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 last week’s top headlines.

News in retail continues to steal headlines in weekly top news. Amazon slashed prices up to 43% at Whole Foods on its official first day as owner of Whole Foods, adding to the competitive pressure of the fast-changing $800 billion supermarket industry. Target finally cut ties with Hampton Creek, explaining that food safety allegations were too much of a risk for the retail giant, despite the FDA’s conclusion that their products were safe. Blue Apron’s Chief Financial Officer Brad Dickerson revealed the struggles behind e-commerce subscription services and a break down of their spendings and losses, which has amounted to $31.6 million.

In restaurant news, Starbuck’s digital ordering system has taken off successfully and managed to change consumer behavior in such a way that should inspire envy in Silicon Valley types. Restaurants turn to data-mining from social media, review sites, and tracking apps to stay competitive.

And finally, a new kind of eating disorder born from wellness culture called orthorexia that obsesses over consuming foods that are “pure” and “clean.”

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

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1. Amazon Cuts Whole Foods Prices as Much as 43% on First Day – Bloomberg

Cutting prices at the chain with an entrenched reputation for high cost is a sign that Amazon is serious about taking on competitors such as Walmart, Kroger and Costco.

2. Inside Amazon + Whole Foods: The First Day – Food Dive

Strategically discounted prices and new signage promoting the grocer’s online shopping platform were on display in Whole Foods.

3. Target Ends Relationship with Troubled Startup Hampton Creek – Bloomberg

The retail giant decided to end the relationship after receiving what it described as “specific and serious food safety allegations about Hampton Creek products,” despite the FDA’s conclusion that their products are safe.

4. Blue Apron’s Struggles Show Why It’s Tough to Make It With E-Commerce Subscriptions – Bloomberg

The business model for subscription boxes turns out to be much tougher than it sounds, because of the high costs of getting and keeping customers. The company spent $94 in the past three years to acquire each subscriber and $144m on marketing in 2016.

5. Starbucks Teaches Silicon Valley a Lesson in Tech – Barron’s

The company’s digital ordering system has become  major hit, changing consumer payment behavior in a way that should inspire envy in Silicon Valley.

6. To Survive in Tough Times, Restaurants Turn to Data-Mining – New York Times

Startups and established companies are both scrambling to deliver immediate data on sales, customers, staff performance or competitors by merging restaurant information with data from sources such as social media, review sites, and tracking apps.

7. Is Wellness Culture Creating a New Kind of Eating Disorder? – Quartz

British actress Daniella Isaacs was once entrenched in the world of wellness until realizing that she had orthorexia, an eating disorder about a moral fixation on consuming “pure” and “clean” foods.

8. Arable Capital Partners Closes Debut Fund at $300m – Global AgInvesting

Arable aims to fill the funding gap that exists in the food and agriculture sectors. The funds will be spent on operating businesses in agriculture.

The post Amazon Cuts Whole Foods Prices 43%, Target Splits With Hampton Creek + More appeared first on Food+Tech Connect.

Guest post by Victor Penev, founder and CEO of Edamam on the nutrition information challenge as part of our Internet of Food Series. The views expressed are are solely those of the author and do not reflect the views of Food+Tech Connect.

Let’s face it, poor nutrition is most often the result of poor, but perfectly understandable, decisions made with poor nutrition information and data. To witness:

• We stuff up on processed foods, because we think they are cheap and easily accessible. If we knew their actual impact on our health and potential cost in medical bills, however, this calculation may change.
• We avoid cooking at home, because it seems easier and faster to order in or eat out. But if we knew how much sodium and fat we consume when eating out, we might reconsider.
• We routinely overeat, because we are unaware of the amount of calories and other nutrients packed in our supersized portions. If the calorie count of the pasta dish you eat for dinner is readily available, you might eat only half of it.

Bottom line, eating right – that is, eating properly portioned nutritious food that is aiding our health and well-being – is an information problem. If better, more actionable nutrition information is available when making food decisions, people will make better food choices. Many weight loss programs, for example, have people log what they eat, which ultimately drives a change in how much and what they eat. As the saying goes, if you can measure it, you can manage it.

Solving The Nutrition Information Problem

The good news is that the nutrition information problem is infinitely solvable. It can be broken down into three sub-problems:

1. Gather and organize in one place all relevant food and nutrition information. This means data about every food, recipe, ingredient, quantity, measure, cooking technique, etc.
2. “Smarten” up this database by structuring the data and building algorithms to answer real-life questions about food. An example: what is a good recipe with spinach for someone with heart condition, who has kids allergic to nuts?
3. Make the “smart data” available to as wide as possible network of outlets, so you can reach people at every point they make a decision about food.

Edamam aims to solve these sub-problems of the nutrition information problem. We are relentlessly gathering and structuring food data, building algorithms to allow smart querying and partnering with businesses in the food, health and wellness space to make the data useful to their users. In the process, we hope to change the way people eat by giving them the option of a smarter, better informed food choice every time they make one.

