup that is not for rebroadcast, but Single Platform “helps local businesses get discovered” by, in part, aggregating menus and syndicating that data to publishers, like travel guides, local review sites or mobile applications. Restaurants interested in participating can sign up on its website. And for anyone that has been to Shake Shack or another restaurant that uses buzzers to alert you when your order or table is ready, BuzzTable has a more elegant solution that utilizes your mobile phone and includes a customer loyalty reward program. The platform also serves as a mobile CRM for restaurants, allowing them to collect consumer data on traffic and preferences. Its free mobile app is available for iPhone and Android.

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Imagine a world where the medicines we use to treat common illnesses, like strep throat and ear infections, no longer work.

Public-health advocates argue this kind of public health crisis could fast become a reality if antibiotic use in the agriculture industry is not reduced or eliminated.  Currently, 80 percent of antibiotics sold in the U.S. are used by the meat and poultry industries to accelerate the growth (fatten) of most beef, chicken and pork sold in U.S. supermarkets. This practice is believed to result in “superbugs,” bacteria resistant to one or more antibiotics, that can cause deadly diseases in humans.

Other countries already recognize the danger this poses. The European Union banned the use of antibiotics in 1999. But while numerous experts have already called on the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to ban antibiotics use in animal feed, their arguments have been stymied by the pharmaceutical and large-scale livestock industries.

What Now?

Last week,  Consumers Union, the advocacy arm of Consumer Reports, released a report on consumer attitudes to the overuse of antibiotics in agriculture. In partnership with FixFood, they concurrently launched the Meat Without Drugs campaign in hopes of inspiring citizen action. The report and campaign aim to empower citizens and retailers with the economic, labeling and consumer insight data necessary to make more informed food choices, ultimately shifting antibiotic use through purchasing power.

“Although antibiotics remain legal to use on food animals, supermarkets can choose not to carry, and consumers can choose not to buy, meat and poultry from animals that are fed antibiotics. The vast majority of all meat and poultry produced in the United States is either sold to consumers in supermarkets and grocery stores or consumed in restaurants and schools and other institutions. (The remainder, about 15 percent, is exported.),” says the report.

Consumer Reports sent shoppers to 136 stores of the 13 largest supermarket chains in 23 states to see what meat and poultry products raised without antibiotics are being sold and for how much. In addition, they also conducted a nationwide survey of 1,000 U.S. residents in March 2012. Key findings include:

• 86 percent of the consumers think meat raised without antibiotics should be available in their local supermarket.
• 24 percent of consumers said meat raised without antibiotics was not available at the supermarket where they usually shop. Of this group, 82 percent said they would buy it if it were available.
• 61 percent of consumers would pay an additional 5 cents or more  per pound for antibiotic free meat and poultry; 37 percent indicated they would pay $1.00 a pound or more.
• 72 percent of consumers are very concerned about the widespread use of antibiotics creating new superbugs that cause illnesses that antibiotics cannot cure
• While consumers can trust “organic” labels, since organic certification precludes antibiotic use in livestock, other labels such as “natural,” “antibiotic-free,” “no antibiotic residues,” and “no antibiotic growth promotants” can not be trusted. Antibiotics may also be present in cases where “grassfed” appears without being coupled with an “organic” certification.
• Of the 13 largest U.S. supermarket chains, Whole Foods is the only chain to sell only meat and poultry raised without antibiotics.
• Giant, Hannaford, Shaw’s, Stop & Shop, Publix, and Trader Joe’, however, offered wide selections of these products.
• Meat and poultry raised without antibiotics does not always have to be expensive. Consumer Reports shoppers, found chicken raised without antibiotics for as little as $1.29 per pound in three chains.

Get Involved

The Meat Without Drugs campaign calls on citizens to urge grocery stores to only sell meat from animals raised without antibiotics, starting with Trader Joe’s.

To learn more, watch the video below from Food, Inc. Director Robert Kenner and narrated by actor Bill Paxton. You can sign the petition here to get involved.

Related articles

• Your meat on drugs: Will grocery stores cut out antibiotics?

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• Meat on Drugs, Stop the Superbugs

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• Consumers want meat without antibiotics – study

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The post Consumer Insights: Growing Demand for Meat Without Antibiotics [Video] appeared first on Food+Tech Connect.

