This is the online version of The Spoon\u2019s Food Tech Weekly newsletter. To get it in your inbox, just sign up here.<\/em><\/p>\n Someday, We\u2019ll Look Back and Laugh<\/strong><\/p>\n If you\u2019re in the alternative protein industry, you\u2019ve probably\u00a0seen an article\u00a0from Bloomberg titled, \u201cBeyond Meat and Impossible Foods wanted to upend the world\u2019s $1 trillion meat industry. But plant-based meat is turning out to be a flop<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n And if you haven\u2019t read it, you\u2019ve almost certainly read\u00a0about<\/em>\u00a0it. That\u2019s because, over the past week, there\u2019s been no shortage of blog posts, newsletters, Linkedin think pieces, and\u00a0full-page ads\u00a0in the New York Times\u00a0declaring why \u2013 depending on where you fall on the matter \u2013 Bloomberg had it right or wrong.\u00a0<\/p>\n Much of the reaction from those in the alt-protein\u00a0industry centered on\u00a0the article\u2019s focus\u00a0on two\u00a0companies,\u00a0Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods. Many argued (rightly) that the plant-based meat industry is much bigger than just these two companies, and any analysis of the space and its prospects that doesn\u2019t include a fuller look of the new products on the horizon\u00a0(like those based on fungi\/mycelium) misses why so many are still so excited about the industry\u2019s prospects.\u00a0<\/p>\n But as Rachel Konrad, former head of comms for Impossible Foods,\u00a0said on this\u00a0week\u2019s Spoon podcast, the industry \u201cdoth protest\u00a0too much.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n After all, it\u2019s just one article, right?\u00a0Why<\/em>\u00a0was there so much pushback?<\/p>\n The\u00a0strong reaction can be partly attributed to Bloomberg\u2019s place in the media ecosystem. Not only is its journalism\u00a0viewed on par with the Wall Street Journal from a business reporting perspective (though they don\u2019t have as many journalists covering as many beats at the Journal), but unlike the Journal,\u00a0it\u2019s a weekly news magazine with cover stories.\u00a0<\/p>\n I mean, just look at that cover:\u00a0<\/p>\n Despite print media\u2019s long and slow death spiral, a story\u00a0like this still has\u00a0an outsize impact, especially in publications like Bloomberg. They\u00a0can become, in a sense,\u00a0self-fulfilling prophecies.<\/p>\n Don\u2019t believe it? Just ask Juicero\u2019s founders. Those\u00a0familiar with\u00a0Juicero\u2019s demise will remember\u00a0the final\u00a0nail in the coffin for the connected juicer startup\u00a0was\u00a0a Bloomberg piece. Within days after publication, the company and its high-priced juicer\u00a0became a symbol of Silicon Valley excess and over-engineered solutions. It wasn\u2019t long before the company\u2019s venture backers backed out, and soon after,\u00a0the company\u00a0was toast.<\/p>\n But the plant-based meat industry is not Juicero. It\u2019s an industry made up of literally hundreds of companies, backed by billions of dollars of venture funding, and it has achieved some measure of success in that many of these new products have become established on quick service menus and occupy space on\u00a0grocery store and warehouse store meat aisles.\u00a0<\/p>\n I suspect the real reason, though, the article touched a nerve was it pointed out a truth that not enough\u00a0executives\u00a0in the plant-based industry and food retail are ready to\u00a0admit: some of the earliest and loudest voices in the plant-based industry over-promised early on about\u00a0how quickly consumers would embrace their products.\u00a0<\/p>\n Take these quotes from Pat Brown, founder of Impossible, made on stage in 2015 at a TED talk and later in an interview with the New Yorker:\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI know it sounds insane to replace a deeply entrenched, trillion-dollar-a-year global industry,\u201d he said, \u201cbut it has to be done.\u201d Four years later, when the New Yorker profiled Impossible, Pat predicted his company would \u201ctake a double-digit portion of the beef market\u201d by 2024 before sending it into a \u201cdeath spiral.\u201d Next he would target \u201cthe pork industry and the chicken industry and say, \u2018You\u2019re next!\u2019 and they\u2019ll go bankrupt even faster.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n Ethan Brown has spoken in similar terms about how he felt his company would transform people\u2019s diets around the world. From the Bloomberg piece:<\/p>\n Just like technology had rendered the horse-drawn carriage obsolete, he told the crowd at the New York Times\u2019 climate conference this past fall, so, too, would his system of breaking down plants transform the protein at the center of the plate. \u201cThis,\u201d he said, \u201cis something that I feel is inevitable.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n I don\u2019t blame either founder for articulating what they see as the ultimate goal of plant-based meat. Both are visionary founders and are driven to change what they see as a cruel industry that is, according to them, steering the planet toward a\u00a0calamity caused by the climate impact of industrial agriculture. The goal of the plant-based meat industry\u00a0\u2013 to replace\u00a0industrially-produced meat from animals with a more sustainable\u00a0alternative \u2013 makes sense and should be the goal.