Of course, this is not a one-company solution. Initiatives such as GS1 and legislation to make nutrition labeling in restaurants mandatory are examples of the efforts that should happen at the individual, business and government levels.

Another crucial part of the solution is logging and tracking food consumption. Companies such as Apple, FitBit and LoseIt, for example, make it easier for consumers to track their diet and nutrition, as well as their impact on weight, sleep, mood and overall health. The challenge, however, is that people still have to take the time and effort to log their meals.

The true tipping point will come the moment food logging becomes as easy and as tracking movement is today. When people are able to seamlessly track what they eat, it will become much easier to deliver personalized nutrition advice and recommendations. Applications will be able to match food and nutrition data against personal phenome, genome, microbiome and diet preference data to provide people with the best nutrition plan for them. This is not a remote possibility. With the current state of technology, this will likely be a reality in 5 to 10 years.

As food and nutrition have repeatedly been linked to overall health and longevity, the promise of solving the nutrition information problem will mean longer, healthier and happier lives. The age when we might live on average 120 years by just eating right is nigh, and this is something to cheer about.

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

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Victor Penev is a serial entrepreneur and the founder and CEO of Edamam. Previous to Edamam, Victor co-founded and sold Bulgaria’s largest Internet Company, NetInfo BG. Victor Penev also ran the international digital business of Playboy Enterprises, and was instrumental in starting the digital marketing efforts of BMG and in creating key e-commerce capability for Bertelsmann’s book clubs. He holds MBA from Stanford.

The post Information Is The Missing Ingredient To Eating Right appeared first on Food+Tech Connect.

Guest post on using big food data to create recipes for a sustainable future by Bernard Lahousse co-founder of Foodpairing as part of our Internet of Food Series. The views expressed are are solely those of the author and do not reflect the views of Food+Tech Connect.

“If we just eat what the land gives us, there is food enough for everybody.”
—Chef Dan Barber, Blue Hill

The key to our food sustainability depends on learning to eat what the land and sea already provide us. Rather than industrializing our food systems to coax anything and everything out of (sometimes) nothing, or depleting our current food sources to extinction, we need to embrace the whole world of ingredient options already surrounding us. For example, instead of just eating mainstream fish like salmon and tuna, we can cook with under-appreciated bycatch species. We can also add variety to our daily diets by using other lesser known ingredients such as seaweed, insects and wild, foraged foods.

The challenge is that many people don’t know how to cook with these kinds of ingredients. By analyzing and understanding the aroma and flavor profiles of unfamiliar ingredients, however, we can overcome our biases and discover exciting ways to incorporate them into new recipes.

Big Food Data: Analyzing Aroma, Flavor & Texture at the Molecular Level

At Foodpairing, our goal is to characterize every ingredient in the world. By analyzing individual ingredients on a molecular level, we can pinpoint the actual patterns responsible for their aromas, flavors and textures. These aromatic profiles enable us to calculate the synergy between the flavors of different ingredients, while taking into account seasonality, locality and preparation methods.

Over the last ten years, and with the help of our global network of chefs, bartenders and governmental partners, Foodpairing has been able to source ingredients from around the world. We have also found ways to optimize new recipe algorithms by working in collaboration with some of the world’s best restaurants (Mugaritz, El Bulli, The Fat Duck, Eleven Madison Park, Central and many more).

So far we have analyzed more than 1700 ingredients to understand their aroma and flavor profiles to determine their best ingredient pairings. You can find all product information, discover potential matches, recipes, algorithms and much more through our Foodpairing API.

We partnered with the Belgian-based North Sea Chefs’ bycatch initiative to utilize our technology to minimize food waste and promote the use of lesser-known fish and bycatch. Until recently, 50 percent of the bycatch fish caught in Europe’s North Sea alone were left to die before being discarded at sea, in favor of more popular species to meet consumer demand. We’re proud to say that we now have 30 North Sea fish profiled in the Foodpairing database, and that’s just the beginning. Below, you can see our technology at work with an example of our visual analysis of Pout Whiting’s aromatic profile and its aromatic links to ginger and orange.

Pout whiting is one of many North Sea bycatch fish species. You can see from our aroma analysis that its flavor is characterized as having mostly roasted popcorn-like notes, along with some buttery and floral notes. You may not be as familiar with pout whiting, but it’s every bit as delicious as other familiar fish species. Using Foodpairing, you can find complementary ingredient matches to pair with Pout Whiting, like turnip rooted chervil, codium, fava bean tops, humulus shoots or kimchi.

Data-Driven Recipes For a Sustainable Future

Conventional cooking often relies on intuition and recipe testing. For the most part, personal experience and cultural conventions dictate our notions of how to pair ingredients, which can be somewhat limiting. At Foodpairing, we take a different using approach, using chemistry and physics as a launch pad for the discovery of otherwise hidden ingredient pairings to expand your recipe creations.

