This is a guest post by Jomaree Pinkard, Co-Founder & CEO of Hella Cocktail Co.

Check out our Food & Ag Anti-Racism Resources.

Dear Colleagues,

As a Black Man in business, I have to be extremely careful in both professional and public settings. When I’m trying to make a point, I often have to decide whether I should be direct or performative in my delivery — because my decision, to be honest, can come across as too assertive or even intimidating in the workplace. There is an unwritten rule for black professionals that asks us to speak in a language that others might find more appealing to their sensibilities. In many settings I’ve often had to minimize thoughts to remain poised or what others might deem as “on point,” because my passion in presentation can be mistaken for aggression. If I am too assertive, I can pay the price — and that price can be all too real.

I grew up hearing that I would always need to work twice as hard to get half as much, and keeping these ideas to myself has been over time half the battle. Until today.

For many professionals of color, this sentiment — of minimizing what we know to be real about our lives in business — will ring true. But we also recognize that we can use this moment of societal inflection as an opportunity to actually pivot in business; we can redirect the course for black and brown talent, stories, and industry. We can disrupt how systems have been designed to keep black people in place, silenced, and positioned to avoid risk.

As a black man who grew up in an under-resourced neighborhood in the heart of New York City, I inherently faced nothing but risk and uncertainty daily. I know intimately how challenging it is to break the color barrier in school and at work, when and how I have to prove my worth — and carve out a path toward accessing socio-economic change. In order to find success, black professionals like myself have to put much more on the line to succeed by risking our opportunity to speak, our chance to present, our ability to grow, and our reputations all at once. However, in order to make progress, we must take risks, so here I am putting it all on the line one more time.

I want to state clearly that the system is not failing the status quo — the system is maintaining the exact operation it was designed to uphold. Black people have been maligned in American business for centuries, only given the opportunity to toil and labor, or tend to lower-wage jobs while industry grows more complex and advances. Still, and rarely are Black Americans able to find themselves the business owner. When asked if “my success in the food and beverage industry is the result of drive, hard work, and timing,” I answer “yes” to all three — however, I also recognize that several opportunities have come my way as a result of intentional and deliberate system navigation — challenging the status quo and finding a way in — despite being pushed out, omitted or overlooked, the color of my skin notwithstanding.

Now, in reflection as a successful black entrepreneur and business owner, I recognize that my life, my health, my education and the opportunities that have been afforded me as a result of schooling at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville and The Wharton School of Business are not examples of triumph, but are holes in the system that was designed to hold me back. My success is its failure. American business and industry weren’t designed for me or my family to be healthy or supported, to be highly educated, or to establish an entrepreneurial career with Hella Cocktail Co. The system wasn’t designed for me to raise my family in a flourishing neighborhood, or to support and invest in other black business owners’ dreams and ambitions. It has actually been designed to hold us back, and only now because we are at this juncture in history — might we realize that we have an opportunity, or rather a duty to upend this appalling process.

So the questions I have been pondering and propose to you — the questions the system-owners are now being posed and have to reckon with are these: Will you continue to support a system that is designed to force others to fail? Or will you help to dismantle and redesign it to allow for black and brown people to enter in business unhindered? Will you assist in creating opportunities for black people to develop sustainable business models, create jobs, support families and livelihoods, and invest in black business owners — their dreams and ambitions?

If you are willing and haven’t already begun to explore concrete action items, here are four discrete practices you must do to ensure your platform or business is prepared to support black lives mattering.

Practice #1: Listen, Acknowledge Trauma, & Self-Educate

“The goal isn’t perfection, it’s presence!” “The first step is to show up.” ~ Ashtin Berry

There is no perfect playbook for standing face-to-face with inequity, injustice, and oppression while running a business or an organization. Talking about race, racial violence, racism, and the Black Lives Matter movement is the first step. Embracing the complex history of our country is necessary for us to better understand, heal, and change. There are many resources that can help you better explore the dynamics and the voices at play. Educate yourself on American history — the issues of people of color, women, people with disabilities, LGBTQ+ communities, religious minorities, and other marginalized groups, and understand the compounding effects from challenges faced by individuals and communities who inhabit intersectional identities.

There is a shared trauma that impacts communities, our nation, and everyone’s bottom line. For an example of a business in action, Ben & Jerry’s has done its homework throughout the years while actively participating and taking strong social and political stances. As a leader in today’s world, you are grappling with complex change on many levels while trying to understand human dynamics that can feel untranslatable, conflicting, and often painful to your employees and your customers. We must each dismantle and rebuild the entire system together, or choose to do the work independently, and bring back that new knowledge to our companies to invite change.

Practice #2: Investigate Your Internal Impact

“Equity begins with representation.”

Grocery retailers demand door over door metrics, food and alcohol distributors demand minimum case per week turnover, bars and restaurants fiercely rely on the average cover per seat, and investors don’t even place their bets until they are able to verify any of this historical data to measure traction before investment. Somehow these metrics have been omitted when it comes to diversity and inclusion beyond gender. Our companies and organizations feel the impact of the world around us, whether it is apparent to each individual within our ranks or not. It is necessary for us to respond to the challenges of American history, as well as the current climate, and redesign systems and environments where our employees can not only survive — but thrive.

Large multinational spirit companies need to realize that it’s in their best interest to prioritize a culture that is not only equitable and inclusive — but also responsive to the pressing needs of the communities served with their business. From the busser to the boardroom, it is absolutely paramount that fine dining establishments and large restaurant chains seek opportunities to reflect the diversity of the communities served on all levels. Bon Appetit and Epicurious accepted the resignation of their former editor-in-chief, and admitted to being complicit in ‘tokeniz[ing] many BIPOC staffers and contributors” to make their brands appear more diverse; the company also acknowledged its effort in “dismantling the toxic, top-down culture” by “prioritizing people of color for the editor-in-chief candidate pool…and resolving any pay inequities that are found across all departments.”

Starting with the application and vetting process, and working with those that hold the door open or closed, companies must put themselves in a position to seek out and discover talent that has been left behind or that the organization hasn’t yet had the network to discover. The time to hold your company responsible for this task is now.

Practice #3. Scrutinize Your Community Impact

“Donate AND be active in the life span of your contribution.”

Statistics show that 91 percent of consumers believe brands should do more than make a profit; they should address social or environmental concerns, too. While it is intrinsically the right thing to do, this is also the precise reason why during the current pandemic companies have donated everything from free virtual meeting platforms and wifi for schools to contactless free food and beverage delivery. Communities support business because there is an implicit social contract that the community will patronize your establishment in exchange for you offering the best goods or services — with the condition that you continue to represent the best interest of the community.

But what happens after the special event or ribbon-cutting ceremony is over? Charitable donations to organizations such as Color for Change, The NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Black Lives Matter, and The National Museum of African American History and Culture, among many others, are undoubtedly and immensely important. However, the reality is that we in the black community are hesitant to believe in these monetary postures because we know these are often one-time donations to clear consciences, and only uphold the status quo in moving forward.

Like all other business initiatives and investments your organization makes, community-directed donations need to be looked at through the lens of a business investment similar to launching a new product, or vertical or brick and mortar location, rather than a bottom-line optimizing tax write-off. In the past week, retailers Target, Walmart, Kroger, and H-E-B and spirits producers Pernod Ricard along with Diageo have begun to either donate or set up internal funds to address racial inequalities and injustice. We are hopeful that these social impact-driven funds won’t simply lean in the direction of one-time investments but will create self-sustainable business practices that facilitate growth of reinvestments in the community.

Practice #4. Provide Access and Investment

“Donations are icing on the cake. The CAKE is what’s most important!”

In the U.S. hospitality industry, 60 percent of the sector is made up of people of color, yet black and brown hospitality professionals occupy less than 7 percent of managerial roles. On the small business front of the food & beverage industry, many venture capital firms are onto their 2nd, 3rd, or 4th venture funds — which means they are only interested in companies that are already hitting the $10 million-plus revenue run rates to deliver on meaningful rates of return. What this really means is that there is truly no small business investing present. Overall, the venture industry’s track record on accessibility when it comes to diversity and race fares even worse: only 3 percent of investment partners and 1 percent of founders of venture capital-backed firms are black.

Each of these sub-segments of the industry has a systemic problem that starts at who is hired for entry-level positions and extends to the investors who serve as limited partners to venture funds. The reality for black talent in business is that barriers to participation emerge in every part of the marketplace: the requirements of an elite or private education, family lineage, pedigree, or upbringing are more important than a stellar resume or previous experience. This has always been the case.

While you must continue to donate to organizations that align with your values, now and more importantly, the primary method to change the systemic barriers to access for black professionals is to invest in black-owned and black-led businesses throughout the industry’s value chain with transparency and accountability. Although they are primarily tech investors, Softbank’s newly announced ‘The Opportunity Growth Fund’ to the tune of $100 million states that they will “only invest in companies led by founders and entrepreneurs of color,” meanwhile, Andreessen Horowitz’ The Talent x Opportunity Fund (TxO)’ for underserved communities “are now looking for black, women, minority founders to invest in.” These moves are more in line with the direction the food and beverage industry should follow.