PBS’s America Revealed, a series exploring the systems that power America, attached a GPS tracker to a pizza delivery bike messenger to visualize “the delivery end of a vast and complicated machine”- the Dominos supply chain. The short video above is part of the Food Machine episode, where host Yul Kwon travels across the food supply chain, offering a detailed look at the system and its externalities- industrial agriculture, farmers markets, prevalence of corn, colony collapse disorder, water costs, rising obesity, etc…

Youtube Analytics for America Revealed: Pizza Delivery | PBS UK

I first learned of the video from Anderson 360. But a Google search quickly revealed it had been making the Internet rounds after being posted by the World’s Best Ever and Laughing Squid. Bon Appétit, Gizmodo, Huffington Post, Daily Mail, Gothamist, Digital Trends, CNet, Grub Street New York, Chart Porn are just a few of the 100+  blogs that picked up the story. While I’m still not sure how I feel about the Dow-sponsored series, the spread of the video offers some interesting lessons for how to make the complexities of the food supply chain interesting and engaging to a wider audience:

• The blogosphere loves quirky visualizations and videos.
• Reaching influencers , like Laughing Squid, is key to making a story go viral.
• Reaching new audiences, means finding more culturally relevant and engaging storytelling approaches- you have to meet people where their interests are.
• Releasing short clips of long content on multiple platforms, like the various PBS websites this video is posted on, makes it easier for people to find and share.

For examples of Food+Tech Connect posts that went viral check out the Carbs Are Killing You infographic, Ramen Data: From Mouth to Anus, and Care For Some Human Cheese.

The post Viral Video Lessons: PBS’s Visualization of Dominos Delivery Routes appeared first on Food+Tech Connect.

Crowdfunding website Kickstarter offers a trove of insights for making predictions about future product and publishing trends. Two innovative recipe projects – Panna and Culinary Pal- recently caught my attention. Both projects highlight digital home cooking tool trends worth keeping an eye on- video, increased focus on technique, interative iPad experiences and voice-enabled search and instruction. Additional trends and predictions are highlighted in our 2011 Recipe Trends article.

Panna is an iPad and iPhone-based monthly video cookbook subscription app.  Launching in September 2012, each cookbook will feature 15 video recipes taught by master chefs like Rick Bayless of Frontera Grill, Anita Lo of Annisa, and Nancy Silverton of Osteria Mozza. The recipes will be organized into sections such as entertaining, weeknight meals and classics. Panna is looking to raise $25,000 to cover the costs of filming and launching their inaugural issue. While I have not tested the app, it appears to be beautifully designed, which combined with user experience, could give it an edge on other video recipe platforms on the market like Rouxbe It will be interesting to see how Panna founder David Ellner’s 25 years of business, media and technology experience, working with artists like Stevie Wonder and running digital and business development for American Idol, help him differentiate Panna from others in the saturated recipe tech space. More information about the project is available here.

Culinary Pal, is a voice-activated cooking application that allows users to searches for recipes on allrecipes.com and listen to cooking instructions through self-paced voice commands. The app is one of three apps beta testing YiZRi LLC‘s VoiceSee, a patent-pending technology enabling hand and eye-free web browsing. Currently available for Android phones (free), an iPhone and iPad  app will reportedly be available in the coming months. VoiceSee is looking to raise $100,000 to complete beta testing, develop iPhone and iPad mobile apps, and to to develop new applications that “will transform the way people and technologies collaborate,” said YiZRi LLC founder Daniel Ben-Ezri. More information about the Kickstarter campaign is available here.

The post Kickstarting The Future of Cooking appeared first on Food+Tech Connect.

But brands and retailers should take notice – it is only a matter of time before socially conscious eaters in the United States begin demanding information about farmworker conditions.

The grassroots groundswell has already begun. The foundation arm of Bon Appétit Management Company, which operates more than 400 cafés for companies including Twitter, Yahoo! and eBay,  is already working to educate businesses and consumers of the issues and opportunities to change the status quo through TEDxFruitvale.

While not perfect, many eaters look for a “fair trade” label when purchasing coffee and chocolate products. The new Food Justice Certification, a third party certification for social justice in agricultural and food jobs from the Domestic Fair Trade Association, has yet to make it mainstream, but certainly foreshadows what’s to come.

“It creates a point of comparison for the rest of the food system,” writes Grist Food Editor Twilight Greenway of the new Certification. “We live in a time when consumers don’t have to dig too hard to find examples of really terrible farm labor practices. From documented cases of slavery and other human rights abuses in Florida’s tomato fields, to workers dying from heat exhaustion on California farms, and new data about the plight of women on farms and people of color in the food system at large, the national picture is pretty grim.”