Our own Michelin-starred chef Peter Coucquyt crafts new recipes based on potential ingredient matches that have been generated by our Foodpairing Inspiration Tool. Try his North Sea bycatch fish recipe for Pout whiting with orange-carrot ginger soup.

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

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Bernard Lahousse is an author, scientist, food aficionado and co-founder of the Foodpairing Company.

Foodpairing.com is the world’s largest creative chef network. Nowadays, our palates have evolved to eat much more adventurously than before. Unexpected ingredient combinations becoming the new norm and chefs are challenging themselves to churn out innovative menus to not miss out on the next big thing in food trends. Through science and computer-aided intelligence, half a million food professionals, in 125 countries are trusting and leaning on Foodpairing to create surprising flavor combinations for healthy and sustainable recipes.

Building on its extensive flavor experience in working with chefs, the Foodpairing company offers consumer flavor intelligence for brands. The Foodpairing technology helps medium and large, customer-centric enterprises to unveil the trending flavors in market data and identify, in no-time, the perfect flavor combinations for their brand and customers. Unlike slow and expensive traditional customer research based on static data and cumbersome reports, Foodpairing consumer flavor intelligence delivers real-time actionable customer intelligence essential to launch the right flavor at the right time and achieve better business outcomes.

The post Using Big Data to Transform Unfamiliar Ingredients Into Tasty Recipes appeared first on Food+Tech Connect.

Got data on the brain? So do we. Join us on August 11 for our ‘Dining on Data: The Future of Cooking, Eating & Running a Food Biz‘ Meeup and hear from five companies that are using data to improve everything from cooking to restaurant concept and menu development. You’ll get an inside look at these companies’ business models, the innovative ways they use data and their lessons learned.

There will also be networking, and lots of drinks and nibbles from Taste Wine Company, Sixpoint, Steve’s Ice Cream, Sustainable Snacks and more.

Meetup Details

Where: Redwood Studios – 55 9th Street, 11215, Brooklyn, NY

When: Tuesday, August 11 – 7:00 – 9:30 PM

RSVP: Space is limited, so snag our spot here!

***We will stop accepting RSVPs on August 10th. We will have 15 spots available for $30 at the door for last minute RSVPs.***

Schedule

7:00 – 7:45: Networking, Snacks & Drinks

7:45 – 9:00: Presentations & Q&A

9:00 – 9:30: More Networking

Confirmed Presenters

 Cedric Penders – API Evangelist & Business Developer, Foodpairing® – A creative food-tech agency that operates one of the world’s largest ingredient databases and a set of unique algorithms, capable of calculating the most surprising ingredient pairings. Foodpairing® is inspiring top chefs and mixologists from all over the world to create new dishes and drinks, and enabling food brands, apps and websites to inspire consumers with customized pairing suggestions.

Florian Pinel – Senior Technical Staff Engineer, Watson Life department – IBM Watson Group – IBM’s Chef Watson is a cognitive cooking application that helps chefs and everyday folks alike discover new flavor combinations and unique pairings. When a user inputs an ingredient, Chef Watson refers to its knowledge of over 10,000 Bon Appetit recipes to generate unique options based on food chemistry and the psychology behind taste preferences.

Drew Barrett – President, The Brooklyn FoodWorks Powered by Dinner Lab – Dinner Lab is the premier platform to discover, prototype, and educate on new concepts in the culinary world. It connects talented, up-and-coming chefs with an engaged group of food enthusiasts looking for unique dining experiences and generates useful data and feedback that is used by chefs to iterate and improve on their menu ideas.

Lauren Hobbs – Director of Marketing, Union Square Hospitality Group & Co-founder, TechTable – USHG was founded by Danny Meyer and includes some of New York City’s most beloved restaurants: Union Square Cafe, Gramercy Tavern, Blue Smoke, Jazz Standard, The Modern at the Museum of Modern Art, Maialino, North End Grill, Marta, Porchlight, and Untitled at the Whitney Museum of American Art. USHG also includes Union Square Events, a catering and venue hospitality business, and Hospitality Quotient, an organizational consulting group that works with leaders in diverse industries to transform their business through hospitality.

Space Partner

Splacer is an on-line marketplace that connects owners of unique, creative spaces with people looking to create all kinds of event experiences including social gatherings, workshops, photo shoots, exhibitions, and pop-ups. Splacer was created by a duo of female architects with a vision of a world where beautiful spaces never go to waste and access to space in big cities is redefined. Splacer features both commercial and private spaces that  are not necessarily designated for events from galleries to private lofts, urban gardens to industrial warehouses.

Food & Beverage Partners

Taste Wine Company, called “the Spotify of wine” by Edible Manhattan, is disrupting the retail wine space with wine dispensing machines and a mobile app encouraging customers to taste their wine before buying it.  The more you Taste and then rate thewines, the better the recommendations from the app. Check them out at 50 3rd Ave or download their App to learn more.