5 Strategies to Move Your Food, Beverage & Hospitality Industry Business to Equity

Once you’ve built in the basics in your practice, you have set the stage. Next, there are the 5 strategies your business can set in motion so that you are part of the movement, and not just responding to the moment:

1. Build a Continuous Diversity Evaluation Process: Being proactive in fighting racism and bias means creating structures and systems within our own ranks to ensure the voices of all members of our workforce are heard and that the needs of our employees are met. Avoid systematic jargon that checks off the diversity-box. If it sounds like “we will provide anti-racism/bias training” or “we will bring in a third party to help conduct company-wide diversity workshops,” you haven’t finished listening. The system — including how you evaluate and dismantle systemic barriers to participation in your business — needs to be built into the company and reassessed with frequency. It is not a person, it is a process.

2. Commit to Accountability: I propose that all organizations who are now publicly saying that Black Lives Matter demand a similar commitment to holding themselves and their peers accountable by being more transparent about where they are in terms of the diversity of their teams and portfolios, benchmarking themselves against their peers, explaining their strategy, adopting KPIs and milestones, and then sharing their progress in an open and transparent manner. From entry-level merchandisers and restaurant servers to the editor-in-chief and board seats; be accountable with respect to how you operate as a business and seek out opportunities to reflect the diversity of the community. Commit to equity on all levels.

3. Invest Your Donation: Investments create ownership, ladders for progress, and accountability throughout an organization’s entire value chain. Like all other business initiatives organizations make, donations need to be looked at through the lens of a business investment rather than a charitable contribution. Those steps include but are not limited to: cultural and historical research, consumer insights and how they impact your community, the alignment of team values, concept development, idea testing and fit, measurement of successes and failures, and, most importantly, reinvestment. Investments are sustainable and have growth metrics around them. You know the drill.

4. Update Your Investment Thesis: Your investment thesis is an inaccurate overestimation of how rational your investments are. In fact, the thesis is mostly built on the basis of the group’s collective trust. That lack of trust is why investments in black-owned businesses are so low, and why access is non-existent. I challenge VCs and strategic funds to alter their investment thesis, and then invest. Think outside the box.

5. Pledge 15% to a Timeline: Black people in the U.S. make up nearly 15 percent of the population. Commit to investment proportions that align with the population over a 1, 2, and 5-year time horizon.

• Media & Trade: Take a pledge to allocate a minimum of 15 percent of your coverage to black talent and businesses,
• Retail: Take the 15% pledge to allocate a minimum of 15 percent of retail shelf space to black-owned businesses,
• Hospitality: Take a pledge to allocate a minimum of 15 percent of bar and restaurant menu placement to black-owned businesses,
• Beer, Wine & Spirits: Take a pledge to allocate a minimum of 15 percent of your portfolio of investment, innovation and distribution network to black-owned businesses,
• Venture/Strategic Investors: Take a pledge to allocate a minimum of 15 percent of your investment portfolio to fund food, beverage, and hospitality entrepreneurial ventures to black-owned businesses.

In your process, you will make mistakes. It is better to move forward with the intention to dismantle and change the status quo than to stand still and wonder why things are imperfect and unbalanced. That is my charge as well.

While it is true that as a Black Man in business I have been extremely careful in both professional and public settings, I have also opened many of the proverbially closed doors and sat in many of the least desirable seats. My daily journey of attempting to gain access to menu and shelf space, capital, and networks has been difficult; but my story of continuing to navigate a flawed system is still hopeful, despite exhaustion and loneliness.

This isn’t about me alone though, by any means. Nope! It’s about those who don’t have the access, who may not have had the opportunity for higher education, or who may never make enough connections to get into the room where decisions happen. For those of us who have: it is time to listen, learn, and acknowledge the centuries-old trauma of systemic inequity endured by black individuals and communities. It is time to redesign a system that truly values the health, education, careers, and ambitions of black people. It is time to disrupt the old system and immediately commit to more equitable actions: invest money, commit to coverage, pledge space, support black-owned, and reward risk. It’s time to use this moment of inflection as an opportunity to redirect the course for black lives — which have always mattered.

Sincerely,

Jomaree Pinkard | CEO & Co-Founder, Hella Cocktail Co.

This post originally appeared on Medium.

____________________________________

Jomaree Pinkard’s career journey has taken him from helping to develop and implement The Salvation Army’s September 11 World Trade Center Recovery Program to consulting for the NFL. In 2012, he became the Co-Founder and CEO of a minority-owned craft cocktail company, Hella Cocktail Co. In eight years, he and his partners have grown a hobby into a nationally distributed premium-quality food manufacturer producing a line of nonalcoholic cocktail mixers, bitters, and newest innovation Bitters & Sodas that make it easier and more accessible to craft delicious drinks at home or behind the bar. Jomaree is a graduate of the University of Virginia’s McIntire School of Commerce and also earned his MBA from The Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania.

IG: @jomareepinkard

The post 5 Steps to Move Your Food, Beverage or Hospitality Business to Equity appeared first on Food+Tech Connect.

Image Source: New York Times

Every week we track the business, tech and investment trends in CPG, retail, restaurants, agriculture, cooking and health, so you don’t have to. Here are some of this week’s top headlines.

Sustainable Bioproducts has announced a new round of funding and name change. Now known as Nature’s Fynd, the company is ramping up its production of cultured meat and dairy with an $80 million infusion.

The COVID-19 pandemic has put more than 10 million independent restaurant workers at risk of losing their jobs for good. Across sectors, businesses are being forced to pivot their business models as consumers go on lockdown and change their buying habits. This round-up features many of the ways the pandemic is impacting all parts of the food industry.

In an effort to do our part and support the community we love so dearly, we have compiled a list of resources and organizations that are providing support to those in need. We are also offering free job postings to anyone who is looking to employ people impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic.

• Call Your Reps to Save Independent Restaurants: We need to keep calling our reps to urge the House to pass the $2 trillion stimulus package and get independent restaurants some relief. Here is a sample script.
• Resources: Please add any resources, organizations, initiatives, virtual gatherings, etc. here, so we can promote them.
• Jobs: Use code “coronavirusfoodjobs” to post remote or remote-friendly food jobs on our job board.

We need your support as well. Producing our newsletter takes a lot of time and resources, and we need to change our business model to keep it going. To date, we’ve funded our work through our events, sponsorships and consulting, which are all on hold due to the pandemic. If you find our newsletter to be a valuable resource, we hope you will consider making a one time or monthly contribution, so we can keep the newsletter going and free for those who can not afford a subscription fee. Not able to contribute right now? You can help by sharing our newsletter with friends and colleagues. 

Check out our weekly round-up of last week’s top food startup, tech and innovation news below or peruse the full newsletter here.

1. Chicago Startup Raises $80M to Make Chicken Nuggets in a Lab – AmericanInno

Sustainable Bioproducts, now known as Nature’s Fynd, has raised a new round of funding led by Generation Investment Management and Breakthrough Energy Ventures. Funding will be used to support production at its new facility.

2. Coronavirus Sparks Hiring Spree for Nearly 500,000 Jobs at Biggest Retailers – Wall Street Journal

Walmart, Amazon and CVS are among about a dozen large companies looking to hire nearly 500,000 Americans in coming weeks, a spree that would mark a major shift of the US workforce from smaller businesses that have cut staff to survive the coronavirus.

3. Will We Have an America Without Restaurants? – New York Times

Independent restaurants employ more than 10 million people. Our fear is that these jobs may well disappear for good. In New York alone, nearly all 26,000 restaurants have now shut down.

4. How You Can Help Save Restaurants – James Beard Foundation

Seven million people have been laid off and chefs and restaurant owners have become fluent in the ins and outs of disaster relief and applications for emergency aid. There are things that each and every one of us can do, whether you’re a diner or industry professional.

5. Webinar Recap: Optimizing E-Commerce During the COVID-19 Crisis – Nosh

The global lockdown has made e-commerce more vital than ever in sustaining sales during an uncertain economic period. VMG Partners and Right Side Up hosted a webinar to help companies swiftly optimize their businesses.

6. India: BigBasket Acquires Online Milk Delivery App DailyNinja – Bloomberg

The merger comes at a time demand for online groceries has skyrocketed due to a coronavirus-triggered lockdown in India. Financial terms were not disclosed.

7. By the Numbers: COVID-19’s Devastating Effect on the Restaurant Industry – Eater

From canceled dinner plans to delivery app downloads, app data reveals how COVID-19 has brutalized restaurants.

8. Restaurants Closed By Coronavirus Won’t Reopen Without Economic Assistance – The Washington Post

Without grant money, loan forgiveness and help from insurance companies, independent restaurants may not reopen after quarantines end.

9. Inside the Story of How H-E-B Planned for the Pandemic – TexasMonthly

The grocer started communicating with Chinese counterparts in January and was running tabletop simulations a few weeks later.

10. To Save Their Industry, Restaurant Owners Get Organized – Grubstreet

The most effective, fast-moving action is a three-tiered approach: the Independent Restaurant Coalition, the Relief Opportunities for All Restaurants, and the New York City Hospitality Alliance.

11. Chinese Tech Giant Pumps $85M Into Farm Produce Platform – AgFunder

Meituan Dianping led the round. Wangjiahuan is a B2B portal for agricultural produce, providing a range of services from group buying and selling to marketing.

12. If Coronavirus Doesn’t Get Us, Starvation Will’: A Growing Number of Americans Say They Can’t Afford to Stock Up on Groceries – The Washington Post

For those living on a fixed income, it can be difficult to stock up on groceries for weeks at a time, especially when many shoppers are panic-buying because of fears about the coronavirus pandemic.