How can we change the system and stop these injustices? Transform the grocery industry, says award-winning documentary film maker Sanjay Rawal.

Rawal’s latest film project Food Chain, explores labor practices within the United States agriculture sector and how the role the policies of large buyers, particularly supermarkets, play in perpetuating these practices. The Food Chain Team have collected over 400 hours of interviews with farmworkers, as well as with food justice thought-leaders such as Eric Schlosser, Bobby Kennedy Jr., Dolores Huerta, Barry Estabrook, the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, and the UFW.

Now, they are trying to raise post-production funds through Kickstarter to turn their footage into a 70-80 minute film. If you like the short, yet illuminating clip below, you can support the project here.

Featured Image via Food Chain Kickstarter//
Coalition of Immokalee Workers. Fast for Fair Food. March 2012. Week long hunger strike outside Publix Headquarters in Lakeland, Florida.

The post Innovator Video: Food Chain appeared first on Food+Tech Connect.

Food gets its fair share of bad press these days, and for good reason. It’s no secret that our food supply chain is often bad for our economy, health, and environment. Obesity and diabetes are on the rise. Food recalls, environmental pollution and food insecurity are all far too common.

Food+Tech Connect wants to help you explore new ideas for how information and technology can be used to change the status quo and accelerate food innovation. The following are a selection of videos exploring ideas about how we source and cook our food. Please let us know if you have any ideas you would like to share in the comments section below.

{Videography for the first three videos was shot by Celia Talbot Tobin, and produced and edited by Sarah A. Maine as part of the Hacking the Food System Series}

Elizabeth McVay Greene of Plovgh talks about how technology can be used to connect farmers directly with consumers.

“Applying technology to models that restore the connection between farmers and the people they feed has the potential to make an already disruptive trend a new standard for agriculture.” – Hacking the Food System: Farm Profitability and Affordability of Food

Will Turnage of R/GA, Ratio & Bread Baking Basics talks about building software for the home cook. Turnage says we’ve only scratched the surface of how we can make the home cooking experience more dynamic and personalized.

“Applying technology to models that restore the connection between farmers and the people they feed has the potential to make an already disruptive trend a new standard for agriculture.” – Hacking the Food System: Re-Imagining Recipes With Data

Emily Cavalier of Mouth of the Border discusses how technology can be used to help ethnic communities create great foods with fresh ingredients.

James Beard Foundation Executive Vice President Mitchell Davis asks,“What does a better food system taste like?” Davis talks about taste as a powerful tool for social change.

Chefs Homaro Cantu and Ben Roche of Moto in Chicago,  explore how innovations pioneered in their restaurant lab can be used to solve global challenges like the world food crisis and cancer.

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The post Innovator Videos: 6 Ideas for the Future of Food appeared first on Food+Tech Connect.

How can you encourage healthier food choices in “food deserts,” or areas where access to healthy, affordable food is limited?

A group of graphic design, architecture, international relations and industrial design students from the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) and Brown University are using human centered design to come up with solutions to this problem through their work with Design for America (DFA). DFA is “a network of interdisciplinary student teams and community members using design to create local and social impact.”

“Food deserts” are a controversial term used to describe neighborhoods that lack supermarkets, but where bodegas and cheap fast food restaurants are often plentiful. Many have tried to address this situation by simply looking to increase the number of supermarkets in such areas.

The RISD & Brown DFA team’s initial research looked into the issues people face in accessing local foods. Through their evaluation of various approaches to increasing access, the group came to a very interesting finding: the mere availability of healthy food does not cause a shift in eating habits. Education about how to prepare healthy, inexpensive meals is key, and making it fun is particularly important when trying to engage and educate youth.

Based on this finding, the team designed a food container with designated sections to ensure healthy meal portions. The container would include a recipe book, using simple, inexpensive ingredients to prove that it’s easy to make healthy meals, even when shopping at a bodega.

The students plan to continue the project by working with local store owners and other Providence-based food initiatives to better understand barriers to healthy eating through their perspectives.

The following video uses RSA Animate style audio narrated illustration to describe their project and next steps. While the quality of the video is just okay and the project is only a first step, it clearly underscores the importance of and opportunity for multi-disciplinary problem solving.

DFA Healthy Food Project from Allison Wong on Vimeo.

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