Named after the six-pointed Brewer’s star, an ancient symbol of beer brewing, this Red Hook-based establishment has deep roots in craft beer heritage. Since 2004, they’ve formulated hundred of craft brews and strive to combine traditional methods with unbridled innovation –  most notably seen in their Cycliquids and Mad Scientists Series of beers.

Sustainable Snacks  is a Bronx-based natural foods company committed to crafting nourishing snacks that don’t compromise on flavor. Mountain Morsels® are all natural, vegan-friendly, energy snacks. Packed full of fruit, nuts and dark chocolate, they are nutrient-dense and filled with plant power.

EXHIBIT C. is a fresh, organic space celebrating all that is food in the world. We blend food, wellness, entrepreneurship, art, and tech to create deliciously interesting classes, dinner, and events. Founded by Daphne Cheng, haute vegetable chef, the space offers a platform for local and visiting chefs and entrepreneurs to showcase their talents and reach new audiences. Launching soon early September.

Steve’s Ice Cream takes classic American flavors and gives them a modern twist. For all of our unique flavors, we focus on the subtleties of flavor profiles and the art of the mix-in in our dairy and non-dairy flavors. And we’re not adding in just any old mix-ins – we source ingredients/mix-ins from artisans who truly care about the product they produce.

WTRMLN WTR is the pioneer in deliciously hydrating, super healthy watermelon water. It is made with 2 simple ingredients – fresh watermelon and organic lemon. Each hand selected, hand skinned melon is cold-pressed using the rind and flesh, treated with a short, innovative nutrient preserving process, and refrigerated until consumed in BPA-free plastic bottles. Every detail, including how we tell our story through wellness experts hired as brand educators, the chic melon-forward packaging, the elegant “straw in melon” design, and even our corporate office have a touch of love – hence why we nickname our product “Liquid Love.” 

The post Food Data Meetup with IBM’s Chef Watson, Dinner Lab, USHG + More appeared first on Food+Tech Connect.

Ahh, the joys of summer: grilling outdoors, growing vegetables, sipping cold beers, and…free analytics? Yes, you read that right. In honor of the glorious summer of 2015, Food Genius, the leading foodservice data provider, is making exciting changes to how you can interact with our data and analytics. We’re announcing a new program for qualified users to receive complimentary access to our menu analytics dashboard.

Over the last 4 years, we’ve built a number of tools and experiences for foodservice professionals to gain insight and value from the massive amounts of menu data and technology we’ve built. We’ve had our share of successes and failures, but one thing we know is that more access to data is great for the foodservice industry as a whole. We believe that adoption of new tools, technology, and analytics services will lead to better insights and ultimately greater innovation.

We’ve decided to lower the barrier for certain groups of people working in or around the food industry to interact with and manipulate our data dashboard for a few reasons. First, we built a tool chock-full of insight, and we want to show it off. Second, we believe in democratizing data and are intent on leading that shift for the food industry. Access to data should be a given. This open access provides people with the freedom to interpret the data, and pushes everyone to become more “data literate”.

As Kris Hammond from the team at Narrative Science said, “Truly democratizing data requires some work in order to make it more understandable to everyone…It means giving people the stories that are trapped in the data so they can do something with the information.” The release of our dashboard attempts to do just that. It allows people access to those stories hidden in the data, so that people can access it and understand it in a relevant way for themselves, instead of going through us.

Starting immediately, students, educators, researchers, state restaurant associations and media focused on the food service industry will be able to access the Food Genius dashboard for the remainder of the year, completely free of charge, opening up access to menu examples, pricing statistics, ingredient usage rates, and geographic penetration.

Get in touch with us to learn more.

A version of this post originally appeared on Food Genius’ blog on July 7.

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Eli Rosenberg is a co-founder of Food Genius currently working on developing partnerships and managing content development, sometimes he also makes sure the internet works and lunch gets ordered.

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The post Food Genius Democratizes Foodservice Data, Offers Free Access to Menu Analytics Dashboard appeared first on Food+Tech Connect.

 

We published 22 thought-provoking responses on everything from normalizing insect consumption to Uber-ifying food distribution. Dig Inn founder Adam Eskin discusses democratizing the farm-to-table movement, Food Tank president Danielle Nierenberg explores how technology helps small-scale farmers prosper and cultivates educated eaters, Yummly COO Brian Witlin looks at how we can leverage data to incentivize healthy eating and much more.

Check out the wide array of insightful submissions in our roundup below, and make sure to share your thoughts in the comments section.

Why We Need to Uber-ify Food Distribution 

Jennifer Goggin of FarmersWeb makes a case for applying Uber’s on-demand model to local food distribution, in order to catalyze a healthier future.

Dig Inn on Democratizing the Farm-to-Table Movement 

We chat with founder Adam Eskin about Dig Inn’s innovative supply strategy, the role tech plays in operations and his plans to cultivate a veggie revolution.