13. Countries Starting to Hoard Food, Threatening Global Trade – Bloomberg

It’s not just grocery shoppers who are hoarding pantry staples. Some governments are moving to secure domestic food supplies during the coronavirus pandemic.

14. Facing Labor Shortage, Feds Encourage Farmers to Hire Foreign Workers Already in the US – The Counter

Producers worry that workforce gaps now will lead to food supply issues during harvest season.

Our newsletter is the absolute easiest way to stay on top of the emerging sector, so sign up for it today and never miss the latest food tech and innovation news and trends, Already signed up? Share the love with your friends and colleagues!

The post Retailers Hiring For 500K Jobs, An America Without Restaurants + More appeared first on Food+Tech Connect.

Welcome to our newest series: How to Start a New Career in the Food Industry. For many people, breaking into the food industry can be an intimidating process. Whether you’re just starting out or transitioning to food as a second or third career, it’s hard to know where to start. What career opportunities exist in food? How do your skills translate to food? How do you get a job with no experience in the industry? How do you learn as much as possible as quickly as possible? I know this, because I’ve been through (err, am still going through) it.

Though I’ve always loved food and cooking, I never wanted to be a chef. There were no food studies programs when I went to college, so I never really thought of food as a viable career. I didn’t know what other types of food jobs existed, so I maintained food as a hobby while I pursued a different professional track in theater. It wasn’t until almost a decade after I had graduated from college that I left my career in theater and restaurant work to pursue a career in food. I enrolled in a masters program in Food Studies at NYU and started an internship at a food justice non-profit. I worked hard to educate myself – voraciously reading as much as I could, launching a podcast and a food writing career.  Since graduating, I have worked on the Milan Expo, the first World’s Fair devoted to food, written for numerous food publications, worked with a travel startup and started a second podcast.

While I’m still on my journey to finding my perfect food career (my dream is to find a balance between writing and radio that somehow pays the bills), I’ve learned a ton along the way, which I will be sharing with you over the next couple of weeks in our newest series: How to Start a New Career in the Food Industry. This series is going to cover the basics of how to begin navigating a career in food and agriculture, whether you are interested in marketing, technology, design, operations, media, sales, science or policy.

The first step in pursuing a career in food is to get educated. Luckily, there are endless resources available in terms of books, podcasts, movies, websites and symposiums. This first post will cover a few of the books, websites and publications, podcasts and movies out there that can help you get your bearings in the food world. Check out part 2 with a list of conferences and events to attend plus organizations that can offer an important introduction into food policy, food culture and sustainability issues.

Are we missing anything? Share additional resources here.

Looking to launch a career in food? Check out exciting food tech, design, management, operations, development and food science positions at Food+Tech Jobs.

Newsletter:

Food+Tech Connect: Twice a week  Food+Tech Connect delivers all the top news in the food industry.  The newsletter is a one-stop-shop for staying up to date with the latest news in the CPG, retail, restaurant and agricultural sectors.

Books:

The Third Plate: Field Notes on the Future of Food by Dan Barber: Chef Dan Barber is one of the leaders of the good food movement. At his restaurants, Blue Hill at  Stone Barns and Blue Hill, Barber uses radically innovative techniques to reduce food waste and highlight underused and sustainable ingredients. In his book, Barber points to a third plate: a new way of eating where delicious food and sustainability meet.

The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals by Michael Pollan: Pollan’s seminal book traces four meals back to their origins. By illustrating the journey of several well-known ingredients, Pollan challenges readers to questions their food choices and rethink why we eat what we eat.

The Farm on the Roof by Anastasia Cole Plakias: Brooklyn Grange is the world’s first and largest commercial rooftop farm. The Farm on the Roof is both an inspirational story and an instructional guide for anyone looking to start a successful business that makes a positive impact.

Salt, Sugar, Fat by Michael Moss: Michael Moss is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter formerly with The New York Times. His eye-opening book is a startling account of the processed food industry’s complicity in America’s obesity epidemic.

Devoured: From Chicken Wings to Kale Smoothies–How What We Eat Defines Who We Are by Sophie Egan: By weaving together insights from psychology, anthropology, food science and daily life, food writer and Culinary Institute of America program director Sophie Egan examines the connections between what Americans eat and how our cultural values influence our food choices.

Cooking Up a Business: Lessons from Food Lovers Who Turned Their Passion into a Career — and How You Can, Too by Rachel Hofstetter: For anyone interested in starting a food business, this book is required reading. Through interviews with notable food entrepreneurs from Popchips, Vosges Haut-Chocolat, Hint Water, Mary’s Gone Crackers, Love Grown Foods, Kopali Organics, Tasty, Evol, Justin’s Nut Butters and more, you’ll gain insight and applicable guidance to launching a successful food company.

Diet for a Small Planet by Francis Moore Lappe: Although it was written in 1985, Diet for a Small Planet remains a compelling guide for anyone who wants to minimize their carbon footprint through their diet.

Bringing it to the Table: On Farming and Food by Wendell Berry: Wendell Berry is an accomplished author, a prolific farmer, and a champion of mindful eating. His essential book, On Farming and Food, draws from over thirty years over of essays that challenge readers to make meaningful connections between the farm and the table.

Food Politics: How the Food Industry Influences Nutrition and Health by Marion Nestle: Dr. Marion Nestle has been an authority on nutrition and food policy for over four decades. Her 2013 book is a behind-the-scenes account of the often unsettling connections between the food industry and government nutrition policies.

Websites and Publications to Follow:

General Food Systems

Civil Eats: Civil Eats is a go-to publication for the good food innovation movement. It publishes daily news and commentary about our food system and works to transform the conversation around sustainable agriculture. It digs deep into food policy issues, profiles food heroes from across the country and highlights food culture.

Edible Communities: With local publications across the nation, these quarterly magazines and online publications tell stories of innovative local farmers, growers, chefs, food artisans and startups.

Food Tank: Food Tank aims to build a global community for safe, healthy, nourished eaters. Through its blog, newsletters and events, Food Tank highlights environmentally, socially, and economically sustainable ways of alleviating hunger, obesity, and poverty, and inspires the entire food ecosystem to build a better future.

Heritage Radio Network: HRN is the only online food radio station in the world. Its programming includes over 40 shows that span topics ranging from school food to craft beer. In addition to the weekly shows, the website features food news reports, interviews and event coverage

NPR The Salt: A blog from the NPR Science Desk, The Salt explores what we eat and why we eat it. It serves up stories about food science, culture, policy and innovation.

Good Food Jobs: Good Food Jobs is a site that posts jobs covering just about every sector of the food industry. The website’s blog, The Gastronomes, is a series of interviews with individuals who have found success working in food. It’s a great place to learn about the types of opportunities that exist in the food world and hear from those who have managed to achieve successful careers.

Food Tech

Food+Tech Connect: FTC is the site of record for food tech and innovation. From monthly meet-ups to interviews with industry leaders and a bi-weekly newsletter, Food and Tech Connect provides community and invaluable resources for anyone interested in the intersection of food and technology.

The Spoon: The Spoon provides daily analysis and reporting about the smart kitchen and food tech revolution with original content and an informative podcast.

The Food Rush: Through stories, podcasts and news and events, The Food Rush is focused on the future of food. Sustainability and innovation are the lens through which questions about our future food supply are explored and discussed.

CPG

Project Nosh: Project Nosh covers the world of packaged food companies and services, and in particular startup food companies focused on organic, natural and sustainable products.

Bevnet: Bevnet is a comprehensive resource for beverage industry news, reviews, events and jobs. While all beverages are covered, there is a vertical devoted entirely to spirits and one focused solely on beer news.

Fortune – At Fortune, we particularly enjoy the work of journalists Beth Kowitt and  John Kell who cover food, agriculture, consumer behavior and sustainability.

ForceBrands: ForceBrands is a boutique food industry recruiting and staffing agency that helps good people find great jobs at the best food, beverage and consumer products companies.

Agriculture

Modern Farmer: Modern Farmer is a quarterly magazine and daily website covering food and agriculture, especially as it relates to policy and sustainability.

AgFunder: AgFunder is an online platform for fundraising and investing in Ag and Agtech. There is also periodic research on trends within the Agtech sector and daily coverage through AgFunder News.

Restaurants

Eater: Eater is the go-to source for all food news under the sun. Yes, there are a lot of articles devoted to unicorn lattes, but there are also hard-hitting features on immigrant restaurant workers and a whole vertical that covers food policy in the age of Trump.

Journee Blog: Journee is a membership-based community working to improve the lives of restaurant professionals. The blog is an excellent resource for insider perspectives on the restaurant industry and the topics most critical to those within it.

Movies:

Food Inc.In Food Inc., filmmaker Robert Kenner exposes how the interests of a few corporations affect America’s food supply and as a result have led to epidemics of diabetes, heart disease and obesity. Interviews with experts such as Eric Schlosser and Michael Pollan provide further insight into the disturbing connections between corporate agendas and the USDA and FDA.

King Corn: This fascinating feature documentary follows the journey of two friends who attempt to track a bumper crop of corn they’ve grown into the food system. Their findings reveal just how dependent Americans are on corn as an ingredient that turns up in everything from toothpaste to bubble gum.

Supersize Me: In order to better understand how America’s addiction to fast food is impacting our nation’s health, documentary filmmaker Morgan Spurlock eats nothing but McDonald’s for an entire month.