<\/p>\n But the reality is that these visionaries overpromised\u00a0early market acceptance because, in part, they underestimated how difficult it would be to\u00a0convince consumers to change their diets. Part of this has to do with the product themselves;\u00a0neither Beyond nor Impossible are what you could describe as healthy when compared to a pure, simple ingredient\u00a0plant-based diet. Even more importantly, the products\u2019\u00a0taste profiles aren\u2019t nearly close enough to what they are replacing,\u00a0residing still in what chef Ali Bouzari describes as the \u2018Uncanny Valley of Food.\u2019<\/p>\n As a result, the consumer dietary\u00a0profile that Pat Brown has said many times he most wanted to target \u2013 the carnivore \u2013 doesn\u2019t believe\u00a0these products are suitable replacements for something they\u2019ve been eating their whole lives. Arguments about\u00a0animal welfare\u00a0don\u2019t resonate with the vast majority of consumers, and the health arguments \u2013 which have the potential to resonate with a wide swath of consumers \u2013 haven\u2019t convinced the vast majority of people who have\u00a0been told \u2013 rightly or wrongly \u2013 that these products are going to be better for them.\u00a0<\/p>\n The hard truth is consumers are creatures of habit. They eat what they know, and convincing them to change their behavior is difficult. When consumers\u00a0do<\/em>\u00a0change their diets, it\u2019s often due to exposure to a mix\u00a0of influencer-fed trends and\u00a0ideas passed on to them by friends or family. Plant-based meats just haven\u2019t caught on, and in fact, you could point to an opposite trend, where a contingent of consumers\u00a0argue (again rightly or wrongly) against these foods because they\u2019ve come to believe they are too \u201cprocessed\u201d and this is somehow unhealthy.\u00a0<\/p>\n The purchase price also factors in. While consumers with plant-forward diets may be ok\u00a0paying a premium for an alternative product that satiates a desire for meat, most consumers are not. They wonder why not just buy the real thing at a lower price? And sure, the price premium for plant-based meat has gotten smaller, but the products are still, on the whole, more expensive than those spit out\u00a0by the fine-tuned, highly-scaled machinery of industrial animal agriculture.\u00a0<\/p>\n Now, the plant-based meat industry finds itself in a tricky spot in\u00a02023. A\u00a0majority of consumers not only don\u2019t believe these products are\u00a0any healthier than the real thing but they also aren\u2019t convinced plant-based alternatives taste\u00a0as good as meat yet. In other words, the average consumer\u00a0sees plant-based meat \u2013 as represented by Beyond and Impossible \u2013 as\u00a0expensive processed food, and\u00a0no amount of New York Times full-page ads will change that.<\/p>\n But all hope is not lost. The plant-based meat industry is still in the early innings, with much of its promise ahead of it in a pipeline of new products that are either on the market or slated to arrive soon. Tasty meat analogs\u00a0that use mycelium, jackfruit, or other ingredients are already here,\u00a0and most consumers have yet to try them. Products using novel ingredients derived using new approaches that use some combination of\u00a0artificial intelligence, precision fermentation, and genetic engineering\u00a0are\u00a0on their way. New formats, like plant-based whole-cut\u00a0meat and fish, have yet to make their way onto the vast majority of consumer plates. And let\u2019s not forget to mention those products made with real animal cells in the form of cultivated meat, which are now on the fast track toward consumer plates in 2023.<\/p>\n The alternative meat industry has a lot of work ahead of it, but the best way to move forward is to examine its challenges in the cold\u00a0light of day. That\u2019s what we\u2019re doing now, and we\u2019ll look back at the Bloomberg article in 5 or 10 years and laugh and wonder what we were all worried about.\u00a0<\/p>\n How will new tools like ChatGPT impact the world of food? We\u2019ll be discussing just that during the Spoon\u2019s mini-summit on February 15th. The event is free,\u00a0so register here today\u00a0before the session fills up.\u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n The Cell Ag Infrastructure Buildout<\/strong><\/p>\n A little over a week ago, the leaders of the nascent cellular agriculture industry got together at Tufts and held a day-long state of the industry conference. The Tufts team did an excellent job getting the right people together, and the sessions spanned several topics that have been top of mind for me, including scaling and funding, two things that are integrally intertwined.<\/p>\n One of the points\u00a0made during the day\u00a0was the need for more government funding. Bruce Friedrich of GFI said he\u2019s seeing progress on this front, as we\u2019ve seen governments go from \u201calmost zero to hundreds of millions of dollars\u201d in funding in the span of a few years.<\/p>\n Friedrich pointed to how the government helped get the EV industry off the ground by allocating tens of billions of dollars over the past decade and thinks governments could be convinced to eventually do the same for cellular agriculture.