Bringing Amazon-like Innovation to Healthy Fast Food 

Alex Yancher  of Pantry believes companies like Munchery and Sprig are pioneering a new fast food model, one he hopes will bring healthy, affordable food to the masses.

We Need to Harness the Power of Insects to Feed the World

Exo co-founder Greg Sewitz believes bugs are integral to a sustainable future. He’s helping eaters get over the psychological hurdle via cricket protein bars.

Enabling Healthy Eating with Personalized Food Identities

6SensorLabs co-founder Shireen Yates explores how startups are helping people eat healthier through personalized food identities, especially people with food allergies.

Let’s Make Food Production Personal & Start a Home Growing Revolution 

Grove Labs co-founder Gabe Blanchet explores how home growing can make food production more efficient while bolstering the local food movement.

Arming Consumers with the Tools to Demand Real Food

Lawrence Williams of USHFC discusses how REAL Certified empowers consumers and the foodservice industry to support real food, helping catalyze a better future.

Feeding Billions by Empowering Millions to Farm

Freight Farms co-founders Brad McNamara and Jon Friedman weigh in on why enabling fresh food production in any environment is crucial to ensuring safe, healthy food for a growing population.

Optimizing the Microbiome from Farm to Table

In order to feed a growing population, Scott Shibata of Diagenetix proposes we start recruiting from the trillions of microorganisms that are already in the field.

Creating Full-Stack Food Chain Solutions

Cover co-founder Mark Egerman explores how to use tech to create lasting food chain infrastructure change in order to enable a better future for production, distribution and consumption.

Reimagining, Not Reinventing, Food Distribution

FreshRealm founder Michael Lippold claims we don’t need to rebuild food distribution infrastructure. We need to foster an evolution by connecting its players more efficiently.

Photo via MFarm

Tech Helps Farmers Prosper & Empowers Educated Eaters

Food Tank’s Danielle Nierenberg and Sarah Small explore how innovative technologies and initiatives are cultivating a brighter future for farmers and eaters.

Let’s Facilitate Healthy Eating by Simplifying Grocery Planning 

KickDish founder Alex Greve explores how grocery tech services like Instacart, AmazonFresh and Google Express can help eaters make healthier, more economical food choices.

Leveraging Data to Incentivize Healthy Eating & Improve Food  

Brian Witlin, COO of Yummly, discusses why harnessing data and creating financial incentives for healthy eating, will help us reimagine food production, regulation and consumption.

Reconnecting Diners & Chefs to Ensure a Better Food Future 

Feastly founder Noah Karesh is bringing the sharing economy to food and empowering chefs and eaters to celebrate real, authentic food experiences.

Image via National Geographic

Linking Gardeners & Urban Farmers to Ensure Fresh Food For All

Ryan Albritton of Sprouthood believes connecting gardeners and urban farmers and enabling them to be co-cultivators of the same farm is key to ramping up fresh food production.

Programming the Global Food System, from Smart Seeds to Distribution Robots 

Rebecca Chesney of the Institute for the Future imagines a networked food future, in which natural and artificial objects can communicate and work together.

Upcycling Food Waste into Fertilizer to Catalyze a New Green Revolution 

WISErg CEO Larry LeSueur believes that tackling food waste is fundamental to doubling production by 2050 while also cultivating a sustainable, profitable supply chain.

Harnessing Existing Distribution Infrastructure to Make Sustainable Food Mainstream

Baldor CEO TJ Murphy explores how to leverage operational expertise and industry-tested best practices to bring new levels of efficiency to the sustainable food movement.

Food Supply Chain Transparency is Key to a Healthy Future

Peretz Partensky of Sourcery discusses how new tech and decentralized business models are tackling the least transparent part of our food system: the supply chain.

Catalyzing a Food Revolution through Connected Ecosystems & Open Innovation

Expo Milano’s Feeding the Accelerator Curator Johan Jorgensen explains how moving from silos to ecosystems, closed labs to open innovation is critical for a better future.

How Hampton Creek Aims to Guarantee Healthy, Safe & Sufficient Food For All

We chat with Hampton Creek CEO Josh Tetrick about re-engineering the food system, the wild success of Mayo Gate and why an IPO may be in the startup’s future.

The post Internet of Food Editorial Series Recap appeared first on Food+Tech Connect.

Guest post by Johan Jörgensen, curator of Feeding the Accelerator, the USA Pavilion‘s food startup accelerator at Expo Milano. The views expressed here are solely those of the author and do not reflect the views of Food+Tech Connect.

The bad news is that the food sector is teaming with problems. The good news is that we can use technology to solve many of those problems, but we definitely have some distance to go.

Food is out of sync with society. While we have been busy entering post-industrialism, residing in cities and focusing on knowledge and creativity, most of the food world remains deadlocked in the industrial phase.

Food will not remain in the backwaters, however. There is a lot of work being done to make food computable and discussions revolving around how deep infrastructure layers can be adopted to take food into the 21st century. In parallel, food data is becoming more accessible thanks to open databases and APIs.