Forks Over Knives: Forks Over Knives investigates the claim that many degenerative diseases such as type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and several types of cancer could be prevented–and sometimes reversed by adopting an animal-free plant-based diet.

A Place at the Table: Despite being one of the world’s top producers of food, hunger continues to be a pervasive issue in the U.S. A Place at the Table examines how hunger and food insecurity impacts the lives of three individuals living in different parts of the country and how hunger could be solved once and for all if the American public decided to make it a priority.

Spinning Plates: Spinning Plates tells the stories of three different restaurants: a 150-year old family restaurant in Iowa, a Michelin-starred temple of molecular gastronomy, and a struggling Mexican restaurant in Tucson.

FRESH, the movie: FRESH celebrates the farmers, thinkers and business people across America who are re-inventing our food system. Featuring urban farmer and activist, Will Allen, sustainable farmer and entrepreneur, Joel Salatin, and supermarket owner, David Ball, FRESH offers up a vision for a healthier and more sustainable way of living.

The Garden: The fourteen-acre community garden at 41st and Alameda in South Central Los Angeles is the largest of its kind in the United States. Started as a form of healing after the devastating L.A. riots in 1992, the South Central Farmers have since created a miracle in one of the country’s most blighted neighborhoods. Growing their own food, feeding their families and creating a community.

Podcasts:

The Sporkful: Hosted by James Beard Award nominee Dan Pashman, The Sporkful is a fun foray into the world of food, culture, restaurants and eating that goes way beyond the realm of recipes.

Gravy: Produced by Southern Foodways Alliance, Gravy is an exploration of the history and diverse food cultures of the changing American South.

Eating Matters: With weekly interviews with food policy experts and leaders, host Jenna Luit tackles critical issues such as health, labor, politics and sustainabilty through the lens of food.

The Farm Report: Former Executive Director of Heritage Radio Network, Erin Fairbanks, interviews a guest each week from the agricultural sector to discuss issues such as labor and immigration.

NPR The Salt: A blog from the NPR Science Desk, The Salt explores what we eat and why we eat it. It serves up stories about food science, culture, policy and innovation.

The Spoon Podcasts: From The Spoon, The Smart Kitchen Show and the Weekly Spoon will keep you apprised of the current news in food tech and the future of cooking.

Food Startups Podcast: Hosted by food entrepreneur Matt Aaron, weekly episodes are intended to help food businesses grow and prosper.

Take Out with Ashley & Robyn: Ashley is a registered dietician and Robyn is a data analyst who studies how health trends impact families. Together they interview food industry leaders, farmers, musicians, celebrities and athletes who all want the same thing: a better food system for healthier families.

Tech Bites: Also on Heritage Radio Network, host Jennifer Leuzzi explores the intersection of technology and food and investigates the ways in which the digital world is impacting the way we produce and share food.

Looking to launch a career in food? Check out exciting food tech, design, management, operations, development and food science positions at Food+Tech Jobs.

The post How to Start a New Career in the Food Industry: Educate Yourself Part 1 appeared first on Food+Tech Connect.

Dishes that promote more sustainable food systems: (clockwise from upper left) Bone marrow & parsley salad, St. John; beet infused asian carp, Miya’s; carrot tartare, Eleven Madison Park; rotation risotto, Blue Hill.

In the recent history of fine dining, there have been a handful of notable dishes that transcend the table and make a statement about how our food system should operate. To name a few:

• Nose-to-Tail, Circa 1994: Chef Fergus Henderson, of St. John in London, opens his restaurant and becomes a vocal proponent of nose-to-tail eating. He turns bone marrow into a luxury dish and delights farmers and butchers everywhere by getting the public to celebrate more parts of the animal, reducing food waste and bringing additional income to those who make meat.
• Invasavorism, c.2010: Chef Bun Lai, of Miya’s Sushi in New Haven, Connecticut, starts serving invasive species — like Lionfish, Asian Carp, and Knotweed — on his menu as a way to use aquatic bycatch and to strengthen the local food system.
• Plant “Proteins”, c.2012: Chef Daniel Humm, of Eleven Madison Park in New York City, mesmerizes diners with a beef-tartare-inspired dish entirely made from carrots. The dish is served tableside with your server grinding whole carrots through a meat grinder.
• Rotational Dining, c.2013: Chef Dan Barber, of Blue Hill in New York, creates his seminal, “Rotation Risotto” dish. A mix of “soil-supporting grains and legumes, cooked and presented in the manner of a classic risotto,” it’s a delicious plate that reinforces rotational agriculture that’s better for the soil.

All of these chefs have used their platforms as restaurateurs and influencers to promote mindful deliciousness. For those lucky enough to have been to these restaurants, the ability to dine on something so pleasurable while supporting sustainability feels like you’re getting away with something.

But we (eaters, cooks, farmers, food makers, food media, etc.) can’t let the kind of food you see at those restaurants start and end there. For every cupcake, avocado toast or cronut that catches on like wildfire, we need more dishes that feature offal, bycatch, plant based foods and rotation crops to also dominate menus everywhere.

The above examples are dishes that only a tiny fraction of the world can experience. In their current form, they may never scale beyond the small group they were designed for. It’s great that these chefs have a media platform to talk about the ideas underlying these dishes, but the food system by-and-large doesn’t feed people like this. Outside of major metro areas there are many who have never heard of these chefs and their ideas.

How might we democratize the most high-minded food ideals practiced in Michelin starred kitchens so that everyone can have them? I’m not talking about lobes of foie gras topped with quenelles of caviar, but dishes like Rotation Risotto, which promotes rotational agriculture and biodiversity.

How do we get someone like General Mills to put Rotation Risotto in every Wal-Mart? How do we get Tyson to make offal a billion dollar consumer product? How do we get Red Lobster to serve bycatch? How do we get McDonald’s to put a veggie burger on the menu in America?

We at the Future Market explored this question with our Crop Crisp prototype product. With Crop Crisps, a mass-market cracker was made in four flavors where each flavor was based on a crop in a four-crop wheat rotation.

Crop Crisps are the CPG version of the Rotation Risotto, in cracker form. While our limited edition run was handmade in Brooklyn, the design of the box suggests a mass produced product similar to what you see in a Wal-Mart or Costco. We did this intentionally because we wanted to show what it would look like when progressive ideas make it into the mainstream, like how a Gucci sweater can eventually trickle down to the Gap.

Crop Crisps: a Future Market concept product. Each cracker flavor is based on a different crop from the same four-crop rotational planting.

Great new dishes with the power to shift the food system will always emerge from places like Blue Hill and Eleven Madison Park. But to truly shift the food system we have to move these ideas to the masses.

Everyday eaters can help these dishes make the jump into the mainstream. How? Next time you’re at a butcher shop, ask for an “off” cut of meat. Any butcher worth their salt will eagerly talk you through how to prepare it. Next time you’re eating something with a great story like Rotation Risotto, share the story on your social networks, not just a FOMO-inducing beauty shot.

It may sound like a series of small actions, but remember that the cupcake, avocado toast and cronut all caught on after a steadily growing stream of social posts. These trends tend to go viral once an editor at Food & Wine decides to write about why their Instagram feed is covered in avocado toast, but it all starts with the people making noise.

We as eaters have the power to decide what the next food trends are. Isn’t it time we start promoting more trends that can impact the food system?

This is also posted at The Future Market.

The post Good Food, Trickling Down appeared first on Food+Tech Connect.

Last month, The Future Market kicked off our Future of Food Dinner Series to bring the themes shaping the future our food system to life. The Future of Protein was the first theme in the series, held at the Museum of Food and Drink in Brooklyn on June 28. Part food conference, part dinner, part art installation, the Future of Food dinner series showcases the biggest ideas impacting our food system in an immersive, delicious dining experience. The goal for this dinner series is to bring the food innovations of tomorrow to life today through thought-provoking, memorable dining experiences.

Using Design & Experience To Explore The Future of Protein

From the massive impact conventional animal farming has on our ecosystem to the effects excessive meat consumption has on our health, there are few areas of food that touch our economy, environment and culture as deeply as protein. It’s clear that our current approach to protein production and consumption is unsustainable. A lot of the conversations around the future of protein are just that – conversations, research reports and articles. The Future of Protein dinner was all about highlighting the work of innovators rethinking protein in a way that that’s better for people, planet, and profit.

To imagine where our food system might be headed, it’s important to show where we’ve been. In seven courses, the Future Market team showcased the past, present and future innovations that have and will shape protein’s role in our food system. Each course represented the state of protein from a different time era starting in the post-industrial 1850s and ending in the year 2065.

The dinner was an edible exploration of everything from the impact of the green revolution to the role biodiversity, insects and cellular agriculture will play in feeding 9 billion people. We created a visceral experience that enabled our diners – Fortune 500 executives, innovators and eaters –  to touch, taste and experience what the future of protein might look like.

This kind of immersive storytelling is key to designing a better future for food, because it brings challenges and innovations of a global scale down to the human scale. We want to show people how massive shifts in the food system translate to an experience on their plate.

In the following post I will walk you course-by-course through the dinner. Protein is just the start of the Future of Food dinner series, so sign up to get notified about future dinners and workshops.