\u00a0<\/p>\n So the question becomes what this type of funding would look like and how it would be spent. Are tax breaks for large-scale biomanufacturing similar to what we saw for the chip industry with the CHIPS act the right approch? Or what about direct investment in infrastructure, like we\u2019re seeing with the EV charging network buildout spending allocated from the infrastructure bill? The devil is definitely in the details, but one that is sure is that private capital alone won\u2019t get us there alone.\u00a0<\/p>\n Who knows, maybe someday we\u2019ll see a biomanufacturing infrastructure plan akin to the CHIP act. For that to take place, the Biden administration or one that follows will need to be convinced that cellular agriculture is not only a growth industry that will provide millions of new jobs (which I think it could), but it\u2019s also strategically important for the US to become a leader in biomanufacturing, something other countries \u2013 China and Singapore to name a couple \u2013 already have recognized.\u00a0<\/p>\n Food robots are popping up everywhere, from fast food to stadiums to even some homes. So what\u2019s the food robot industry look like in 2023? Join us for the Food Robotics Outlook 2023 on March 1st to find out!\u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n You can register for this free event\u00a0here. Better hurry before the tickets are gone! \u00a0<\/p>\n Sigh. I Guess The Gas Stove is Now Part of the Culture War<\/strong><\/p>\n Over the past couple of years, food-related matters have become an ever-bigger part of the political culture wars, and the latest one to enter the fray is gas stoves. The recent fuss resulted from some poorly worded remarks from\u00a0Consumer Product Safety Commission Commissioner Richard Trumka Jr, who told Bloomberg\u00a0that \u201cany option\u201d was on the table regarding gas stoves: \u201cProducts that can\u2019t be made safe can be banned,\u201d\u00a0he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n Some on the right, ever eager for a new political cudgel with which to hit the Biden administration over the head, seized on the words. Trumka later clarified his remarks and said no ban was being considered, but by then, it didn\u2019t matter; gas stoves were fodder\u00a0in a new culture war.<\/p>\n While there is little chance we\u2019ll ever see an outright ban on gas stoves at the federal level, we are already seeing some restrictions being put in place at the state and city level. Berkeley started it all in 2019, followed by San Francisco and LA, and the\u00a0state of California\u00a0is looking to ban gas hookups to new builds by 2030. More recently, states\u00a0like Washington\u00a0have passed legislation banning gas in commercial buildings set to kick in this year.<\/p>\n Somewhat lost in the frenzied debate is the momentum we\u2019ve seen for induction cooking over the past couple of years. The technology, which a number of chefs have started to see as superior to that of gas, has become more mainstream in the US in the past couple of years, and forecasts have it continuing to outpace the growth of gas or coiled-electric cooktops.\u00a0<\/p>\n The biggest hurdle for induction cooking today is price. On average, a new induction stove still costs more than a gas or coiled electric stove and costs even more if a consumer has to swap out their cookware for induction-compatible pots and pans. The good news is many pans sold today come induction compatible, so many consumers may already be equipped to start cooking with induction.\u00a0<\/p>\n For now, organizations like the\u00a0Decarbonization Coalition are busy making the rounds, doing the hard work of trying to convince more of the benefits of electrification. We wish them luck and hope they don\u2019t get caught in the crossfire!<\/p>\n That\u2019s it for this week. Have a great weekend and we\u2019ll talk to you next week.<\/p>\n Michael Wolf<\/p>\n P.S. The CES food tech report will be out on Monday. There was so much to cover we wanted to make sure to get all of it!<\/p>\n New Alt Protein and Bioinnovation Hubs Are Popping Up From NYC to Israel<\/strong><\/p>\n This week was a big one when it came to incubating the next generation of future food.<\/p>\n Not only did GFI Israel and Technion\u00a0announce\u00a0a new Sustainable Protein Research Center (SPRC), but the city of New York also announced it would build a \u201cbioinnovation hub\u201d with $20 million in new funding earmarked from NYC Mayor Eric Adams\u2019 administration.<\/p>\n The SPRC, which Technion and GFI Israel claim is the first of its kind in the world, \u201cwill coordinate the collaborative activities of dozens of researchers from more than ten different academic departments at the Technion and with additional universities and companies to address the world\u2019s most pressing challenges of sustainability and human health.\u201d<\/p>\n The new facility will have a 5-year budget of $20 million and will facilitate the recruitment of new faculty members in the field and support \u201cthe construction of a building for the Carasso FoodTech Innovation Center.\u201d The new center will purchase and maintain capital equipment and recruit professional technicians and \u201d fund collaborative seed research and train graduate students and post-docs in related fields.\u201d<\/p>\n You can read the\u00a0full story here\u00a0on The Spoon.