The fact that the largest sector on the planet has not yet been transformed due to the influx of the Internet and the information revolution does not mean it is immune to change. It just means that change has not yet been catalyzed.

With proper information and service layers in place alongside open databases, we can start to innovate production methods, distribution systems and consumption patterns. As the ecosystem grows, new connections will form and resistance to change will break down. That is what has happened in almost every other industry, and it will happen in the food sector as well.

Fast-forward a few years. A fruit orchard becomes an Internet of Food network, and a cow becomes a node in a social graph. There will be digital service layers on top of bee hives analyzing sensor data in the cloud. What will the future farmer look like? Will it be a person with dirty nails or a system operator sending drones out in the fields to zap bugs or deploying exact fertilizers according to sensor data?

In a world of open food, will supermarkets still be able to beat producers down on price or will the long-tail prevail? Will we be able to crunch Big Data, develop best practices and connect the quantified self to quantified food? When, at the touch of a finger tip, we can see how food is produced, what it contains and what it does to us and the planet, will we change our habits?

In this world, the new business models will follow the same paths as other sectors. Google’s “don’t be evil” mantra might even (hopefully) be followed up by the general promise: “don’t produce sh$%”. We are going from silos to ecosystems, moving from closed labs to open innovation.

During the innovation program at the USA Pavilion at this year’s world exhibition in Milan–which is all about food and feeding the planet in a healthy and sustainable way–we ask the question: what will happen when we connect great food tech entrepreneurs to an entire ecosystem of big thinkers from the tech and creative fields with progressive forces in the current food sector? And what will happen when we accelerate them and help them become beacons for the future of food? With more beacons and the necessary infrastructure components in place, the snowball effect will kick in, and the food world will start to truly change.

Technology, new business models and design will change the food industry by adding the fundamental building blocks for food sector innovation. Then it will be up to us to decide how to use those innovations to change the world of food for the better.

The really good news is that the dots are becoming visible, now let’s start to connect them.

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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Johan Jörgensen is curator of Feeding the Accelerator, the USA Pavilion innovation program at Expo2015. He has more than 20 years of experience in the Internet sector as entrepreneur and investor. He is considered a top business developer and is a highly sought-after advisor and board member. Johan is a partner of the New York-Stockholm based change agency AtelierSlice and also serves as chairman of the European crowdfunding platform FundedByMe. He has an extensive network in the European tech and investor circles.

The post Catalyzing a Food Revolution through Connected Ecosystems & Open Innovation appeared first on Food+Tech Connect.

Millions of recipes are just a few taps away, but the accompanying nutrition information, which consumers are increasingly seeking, isn’t always as easy to find. Edamam wants to solve this problem. The two year old data startup aims to capture the world’s food knowledge and use it to help people make informed food decisions.

Edamam has built a semantic food technology platform, which generates real time nutritional analysis of 1.5 million recipes from five hundred popular websites. Leveraging primarily USDA data, the platform categorizes information by thirty attributes, including nutrition information, allergies, cooking time, recipe complexity and more.

The startup offers a suite of nutrition data products built on top of its technology platform. It has an API for developers to leverage, a real time recipe analysis service called Nutrition Wizard ($2.95 a month), a recipe finder website and free iOS and Android apps. Additionally, it recently launched Nutrition Wizard Plus ($5.95 a month), a servicee for nutritionists and restaurants that allows users to export nutrition data and save and print recipes. But its bread and butter is working with big companies, like Epicurious, Gannett, Random House, Nestle and (recently) Samsung, to implement custom nutrition analysis solutions.

I caught up with founder and CEO Victor Penev by email to learn more about Edamam’s business model, challenges and next steps. Our interview has be edited slightly for brevity and clarity.

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Food+Tech Connect: How does your platform work and where do you get your nutrition data from?

Victor Penev: We use natural language processing and proprietary algorithms to do real-time nutrition analysis of any recipe or ingredient list. The key is to produce highly accurate analysis, which requires precision in extracting and processing data from unstructured text We don’t have drop downs and clumsy selections of foods – we simply take the information in a way people speak about food and analyze it.

The underlying nutrient data comes from the USDA open source database, but we have added to it and enhanced it as we have worked on our technology. We combine several databases, but a key differentiator is not the underlying data, but our ability to produce highly accurate nutritional analysis on the fly.

FTC: What is your business model, and how has it shifted since you started the company in 2012?

VP: We are a Business-to-Business (B2B) company and we sell Data-as-a-Service solutions to businesses. For large clients, we do custom licensing and implementation.

Edamam started as a Business-to-Consumer (B2C) company, and we do have mobile apps and website which are very highly rated by users. However, we found strong enough interest from businesses and decided to switch direction at the end of last year. Our focus is on large companies that can most benefit from our cost-effective, scalable, real-time nutrition solutions.

The solutions fall into two main categories: diet driven recipe recommendations and search, and real time nutrition analysis, which is provided as an API, i.e. clients send us data, which we analyze in real time and send back the analyzed nutrition information.