Brian Halweil, Editor-in-chief of Edible Brooklyn/Manhattan (center)

The Future of Protein: Course-by-Course

• Course 1: The Industrial Revolution – The Year 1850
• Course 2: The Green Revolution – The Year 1950
• Course 3: Today, In Transition – The Year 2020
• Course 4: Eating With Ecosystems – The Year 2030
• Interstitial Discussion #1: “You Are What You Eat Eats”
• Course 5: Insects Are the New Normal – The Year 2040
• Interstitial Discussion #2: Cellular Agriculture
• Course 6: Protein for 9 Billion – The Year 2065

You can also visit the Future Market for a full photo gallery.

The Future Market would also like to thank our gracious sponsors: Food+Tech Connect, Museum of Food and Drink, The Algae Factory, Bitwater Farms, Bugsolutely, Entomo Farms, Exo, Fleishers Craft Butchery, Highlands Dinner Club, The Honest Bison, One Hop Kitchen, Kobrand Wines (Bodega Chacra & Sequoia Grove Winery), Brooklyn Brewery, Mezcal Buenbicho, and New York Distilling Company.

Course 1: The Industrial Revolution – The Year 1850

“Wild Protein”
When protein was organic, non-GMO and grass-fed by default

• Dish: Bison, Shallot, Wild Greens, Mustard Seed
• Cocktail: Brandy Punch c. 1852 by Prof. Jerry Thomas
• Featured Conversation: Sean Lenihan, The Honest Bison

Diners were transported to the 1850s through the first 20′ video animation of the evening.

We start in a place where protein ran wild and free and the idea of mass-scale farming and processed foods was hard to imagine. Paradoxically, many of the aspirations from our current-day food movement aim to shift pieces of our food system back to this simpler time. Sourcing food from small, local farms was the norm and hunting wild animals like bison was a big part of our protein consumption.

A Conversation with Sean Lenihan, CEO of The Honest Bison

Sean Lenihan, founder and CEO of the Honest Bison, shared his vision for bringing bison back to our plates as a healthy, sustainable source of protein. Like their 1850s brethren, Lenihan’s bison are all grass-fed and humanely raised with “no grains. no hormones. no feedlots. no matter what.”  The first course featured tongue and skirt from the Honest Bison, accompanied by pickled shallots, wild greens and mustard seed.

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Course 2: The Green Revolution – The Year 1950

“Industrial Protein”
The rise of the industrial food system

• Dish: Grass-fed Salisbury Steak, Mixed Vegetables and Potato, served in a Future Market TV Dinner box.
• Cocktail: The Swimmer c.1964; Vodka, Beef Bouillon, Tomato
• Featured Conversation: Peter Kim, Museum of Food and Drink

Welcome to the 1950s Green Revolution. We’ll be dining in front of the TV now.

After World War II, the American agricultural system was transformed by the use of industrial inputs such as fertilizer. This shift, combined with government subsidies for calorie-dense crops like corn, wheat and soy, contributed to the creation of a farming system that produces large quantities of inexpensive calories. These cheap ingredients, in turn, constituted the basis for the production of a variety of highly processed foods, profoundly influencing what food is produced and consumed.

A Conversation with Peter Kim, Executive Director of the Museum of Food and Drink.

Peter Kim, Executive Director of the Museum of Food and Drink, spoke to us about those nascent days of the industrialized food industry. The TV Dinner is one of the most powerful symbols of how our industrial food impacted the way we ate. Food no longer needed to be made from scratch, which meant liberation from the kitchen for legions of homemakers in America. Kim noted that products like TV Dinners facilitated the industrial farming system where animals (and plants) were grown for yield and consistency. The protein system began to shift toward using concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs), antibiotics, and other methods to efficiently produce food as much as possible with less regard for animal welfare or environmental impact.

To illustrate the industrialization of our protein, we designed handmade TV dinner boxes featuring grass-fed, dry-aged salisbury steak from Fleisher’s, a medley of farmers markets vegetables and mashed potatoes. Though the TV dinners of 1950 did not include grass-fed beef (a much more sustainable, healthful way to raise beef), we wanted to simulate one of the signature food rituals of the time while adhering to more progressive ideals about how our food is made. This dish demonstrates our hope that well-raised meat and vegetables can one day be conveniently accessible to everyone.

Diners could scan the entire face of the box to learn more about the impact of the Green Revolution, using an augmented reality experience we built in the AR tool, Layar.

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Course 3: Today, In Transition – The Year 2020

“Sustainable Hedonism”
Shifting toward a more plant-based plate

• Dish: 1 oz of Dry Aged, Grass-fed Ribeye + 58 oz of Energy Equivalent Vegetables.
• Wine: Sequoia Grove Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon 2013 & Bodega Chacra Barda 2013
• Featured Conversation: Danielle Gould, Food+Tech Connect

Today, In Transition: the scenery for our current day era, where we strive toward a more plant-based diet.

While most of us love our animal protein more than ever, we have become clear that we cannot continue to produce and consume it in the quantities we were raised to expect. The energy requirements and ecological consequences of mass production of animal protein are clearly unsustainable, especially as we look towards 9 billion meat-hungry humans by mid-century.

A Conversation with Danielle Gould, Founder of Food+Tech Connect.

Danielle Gould, founder of Food+Tech Connect, touched on $100s of millions of investment money that’s gone into the plant-based protein space with companies such as Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods. While animal protein isn’t going away overnight – if ever – it’s clear that there is a strong movement toward a more plant-forward diet, where meat is still present, but the idea that meat is always center of plate is no longer the cultural default.

A 1oz slice of grass-fed, dry-aged ribeye. This was paired with a 58oz family style serving of vegetables, which requires approximately the same amount of gasoline equivalent energy to produce.

For this dish, we highlight the disparity in resources required to produce 1oz of beef versus 1oz of vegetable. Diners were served a 1oz piece of grass-fed, dry-aged ribeye alongside a 58oz family style serving of rice, eggplant, broccoli, and cauliflower that required approximately the same amount of gasoline equivalent energy to produce.

This course is all about the tensions and shifts in how we produce food today. The wine pairing showcases two different approaches to winemaking: Biodynamic (Barda) vs Traditional (Sequoia Grove).

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Course 4: Eating With Ecosystems – The Year 2030

“The Biodiverse Kitchen”
Bringing biodiversity back into our kitchens and diets

• Dish: 12 Diverse Proteins + Three Sisters Biodiverse Polenta
• Beer: An assortment of ten different Brooklyn Brewery Beers
• Featured Conversation: Bryan Mayer, Head of Butcher Education, Fleishers Craft Butchery

The Biodiverse Kitchen: the future of food is about producing and consuming food in a way that supports a more diverse ecosystem.

Seventy five percent of the world’s food is generated from only 12 plants & 5 animal species. We live in a world centered on monocultures. Food and dietary trends reinforce the behavior of consuming one thing at a massive scale, instead of a more balanced diet that includes consuming smaller amounts of a wider range of foods. As we are discovering, this approach has created all sorts of problems related to artificial fertilizer use, pesticide use and disease prone-crops. Biodiverse agricultural systems bear the promise of creating more resilient and sustainable crops.

A Conversation with Bryan Mayer, Head of Butcher Education, Fleishers Craft Butchery.

Bryan Mayer, Head of Butcher Education at Fleishers Craft Butchery, joined us to share his thoughts on how the future of food is not one thing, it’s about growing and eating a little of everything. As a butcher, Bryan sees first-hand how certain celebrated cuts of meat (ribeyes, chops, etc.) are always in highest demand. But he implores us to expand our horizons and not only eat more less-demanded meat cuts like offal, but to eat a much wider range of food overall. By doing this, we can send a message to food producers that biodiversity and more sustainable systems are what the world demands.

For the year 2030 dish, we wanted to underscore how important it will be to eat smaller amounts of a wider range of proteins in the future. Instead of a larger portion of one kind of protein, diners were served small portions of 12 different proteins: beef oxtail, chicken thigh, bison brisket, chicken mousse, bluefish, smoked mussel, beef heart, beef cheek, bison filet, bison ribeye, pork shoulder and yak london broil.

Three Sisters Biodiverse Polenta was the accompaniment, which is made from corn, beans, and squash. Corn, beans, and squash, when planted together as companion crops, grow symbiotically and take care of each other and the soil much better when planted in sync vs separately. Three Sisters is a Future Market Concept Product illustrating a vision of what polyculture might look like in mass-consumer products.

A little of everything. Diners selected from a slate of 10 different beers from Brooklyn Brewery.

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Interstitial Discussion

“You Are What You Eat, Eats”
Evolving the state of animal feed

• Dish: Two Deviled Eggs, cricket-fed chicken egg vs. conventional chicken egg
• Featured Conversation: Sean McDonald, CEO of Bitwater Farms

A Conversation with Sean McDonald, CEO of Bitwater Farms.

Bitwater Farms works with poultry farmers to install modular cricket farms onsite, which are harvested as feed for poultry. Crickets eat a vegetable based diet and are fed to chickens. Extra crickets are bought back and sold into the growing edible insect supply chain.

During our interview with Sean McDonald of Bitwater Farms, dinner guests received a side-by-side comparison of two deviled eggs. One from a Bitwater Farms chicken farm, fed by crickets, and topped with crickets. And the other egg comes from a conventional farm without Bitwater Farms – topped with roasted ground soybeans to represent standard chicken feed.