<\/p>\n Meati Opens Up \u2018Mega Ranch\u2019 Production Facility, Plans to Produce \u201cTens of Millions of Pounds\u201d of Fungi-Based Meat<\/strong><\/p>\n Meati Foods, a producer of plant-based whole-food protein made from mycelium,\u00a0announced\u00a0the opening of its largest-yet production facility in Thornton, Colorado. The 100 thousand foot facility, dubbed the \u201cMega Ranch,\u201d is expected to hit a production rate that could produce tens of millions of pounds of the startup\u2019s fungi-derived meat product by late 2023.<\/p>\n The funding for the new facility comes in the form of\u00a0a $150 million Series C raised last year\u00a0and a recent $22 million extension round. The company\u2019s total funding to date is more than $250 million.<\/p>\n Meati claims the Mega Ranch will be able to match and even exceed the scale of the United States\u2019 largest individual animal-based ranches. The company says the Ranch is vertically integrated, which means it will allow for the growing, harvesting, processing, and packaging of Meati products under one roof.<\/p>\n Read the full story\u00a0at The Spoon.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n GreenSwapp Wants to Make Figuring Out the Climate Impact of a Bag of Chips as Easy as Snapping a Pic<\/strong><\/p>\n While the climate impact of our food has finally\u00a0made the\u00a0main stage as a topic at the world\u2019s most high-profile summit, the average joe has no idea how good or bad that bag of chips or can of soda is for the environment.<\/p>\n A Dutch startup called\u00a0GreenSwapp\u00a0wants to change that by making information about the climate impact of practically any CPG product instantly available to anyone using its technology.<\/p>\n The Amsterdam-based company started as an online grocery app for climate-friendly products, but more recently has focused on building a climate impact data platform for both consumers and companies. To that end, the company debuted a new scanning tool at CES which gives instant scoring (low, medium, or high impact) of practically any packaged food product when the product\u2019s barcode is scanned with a smartphone.<\/p>\n You can read the full story\u00a0at\u00a0The Spoon.\u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n SJW Robotics Raises $2M as It Eyes Launch of Autonomous Robotic Restaurants This Spring<\/strong><\/p>\n SJW Robotics, a maker of autonomous robotic restaurants, has raised a $2 million seed funding round, according to an announcement sent to The Spoon. The Canadian startup\u2019s newest round includes investments from Alley Robotic Ventures and celebrity chef Tom Colicchio.<\/p>\n Company CEO and cofounder Nipun Sharma told The Spoon the new investment would be used to fund the rollout of the company\u2019s robotic kitchen system with partner Compass Canada. The two\u00a0announced\u00a0their partnership last summer, with Compass disclosing that they had plans to pilot three RJW robotic restaurant kitchens in select markets. According to Sharma, the first Compass autonomous kitchen pilot will launch at a hospital in the Toronto market under Compass\u2019s Bok Choy brand this spring.<\/p>\n To read the full story,\u00a0click here!<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n This is the online version of The Spoon\u2019s Food Tech Weekly newsletter. To get it in your inbox, just sign up here. Someday, We\u2019ll Look Back and Laugh If you\u2019re in the alternative protein industry, you\u2019ve probably\u00a0seen an article\u00a0from Bloomberg titled, \u201cBeyond Meat and Impossible Foods wanted to upend the world\u2019s $1 trillion meat industry. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":12171,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-12170","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-smart-home"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.runwayritz.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12170","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.runwayritz.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.runwayritz.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.runwayritz.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.runwayritz.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12170"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.runwayritz.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12170\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12172,"href":"https:\/\/www.runwayritz.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12170\/revisions\/12172"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.runwayritz.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12171"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.runwayritz.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12170"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.runwayritz.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12170"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.runwayritz.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12170"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/thespoon.tech\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/01\/bloomberg-cover.png?w=640&ssl=1)
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\nFood Retail<\/strong><\/h5>\n
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\nFood Robotics<\/strong><\/h5>\n
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Related<\/em><\/h3>\n<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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