FTC: What are your major challenges as a B2B data startup?

VP: As with any B2B business, the primary challenge is streamlining the sales process to scale the business. Large customers usually mean very long sales cycles, while smaller customers are not as profitable. So, our challenge is to find the focus and balance and multiply our sales.

We now have standard products and pricing, and we aim to streamline those for a few verticals where we see the most interest in our solutions.

FTC: How was you experience taking part in StartUp Health? What were your key lessons learned?

VP: I cannot say enough good things about StartUp Health. It is an unusual program, as you stay with it for 3 years. The amount of support and guidance a company can receive there is unbelievable. But most importantly, you get to meet many more entrepreneurs who have adjacent businesses or simply have great lessons from the trenches to share.

Lesson number one is that a long-term program, which is unlike a typical accelerator creates a lot of value for participating start-ups. Lesson number two is that the health/healthcare market is huge but very hard to sell into, so one needs as many resources and help as possible. Lesson three is that nutrition is going to be big not only in the food space, but in the health space and the challenge is to prioritize all opportunities.

FTC: What’s next for Edamam? Do you have any exciting partnerships, features or projects on the horizon?

VP: We look forward to powering nutrition for recipes for the New York Times. In addition, we are in various stages of discussion with WeightWatchers, WebMD, Rodale, Microsoft, Scripps (Food Network), Jawbone, Walmart, Peapod and Disney, as well as a number of smaller companies.

FTC: What advice do you have for burgeoning food tech and health tech startups?

VP: All you need is passion and patience. The way people grow, buy, cook and eat food is going to dramatically change in the next 50 years, and I wish good luck to all who dare to make this happen.

The post Edamam Helps People Eat Better Through Nutrition Data appeared first on Food+Tech Connect.

Will mobile ordering take over the restaurant industry? Are grocery stores the dining destinations of the future? Will Big Food companies launch small-batch, artisanal offerings? Food Genius has answers.

The Chicago-based startup collects and synthesizes restaurant industry data on things like menu items and pricing and creates actionable insights for operators. And today, we’re thrilled to share its predictions for the 10 major foodservice trends for 2015.

One interesting trend is the increased crossover between the consumer product good (CPG), grocery and restaurant industries. As CPG companies continue to up their marketing game, they are poised to become the pacemakers when it comes to restaurant food trends, for example.

As far as pricing trends, get ready for the Uberfication of food delivery. Surge-pricing strategies, i.e. cheaper food delivery at 3:00 PM than 8:00 PM, will come into play in 2015. Food Genius also predicts the proliferation of the Big Food-meets-craft food trend with General Mills’ acquisition of Annie’s representing the tip of the iceberg.

From healthy on-demand food startups continuing to grow, to increased opportunity in the fresh food vending space, to better-for-you ingredient replacement (i.e greek yogurt instead of sour cream), they see health as an overarching food trend in 2015, too.

Check out the graphic below or DOWNLOAD IT HERE (it’ll be a lot easier to read) to learn what trends like “The Shrinking Lunch, “Part-time Vegetarianism” and “Healthier Prep Methods” will mean for your food business in the year to come.

The post Food Genius’ 10 Foodservice Trends of 2015 appeared first on Food+Tech Connect.

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

Building an ecosystem of healthy employees

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

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

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

Inspired by Growing Cities, Sustainable America designed the urban agriculture infographic below. Leveraging data from the USDA, Worldwatch and other sources, the graphic shares some interesting statics on the benefits and potential impact of home growing. For example, while 80 percent of the U.S. population lives in cities, only 2 percent of food eaten in cities is grown locally. But with over 10 million acres of front and backyards in the U.S., it’s clear that there is ample space for people to grow more of their own food. In fact, there is the equivalent of a whopping 10 parking spaces per person. That’s a lot of fruits and veggies.

In terms of ways to jump on the gardening band wagon, the graphic highlights everything from container and windowsill growing to starting a community garden. And while home growing is far from being mainstream, the good news is that the movement is gaining steam; Thirty five percent of U.S. homes grew food in 2012, up from thirty one percent in 2008. Check out all the facts and figures below.

The post [Infographic] Growing the Home Food Gardening Movement appeared first on Food+Tech Connect.

Weeks 7 and 8  of our future of dining series were chock-full of thought-provoking submissions covering everything from streamlining home-cooking to bringing tech to wine making. Klappo dives into how we can harness big data to build better health and wellness apps, Sea to Table gives us an inside look at how it’s using tech to grow the sustainable seafood movement and Look & Cook envisions a community of smart, linked cooking apps, to name a few.

Don’t miss our  roundup of posts from the last two weeks below, complete with nifty quote images for your viewing (and social sharing) pleasure, and have a look at the 40+ (phew) submissions we’ve posted so far here.

________________

Designing Our Way to a Community of Smart, Linked Cooking Apps

Yael Raviv of Kinetic Art envisions a world of smart, linked cooking apps that use a shared database to making food apps more financially sustainable.