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Course 5: Insects Are the New Normal – The Year 2040

“Family Meal of the Future”
Eating insects is the new normal

• Dish: Cricket Rotini, Mealworm Bolognese, Insect Rolls, Jackfruit Sausage
• Cocktail: Oaxacan Spaghetti Western; Mezcal Negroni feat. Mezcal Buenbicho
• Featured Conversation: Lee Cadesky, Co-Founder, One Hop Kitchen

A Conversation with Lee Cadesky, Co-Founder, One Hop Kitchen.

The vast majority of humanity eats insects regularly. And it turns out that insects are not only protein-rich, their cultivation also requires dramatically less energy and resource and produces far less pollution than the farming of livestock.

Lee Cadesky, Co-Founder of One Hop Kitchen, “the world’s first, best, and only insect bolognese sauce,” spoke to the audience about how his cricket & mealworm based sauces can save approximately 1,900 liters of water per jar compared to beef based sauces, and supply the same amount of protein with much less saturated fat and cholesterol.

Despite these benefits, some cultures in the world still hang on to a certain level of stigma when it comes to eating insects. For this reason, we created a dish rooted in comfort and familiarity: rotini with bolognese sauce, meatballs, and bread.

The twist: the rotini is made from cricket flour (by Bugsolutely), the bolognese is made with mealworms (by One Hop Kitchen), the meatballs made from jackfruit and shiitake mushrooms, and the bread was made from mealworm flour (by Entomo Farms & Exo). By the year 2040 or earlier, we envision a world where eating insects is comfortably mainstream.

The future of protein includes insects, brought to you by Bugsolutely, Exo, One Hop Kitchen, and Entomo Farms.

Insect course paired with Mezcal by Mezcal Buenbicho.

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Interstitial Discussion

Cellular Agriculture: Culturing Proteins

• Featured Conversation: Kevin Yuen, Modern Meadow

A Conversation with Kevin Yuen, Modern Meadow.

As we travel further into the future, we focus on the emerging innovation of cellular agriculture, the production of agricultural products from cell cultures. Modern Meadow, one such company at the forefront of the cellular agricultural movement, produces cultured meat and leather in Brooklyn, NY. Kevin Yuen from Modern Meadow was on hand to share a vision of what cultured protein could bring us in the future: a world where protein is more sustainably produced, animal welfare issues are reduced, food safety improves, and even protein nutrition can be tightly controlled.

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Course 6: Protein for 9 Billion – The Year 2065

“Aquatic Protein”
The protein power of sea plants

• Dish: Spirulina-Chocolate Ice Cream with Aquafaba feat. Algae Factory
• Beverage: Lighter Than Air, Gin Sour feat. NY Distilling Company’s Dorothy Parker

Our dessert showcased the magic of spirulina, one of the most protein dense foods available, with 57g protein per 100g (Beef is approximately 26g protein per 100g. We turned the already delicious chocolate algae bars from the Algae Factory into ice cream, topped with aquafaba (whipped chickpea water).

Crunchy protein for the future: Algae Factory spirulina sprinkles.

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Join the Future Market mailing list or follow on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram to stay in the loop for announcements about future dinner events and workshops. 

Visit the Future Market for a full photo gallery.

Thank You to the Future Market team & collaborators: Ben Walmer, Neil Redding, Riccardo Accolla, Alrik Suvari, Chris “CJ” Jordan, Leonardo Urbina, Danielle Gould, Nina Meijers, Soomin Baik, Aeh Jay Hollenbeck, Jeffrey dePicciotto, Danny Zlobnsky, Julia Greene, Peter Droste, Nate Debos, Rudy Gould, Jason DeMera, Emily Law, Maaz Shahid, Carson Peterson, Romain Lacombe, Emily Dodd, Emily Dellas.

The post Dining on the Future of Protein appeared first on Food+Tech Connect.

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

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

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

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

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

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

FTC: What is your business model?

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

FTC: What impact do you hope to have?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In an effort to educate eaters on the water footprint of the foods they consume, the Los Angeles Times created the interactive infographic below. Based on a report by the UNESCO Institute for Water Education entitled “The Green, Blue and Grey Water Footprint of Crops and Derived Crop Products” and data from the Water Footprint Network, the two part graphic lets you explore how much water different crops require and then helps you visualize the water footprints of sample meals through the “Random Plate” feature.

Playing around with the interactive graphic, I discovered some unexpected data. A few of my findings are below. You can take your own water footprint educational journey here.

Not surprisingly, beef takes the lead as the biggest water-hogger, requiring 106.28 gallons to produce one ounce. But interestingly, due to a higher rate of fertilizer application, chickpeas and lentils have an enormous water footprint, requiring 76.07 and 71.28 gallons to produce a single ounce respectively. This is roughly 30 gallons more than pork and 55 gallons more than chicken.

The graphic also highlights California’s colossal contribution to our nation’s fruit and vegetable supply. It produces 81% of our carrots, 88% of our avocados, 91% of our grapes and tomatoes, 92% of our strawberries and a whopping 99% of our artichokes.

Wine and milk are huge water guzzlers, the graphic points out. At 3.48 gallons of water needed to produce an ounce, wine has one of the largest water footprints. And milk requires a shocking 5.48 gallons per ounce, which is particularly staggering since California has been that nation’s top producer of dairy since 1993. However, beer has the smallest footprint of all the featured drinks, requiring 1.96 gallons per ounce.

The Random Plate feature lets you mix and match sample dinner plates and calculates the water footprint for each. By substituting chicken for beef, the plate’s footprint decreases from 850.2 gallons to 132.9, and swapping out okra for eggplant saves 48.6 gallons of water, to name a few examples. Beef, pork, lamb, chickpeas, lentils, peas, goat and asparagus are serious water hogs. While cabbage, strawberries, onions, lettuce, carrots, eggplant, grapefruit and tomatoes require significantly less to produce, according to the graphic.

Hopefully this interactive visualization encourages eaters and the foodservice industry nationwide to be more conscious of the water footprints of our food, to waste less and to support local agriculture production.

The post The Water Footprint of Agriculture Production [Infographic] 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.

Image via Modern Farmer

Guest post by Rebecca Chesney, Communications and Research Manager at the Institute for the Future. The views expressed here are solely those of the author and do not reflect the views of Food+Tech Connect.

“The world is full of magic things, patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper,” wrote poet W. B. Yeats.

Until now, we have been mostly blind to the systems and networks of systems that underpin our physicality. But over the next decade, a confluence of breakthroughs in physics, engineering, biology, computation and complexity science will give us new lenses to observe the wondrous interconnections surrounding us and within us. It is in those systems—from the microbial to the planetary—where the potential truly lies to improve our lives, restore our planet and understand our universe.

So begins Institute for the Future’s (IFTF) 2013 map, Age of Networked Matter, a journey through three time horizons to a future of immense possibility. Beyond the current flood of Abundant Data, and just past the promise of the Internet of Things, we find a world where everything is interconnected in entirely new ways. It is the Age of Networked Matter.

When thinking about the future of food in this world, we must think about how to develop and harness our technological capabilities for resiliency, equity and stability. The interactions of food with soil, shipping crates, packaging, processing and cooking and our bodies are inherently complex. An influx of data-driven food production, distribution, and 3D printing efforts create a window into these interactions at extraordinary resolution. The Internet of Food—emerging as fields of sensors, connected cups and handheld scanning devices—is beginning to add a virtual overlay to this reality, reshaping the ways in which we engage with this data in daily food experiences.

Imagine what will happen when the connections within the entire global food system are not only evident, but also programmed—when natural and artificial objects can communicate and work in concert with each other. To picture this world, I highlight one forecast at each scale in the Age of Network Matter map and its possible food system impacts:

Micro scale | adaptive atoms: toward programmable materials

Breakthroughs in nanoengineering, info-chemistry and materials science will deliver machines and materials that can adapt and self-organize in changing contexts, such as projects from MIT’s Self-Assembly Lab. This might manifest as seeds that are programmed to adapt to sudden shifts in weather conditions, or logistics systems that automatically reroute spoiled food to a compost facility.

People scale | organizations as algorithms: toward computable work

In traditional computing, the human provides the framework and algorithm, and computing power provides the answer. Emerging systems flip this relationship, designed to route problems to the right people at the right time, such as tools currently used for efficient warehouse operations. In the Age of Networked Matter, a single restaurant software program might place and track supply orders, coordinate staff schedules, manage finance and customer feedback, and even synthesize all this information to refine menus according to eater taste, ingredient availability, and food prices.

City scale | social robots: toward robot co-dependence

As robots become pervasive mobile nodes on the network, they will become socially engaged with each other. Like ant colonies, groups of robots will work together on a multitude of tasks, even to form a robot orchestra. Though already prevalent on farms, these more collaborative robots might become integral for food distribution in dense urban areas or essential for food security during natural disasters.

Planetary scale | interplanetary internet: toward a networked space age

As entrepreneurial ventures for medicine, manufacturing, and even tourism drive the space race, new technology will be deployed to network space vehicles, satellites, and eventually human habitats (and farms needed to feed them). These programs will likely accelerate new technologies on Earth, particularly as we are faced with growing food in rapidly changing climates.

This networked future might seem daunting, but it is one that we need to consider as we innovate today—especially with the long-term and far-reaching impacts of food system efforts. Abundant Data and the Internet of Food are the scaffold for this coming Age of Networked Matter. What are you building?

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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Rebecca Chesney is a Research and Special Projects Manager with Institute for the Future’s Food Futures Lab. Her passion is to connect farmers, chefs, innovators, and eaters to collectively shape the future of food. Her research includes food security, open innovation, changing norms and values across the food system. In 2015, she is helping launch IFTF’s multi-year study of food innovation hubs around the world. Rebecca previously worked with the World Bank and wrote financial accounting policy for the United States. She holds degrees in accounting and finance from Texas A&M University and an MA in the anthropology of food from SOAS, University of London.

The post Programming the Global Food System, from Smart Seeds to Distribution Robots appeared first on Food+Tech Connect.

From new investment funds to accelerator programs to crowdfunding platforms, 26 new private food and agriculture funding sources launched over the past year. We’ve compiled these funding sources into an easy-to-reference list below, which we will continue to update throughout the year. We’ll also be posting a more detailed analysis on Forbes in the next few weeks, so be sure to check back.

Did we miss anything? Let us know in the comments below, and we’ll make sure it’s added to the list.

FOOD & AG FUNDS INVESTING IN TECH

Cultivan Sandbox: Cultivian Sandbox is a newly launched venture capital fund investing in next-generation disruptive agriculture and food technology companies. A partnership between Cultivan Ventures and Sandbox Industries, the Chicago-based investment fund and incubator launched by Monsanto Co. alums, it closed its first tranche in May, raising about $70 million with plans to raise a total of $150 million. Its areas of investment include: animal health and protein production, crop production (including robotics and precision agriculture), food safety, cleantech and water technologies.

7-Ventures: Dallas-based convenience store chain 7-Eleven launched a new venture capital arm this summer to invest in food, food tech and retail technology startups. 7-Ventures has made two investments to date, including one in an undisclosed coffee company and one in customer loyalty and marketing platform Belly.

Arthur Ventures Growth Fund II: North Dakota-based Arthur Ventures raised a $45 million fund this year to invest in  a variety of sectors, including agriculture, energy, enterprise technology and web-enabled services and healthcare. Its investments in early-stage companies range from $250,000 to $3M, with most falling between $1M and $2M.

Anterra Capital: Netherlands-based Anterra Capital is an independent growth capital fund that invests in fast growing companies working to improve the global food supply chain. Its areas of focus span the entire supply chain, including everything from novel agro inputs and precision farming to smarter logistics and consumer safety. Anterra target investments of EUR 2M to EUR 12M and acts as the lead investor, taking a  significant minority equity position. Formed in 2013 from the spin-out of Rabobank’s proprietary food and agriculture venture capital fund Rabo Ventures, today it is backed by Moonray Investors and Rabobank Private Equity. To date its made investments in four companies, including Voltea, Food Freshness Technology, Ceradis Agro Formulations and Bluwrap

GreenSoil Investments: In February, GreenSoil  Investments, a Canadian venture fund dedicated to investing in Israeli food and agriculture startups, launched its second fund. It has raised $14 million for this fund to date and raised $12 million last year for its first fund, raising a total of $26 million for both funds. The fund has invested in five companies, three of which were made through its new fund, including Phenome Networks, TIPA, Fruitura Bioscience Ltd, EcoFer and Rootility.

dunnhumby Ventures: Dunnhumby, the analytics and direct-marketing firm behind loyalty programs at Tesco and Kroger among others, launched a venture fund in September to make seed-stage investments in retail data, analytics and marketing technology startups.  To date, the Boston-based fund has backed three companies, including InfoScout, Coherent Path and The Shelf, and plans to make 10 investments annually. Investments have ranged from $250,000 to $500,000.

Sarthi Angel Fund: Mumbai-based Sarthi Grouped launched a not-for-profit angel platform to provide funds to startups focused on agriculture and food processing, consumer, cleantech, e-commerce and information technology, healthcare and media.

Finistere II Fund, LP: This San Diego-based firm is currently raising a new fund, which will focus on agricultural technology at the nexus of the food agricultural productivity and sustainability in food, alternative energy, human and animal health, and the digital technology sectors.

Fair Foods Fund: Created by Fair Food Network, this impact capital fund provides financing and business assistance to food systems entrepreneurs. Fair Foods Fund makes investments that are focused on the middle of the supply chain, including: aggregation, storage or distribution of local food; value-added processing or marketing of local food; and information technology that benefits small- and mid-sized farms. It focuses on subordinated debt and royalty financing, with target deal size ranging from $50,000 to $500,000 and may be offered as a stand-alone investment or as part of a larger financing package. Currently active across the Northeast, it made its first loan this fall to Maine-based MOO Milk. The fund also offers a 3-day intensive boot camp, as well as consulting services. Fair Food Fund has secured funding from foundations and USDA to launch this innovative capital impact fund, but its goal is to raise $10 million by 2015.

FOOD & AG FUNDS

Patagonia $20 Million & Change Fund: Patagonia launched an internal venture fund to invest $20 million in sustainable companies with a focus on clothing, food, water, energy or waste. Named “$20 Million & Change,” the fund will make investments ranging from $500,000 to $5 million  in early stage companies that have at least $1 million in revenue or capitalization. It will take minority and majority stakes and could also create joint ventures.

Boulder Brands Investment Group: Boulder Brands, a Colorado-based food brand focused on health and wellness products, teamed up with Bill Weiland, Founder and CEO of natural foods brokerage Presence Marketing, to launch an investment fund targeting early-stage growth companies in the natural and organic food and beverage sectors. These companies will operate independently from Boulder Brands but will benefit from access to its infrastructure, resources and expertise.

Angel Food Network:  This Chicago-based network for angel food investors launched in the fall to match local, early-stage food and beverage companies with investors. The fund targets Midwestern food and beverage companies that want to raise up to $1 million.

Aqua-Spark: A new global investment fund based in the Netherlands, Aqua-Spark makes investments of €250,000 to €5,000,000 in small-to-medium sized sustainable aquaculture businesses around the world.  The fund seeks to be a minority investor in the businesses it supports, holding between 20 to 49 percent.

FOOD, AGRICULTURE & TECH ACCELERATORS

FreshStartups: Toronto-based FreshStartups launched an accelerator program for food, health and wellness technology startups this year. A partnership between Kinetic Cafe, a consulting firm, and Freshii, a healthy food restaurant chain, FreshStartups focuses on business growth, working side-by-side with startups for 6 months. Participants receive $25,000 in cash, $15,000 in digital lab credits – access to Kinetic Cafe’s on-staff designers, developers, sales, strategy and marketing experts – and office space, as well as educational programming and access to Freshii’s users and infrastructure. Fresh Startups takes 5-10 percent of equity in the businesses.

Alpha Strauss FoodTech Center of Excellence: Israel-based packed food company Strauss Group is partnering with startup accelerator MassChallenge to launch a food tech accelerator in Israel. Details about how the accelerator will operate and it’s specific areas of focus are limited, but Alpha Strauss’ director tells The Jewish Daily Forward that it is hoping to bring in companies that are working on infrastructure, raw ingredients and packaging, among other things. Strauss is launching the accelerator program for a couple of reasons, including: to make Israel the “Silicon Valley of food”; to attract more entrepreneurs and technologies; and to find innovative ways to compete again other multinationals.

AccelFoods: AccelFoods is a New York-based accelerator dedicated to helping promising food and beverage startups – who are already generating sales of above $100,000 on a run rate basis annually – scale their business. Launching its first class in January 2014, each class has four founding teams and runs for 6 months. Teams receive an initial investment of up to $50,000, depending upon their top line sales, as well as weekly seminars, discounts from strategic partners and one-on-one mentorship. Companies are also eligible for an additional investment of $100,000-$200,000 in the form of a convertible note.

Food Hatch: Food Hatch is a food focused accelerator that provides seed and early stage funding and business expertise to food and food tech companies. It invests between $18,000 to $35,000 and receives between a 6-8 percent equity stake in each company selected into the program. In 2013, the accelerator signed term sheets with two companies, but CEO Sam Klepfish anticipates Food Hatch will be much more active in 2014. He also says that it will likely increase the amount of money allocated per investment.

The NextFarm Accelerator:  This business accelerator program aims to support agriculture startups and promote the development sustainable sources of food for a growing global population. A partnership between Memphis Bioworks Foundation, an organization working to change Memphis’ bioscience landscape, and the Northwest Tennessee Entrepreneur Center, a public-private partnership to support local entrepreneurs, the accelerator announced its first class of 9 companies in November. These companies are diverse, ranging from precision software and sensors to expanding processing facilities and replacing synthetic dyes. Startups receive 6 months of mentorship to help them with refining business ideas and strategic planning, commercializing technology and taking products and services to the marketplace. At the end of the program, they’ll have a chance to pitch investors.

Rural Hub: Italy’s first-ever rural innovation incubator launched this year with a 1.2 million euro grant from the government. Rural Hub  is an incubator that offers rural food and agriculture startups mentorship, project financing and connections with venture capitalists. In addition to the incubator programs, it also has a campus for co-living and co-working, hosts events and conducts research on social innovation in the context of rural communities. Read more about Italy’s emerging food tech ecosystem here. 

FOOD & FOOD TECH EQUITY CROWDFUNDING

CircleUp: By far the most popular and well-funded of the crowdfunding websites, CircleUp connects accredited investors with consumer product good and retail companies. In 2013, 11 startups raised funds through its platform, and, since its launch in 2012, a total of 21 startups have raised $21 million. The startup raised $7.5 million in series A funding led by Union Square Ventures in May 2013. It previously raised $1.5  million in seed funding from Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz’s Maveron venture capital firm, Triple Point Investors and a number of angel investors. 