Making Healthy Home-Cooking Easy, Affordable & Accessible

Chef Hollie Greene wants to get people cooking more healthfully. She’s using technology to help families learn how to cook meals with more veggies.

Jetsons-esque Products like Soylent are the Food of the Future

Pills and shakes won’t replace food all together, but tech and design will help alternatives like Soylent become more mainstream in the future of food.

Sustainable Wine Making & Technology: The Perfect Pairing

St. Francis Vineyard shares how it uses data and technology to improve vine health and make its wines more sustainable.

How Sea to Table Is Using Tech to Grow the Sustainable Seafood Movement

Founding Director Michael Dimin explores how tech is helping chefs and eaters from across the country begin to support independent fisherman and sustainable fisheries.

Bridging the Gap Between Chefs & Sustainable Producers

Julie Ann Fineman chronicles FoodShed Exchange’s farm-to-fork launch dinner and how it exemplifies the platform’s goal to connect chefs with sustainable suppliers.

Harnessing Big Data to Build Better Food & Wellness Apps

Klappo looks at how we can leverage semantic data to create food and wellness apps that help consumers truly understand what is in their food.

Using Tech to Cultivate Community & Improve Environmental Health

Brooke Singer and Stefani Bardin of La Casita Verde say using tech to build better food systems and informed communities, will improve environmental and public health.

The Orange Chef Co. on Using Tech to Streamline Home Cooking

CEO and Founder Santiago Merea explores how hacking recipe selection and ingredient sourcing can create a healthier, more customizable future for home cooking.

How Food Data is Personalizing the Feedback Loop

Ingredient1’s co-founders believe tech can help food makers better understand customer needs and trends, while making food info more accessible to consumers.

The post Future of Dining Editorial Series Week 7 + 8 Recap appeared first on Food+Tech Connect.

Guest post by Massimiliano Del Vita, co-founder and CEO, Klappo. The views expressed here are solely those of the author and do not reflect the views of Food+Tech Connect.

Conscious eaters face a challenge: lead a low maintenance life while understanding whether what they consume is consistent with their dietary goals or needs.

Most of us are probably familiar with the infamous high maintenance diner order the 1980s classic “When Harry Met Sally.” But unlike in this example, asking for specific ingredients in a given dish and paying attention to dietary needs usually makes people feel like a nuisance. These people also spend hours perusing labels in grocery stores and searching on blogs for appropriate recipes to meet their dietary needs. And with the current trends of slow cooking and buying local, even people unbound by dietary restrictions want to understand the most intricate of details about their food.

Today, there is more information available than ever before. Diners know the food’s source, the ingredients and even the chef who prepared it. However, there is a glaring gap in consumers’ knowledge about what they’re eating, i.e. what is in the food, and how the ingredients and preparation will affect their bodies?

Technology is being applied to this problem. Diet tracking apps and wearables are exploding, but the demand for deep information about food is simply not being met. These wearables and phone apps provide us with limited insight on the calories we’ve consumed, and the only accurate readings are from products listed in the app (e.g., McDonalds and specific grocery brands). There’s a world of untapped information. However, the application of big data and semantics can extract this information to deliver the deep food nutrition information that people need.

A complex data store is behind this technology that provides information about the effect of food on the consumer’s body. Any technology, whether for a restaurant, supermarket or food blog, must rely on a clean source of data about the food, including the ingredients and the processes used to prepare them. And by applying semantics to this data, developers can produce meaningful apps that will enable diners to have a true understanding about what they are consuming.

By bringing technology into the equation, people will be able to tell at a glance whether or not they should eat something based on the source of the food, its nutritional values and recommendations for pairing. People with food sensitivities, allergies and diet preferences can quickly and easily identify the foods they are able to eat. Recipe writers and food bloggers can quickly plug in a tool that can tell their readers exactly what is in a dish: ingredients, nutrients and processes.

By providing clean and usable data sources, the dining experience can be wholly redesigned to meet the needs of educated, engaged, and even pretentious consumers.

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

________________

Max has spent his entire professional life building Internet
products that are at the crossroads of technology and
humanity. Having worked across various project
management roles for online products for 18 years in Italy,
UK, Sweden and China he founded Klappo as a personal
project, born from a desire to help people improve their
health.

The post Harnessing Big Data to Build Better Food & Wellness Apps appeared first on Food+Tech Connect.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

_______________

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mitchell Davis Calls for a Sustainability-driven Yelp

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

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

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

4 Ways Technology Improves The Dining Out Experience

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

Why Casual-dining Restaurants Should Embrace Mobile Tech

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

Unlocking Data to Create a Better Customer Dining Experience

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

Bringing Back the Family Dinner with Online Local Grocery

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

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

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

Yummly on Hacking Taste with Food Data

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

Why We Need a Food Tech Revolution

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

Bolstering Food System Game-changers Through Storytelling

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

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