AgFunder: AgFunder launched in September 2013 to bring transparency and accelerated deal flow to the $6.4 trillion global food and agriculture industry by making it easy to syndicate agricultural investment opportunities. Through its platform, agriculture, ag tech and food processing startups with a lead investor can raise capital from accredited investors. Modeled after FundersClub, AgFunder sources its own investments and then creates a dedicated investment fund for each company into which it can then syndicate investors. For now, AgFunder’s investments range between $500,000 to $1.5 million. The platform is currently running two campaigns: one for AgFunder and one for Oakland, California-based TerViva, which develops new crops for under productive agricultural land and sustainable biofuels.

CraftFund: CraftFund is launching an equity crowdfunding platform for the craft brewing and food industries. Its goal is to connect breweries and food companies with passionate investors.

CrowdBrewed: CrowdBrewed allows craft breweries to raise equity financing through its platforms. Investors can look for opportunities, review offering materials, and make investments through its secure online platform. So far, 4 companies have raised a total of $129,235 through the platform.

FOOD REWARDS-BASED CROWDFUNDING 

FoodStart: The platform aims to help restaurants, food trucks, bakeries, breweries and co-ops raise capital in small increments ($50-$250) from their friends, family and future customers. Similar to Kickstarter, Foodstart campaign supporters receive rewards for their contribution in the form of a gift card for perks like discounts and VIP treatment. Foodstart makes money by taking a 4 percent cut of a campaign’s funding. There are currently 25 projects on the site, but none of them have been funded

Foodie Crowd Funding:  This platform is dedicated to helping small- and medium-sized food businesses take their companies to the next level. Approved “Seekers,” food entrepreneurs looking to launch a project, pay a $99 set up fee, and the platform takes 5 percent of funds raised from projects that reach their funding goal and 7 percent from projects that elect the “partially funded“ plan. ”Funders” receive Kickstarter-esque rewards for pledges. There are currently 24 projects on the site, but  none of them appear to have met their pledge goals.

Credibles:  A project of Slow Money Alliance, Credibles enables small, sustainable food  businesses to crowdfund prepayments from customers. In exchange, backers receive Credibles, or edible credits, which are worth $1 at the business when redeemed.  The website is currently in limited beta with 36 establishments currently listed. Slow Money hopes this is an entirely new investment model for slow food.

The post Food & Ag Investment Sources Explode in 2013 appeared first on Food+Tech Connect.

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

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

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

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

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

M&A

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

FUNDING

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

PARTNERSHIPS

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

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

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

INDUSTRY LANDSCAPE

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

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

Check out last month’s round-up here.

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

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

By a landslide, the most popular infographic of the years was Carbs Are Killing You designed by Column Five Media for Massive Health. After all those years of not eating red meat and cutting back on the mayonnaise, science now tells us it's carbs, not fat, making Americans overweight.  This interesting infographic describes in depth the way in which carbohydrates make the body store fat. Be sure to check out the lively conversation still taking place in the comments section.

Designed for Anytime Fitness and based on the fitness and nutritional habits of its 1.3 million members, Weight of the Union looks at the numbers behind obesity – how expensive it is to be overweight ($2.4 billion spent on diet foods), how much more food people are eating (portion sizes are 2-5 times larger) and the amount of time we spend on activities (95% of people don't do any daily physical activity).

After collecting over 7.68 million food rating in just 5 months through its Eatery iPhone app, Massive Health released some key findings about when people eat, where people eat, what they eat, and who they eat with, as a series of infographics. For more information about the company and  to see the infographic detailing at how people think they eat (and how he

althy they actually eat) click here. The infographic below is one in the series that visualizes data about how our friends and peers influence what we eat. The remaining infographics are available here.

Applegate  put together this handy infographic to give “supermoms” the “superpowers” to keep “superbugs,” bacteria resistant to one or more antibiotics that can cause deadly diseases in humans, out of their childrens’ diets.

The following is not an infographic, but rather a video of  Stefani Bardin‘sproject M2A:The Fantastic Voyage. The video offers a graphic look at how the gastrointestinal tract (GI) processes a meal of Top Ramen, Gummy Bears and Blue Gatorade versus a meal of hand made noodles, pomegranate/cherry juice gummy bears, and hibiscus gatorade. Read more about the project and how others reacted to the video here.

The post Top 5 Food & Health Infographics of 2012 appeared first on Food+Tech Connect.

 #1: Lapka

Lapka is a “personal environment monitor” that allows people to collect, measure and analyze information about their environment via their smartphone. Lapka offers a series of sensor peripherals to measure organicity (how organic your food is), radiation, temperature, humidity and electromagnetic fields. Using the companion app, people are able to make sense of their findings through data visualizations and ratings. Lapka tests organicity of fruits and vegetables using a stainless steel probe, plugged into the phone via the headphone jack, to measure electrical conductivity. The level of conductivity relates to the concentration of nitrate ions from nitrogen-based fertilizers. Lapka is already available for purchase.

#2: iTube

Researchers from UCLA have developed

t used to determine the concentration of colored compounds in a solution. In as little as 20 minutes, the device and accompanying app can identify the presence of peanuts, almonds, eggs, gluten and hazelnuts. Aydogan Ozcan, a professor at UCLA, and his colleagues have successfully tested the technology on various types of commercially available cookies.

“This automated and cost-effective personalized food allergen testing tool running on cellphones can also permit uploading of test results to secure servers to create personal and/or public spatio-temporal allergen maps, which can be useful for public health in various settings,” write Ozcan and his colleagues in a paper published last month in the peer-reviewed journal Lab on a Chip.

#3 Rapid Testing of Food Quality

Germany’s Fraunhofer Institute is developing a miniature spectrometer that will allow consumers to determine the quality of food – if it's ripe or water-logged – before making the decision to buy it. The device uses near infrared technology to assess starch, protein, water, and fat content in food. Fraunhofer explains in a press release, “In the future, all you will need to do is hold your smartphone near the product in question, activate the corresponding app, choose the food type from the menu – e.g. “pear” – and straight away the device will make a recommendation: the fructose content of the pear is high, so buy it!” The device is currently being prototyped, but may be ready for market launch in three to five years, according to the press release.

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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.

Guest Post by Jennifer Goggin of FarmersWeb

Buying and selling fresh meat is a delicate thing. Small farms don’t raise steaks; they raise animals. One cow can only produce a limited number of steaks. Restaurants that go through 50 orders of a particular dish every night need to buy that cut in volume. From the other perspective, farms have a very small window of time to sell every piece of an animal once it has been slaughtered and processed. If a farm takes an order, then schedules and slaughters the animal only to have the buyer back out, the farm needs to immediately sell the meat to another buyer or face having a freezer full of cuts, which is not so easily sold.

When my partners and I first started FarmersWeb, an online marketplace, we wanted to tackle some of these challenges that many meat producers face. To begin, we built a system to let farms accept advanced orders along with a deposit from wholesale buyers. The deposit is held in escrow through online credit card processing, which gives the buyer peace of mind that their deposit will only be cashed once the farm delivers the product, and also incentivizes the buyer to follow through on their order. Should the buyer wish to cancel their order and the farm is able to find another customer for that meat, the deposit can be returned. This system provides assurance to the farm that in the event of cancellation, they won’t be left holding the bag, so to speak.

Furthermore, farms can list their upcoming expected fresh meat products online where buyers can see, in real time, what is available and place their order. This not only helps the farm manage their inventory numbers, but also helps the buyer plan their menus around what local protein will be available. One of the problems we observed in farm-to-table ordering stemmed from poor communication, unclear expectations and inability to plan. Listing upcoming available products online eases this tension on both sides of the sale.

However, although a good start, this is not enough to solve what I believe is the crux of the issue, at least for fresh meat—what about the buyer who wants to buy local meat, but cannot handle a whole animal and all the cuts that it represents? What about the restaurant that has a popular braised short rib dish on its menu, but a single small farm cannot supply the amount of short ribs per week without selling the rest of the cuts that would result from those animals? Why can’t wholesale buyers form buying clubs to split up a whole animal so everyone gets what they need and nothing more? Here is another great opportunity for technology to enhance the communication and coordination that something like this would require. Imagine if there were a site or app on which a farm (or the farm’s slaughterhouse) could create a digital copy of their cut sheet, and buyers could reserve pieces that they want to purchase. As soon as a group of buyers reserves every piece of a single animal, the farm will move ahead with the slaughter.

One final note: much of the challenge around selling and buying fresh meat has to do with consumer demand—so if we as individuals are more willing to try an unfamiliar cut (liver or tripe, anyone?), or embrace the concept of an ever-changing menu (even up to the hour), then restaurants could in fact buy a whole animal themselves and work their way through the parts. Technology can make such sales easier, but restaurants will be more likely to take the risk if we as patrons support them.

How can technology enhance the communication and coordination of buying and selling whole animals? Let us know on Twitter using #hackmeat, on Facebook or at the Hack//Meat hackathon happening December 7-9 in NYC.

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Jennifer Goggin is a co-founder and CEO of FarmersWeb, an online marketplace that connects local farms and wholesale buyers. Jennifer got her start in the food industry as the Director of Operations for Basis Farm to Chef, a New York City based distribution company specializing in locally grown products. She has participated in the WWOOF program in Italy and is involved with Just Food in New York City. Jennifer is always looking for more ways to help solve local food issues.

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