FoodTech Weekly #33 by Daniel S. Ruben

FoodTech Weekly #33

Hi there,

I'm becoming an advisor to Swedish vertical indoor farming startup Urban Oasis. I've visited many vertical indoor farms in recent years, and find the concept really fascinating. Growing indoors in a controlled environment means we can eliminate pesticides and herbicides, reduce water use by up to 90%, grow locally close to end-consumers, and also grow predictably (which reduces food waste) 24 hours per day, 365 days per year -- and we can optimize for taste and nutrition rather than making sure a product is shelf-stable and can withstand long supply chains. I don't want to trivialize the challenges, but I really think there's a place in the future food system for vertical indoor farming. More on my thinking, and why Urban Oasis excites me, in this Medium post. Make sure to follow the Urban Oasis journey on IG and LinkedIn.

Last week I mentioned the launch of the Norrsken Impact Accelerator (where I'm a venture partner), which will focus on FoodTech in 2021, and which will invest $100k each in 20 startups. We've already received hundreds of applications, but are still too light in applications from LATAM and Africa - so please help by spreading the word. Here are shareable posts on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

Speaking about accelerators, impact, FoodTech, and Stockholm,+impact accelerator (by WeWork, Danske Bank, and RISE) is looking for circular economy startups working with agrifood.More info here.

ProVeg is also calling for applicants for its next ProVeg Incubator cohort, with a deadline of Feb 7, 2021. Startups accepted will get up to €200K in funding, mentoring, and access to the incubators' industry contact. The ProVeg Incubator focuses on plant-based, cultured, and FoodTech companies developing alternatives to animal-sourced products and ingredients. More info here.

And over in Oslo, Katapult Ocean, which invests in and supports startups that have a positive impact on our oceans, is open for applications for its next accelerator cohort. Katapult Ocean invests $150k-$500k and runs a 3-month digital accelerator program, starting mid-April. More info here.

OK, on with the show!

Highlights

• Conversations: Tony Lee Ramos (Zest); Ruben Miranda (MiRobot); Noam Sharon (Planterra)

• Noteworthy: Clara Foods takes an $8M loan to bring cell-based egg protein to market: Blue Nalu announces $60M to bring cell-based seafood to market; pizza delivery drones launch in Israel; how Aanika Biosciences uses GM bacterial spores to identify the source of foodborne illnesses

• News from the FoodTech Weekly community

• Random Stuff: Fish robots that collect data in fish farms; a toilet that personalizes your nutrition based on your poop; renting a person who does nothing. And more.

Conversations

• Got to know Tony Lee Ramos through a call. Tony is originally an opera singer, and (true to the cliche) moved to the big city - New York - to make it big, to act and sing. He eventually realized that he didn't have the passion to do long contracts, e.g. performing in the same musical for years and years. He became a server at a restaurant (also true to the cliche) and saw all the online orders coming in from online ordering companies such as GrubHub, Seamless, and Delivery.com. So he helped build a SaaS company for food ordering, got a few hundred restaurants as clients, and ended up selling the company. Tony had discovered his true passion -- food and tech. He realized that people find food in a few ways; research (online or grocery stores), recommendations (friends and family), and marketing. None of these are optimal. Tony wanted to make sure people could get safe, healthy, delicious recommendations, custom-built for their individual preferences. Thus, Zestwas born. Zest builds an 8,500+ ingredient database,

  

   where consumers can bloc ingredients and foods based on dietary restrictions (e.g. allergies). It then integrates with e.g. online ordering platforms, grocery stores, and D2C brands to make sure consumers only get relevant, personalized recommendations.Zest is currently raising $1M pre-seed, to build the product, improve the machine learning, and acquire users. Tony is also interested in intros to senior people at e.g. CPG/FMCG brands. If you'd like to help him, ping him via email or LinkedIn.  

• Spoke with Ruben Miranda yesterday, Founder and CEO of Spanish FoodTech startup MiFood. Ruben studied computer engineering, and worked with a POS ordering app for food restaurants in Madrid, before he saw the opportunity to introduce AI and robotics to restaurants -- for robots to help prepare foods. 'It sounds like science fiction', Ruben explains, and continues: "The restaurants didn't believe in it. But we got investments, and just pushed through.' The food robot developed by MiFood has two arms and can perform a wide range of tasks, up to 3x faster than a human -- and up to 50% cheaper, too. The robot is leased for €500 per month to restaurants. As a comparison, the minimum monthly wage in Poland is €500, €1,000 in Spain, and €1,500 in Germany. MiFood currently focuses on the fast-food segment, because there are many repetitive movements there in food preparation, but eventually believes their robots will arrive in high-end restaurants too. 'The chef, the creative mind, will never be replaced. But many of the repetitive tasks like flipping burgers will be replaced by robots', says Ruben. As many restaurants didn't believe in MiFood, the startup went on to open its own pizza restaurant, MiFood Pizza, in Poznań, Poland. Now orders are pouring in, and Ruben expects to have at least 40 of MiFood's robots in operation at various restaurants around Europe (likely northern Europe) by the end of 2021. MiFood is currently raising €300K which it hopes to close in Q1 2021. Although the company is already profitable, it wishes to accelerate scaling up, filling orders, and expanding marketing. If anyone is interested in learning more, Ruben can be reached via LinkedIn and email.(Side note:As per The Economist, the installed base of factory robots keeps growing, and is forecast to reach 3.2M units worldwide by the end of 2021 (twice as many as in 2015). By 2026, total spend on industrial robots could hit $73B, up 60% vs. today.)

I for one welcome our new robotchef overlords. Image: MiFood/YouTube

• Connected with Noam Sharon, and his leadership team, of Israeli alt. protein startup Planterra this week. The company was founded in mid-2019, and develops plant-based dairy alternatives such as milk, yogurts, cream cheese, and puddings, using chickpea protein isolate. Planterra believes chickpea is excellent not only from a nutrition standpoint but that it is also superior environmentally when comparing to some other plant ingredients, such as soy or almond (that contribute to deforestation and high water use, respectively). The plan is to launch on the U.S. market during the summer of 2021 and potentially also in Europe through a licensing deal with a leading Swiss company. Planterra is currently raising a round (with at least $250k left to fill), to support the build-up of a local U.S. marketing and operations team, strengthen the R&D function, as well as expanding the production capability. If anyone wants to learn more about Planettera and its current round, Noam can be contacted via email.

Noteworthy​

• Clara Foods, which develops egg proteins using cellular agriculture, has taken in $8M in a venture loan from Horizon Technology. Also in the U.S., cell-based seafood startup Blue Nalu has announced a $60M debt financing raise, which will enable the company to open a 40,000 sq ft (4,000 sq mt) food pilot production facility, complete FDA regulatory review, and initiate marketplace testing. The company hopes to launch a cell-based (lab-grown) mahi-mahi this year, followed by the launch of a bluefin tuna product. Meanwhile in Spain, the government is investing €5.2M in a cell-based meat project.

• Dragontail Systems and Pizza Hut are deploying pizza delivery drones in Israel. The drones will not deliver to the consumer doorstep, but to designated remote landing zones where delivery drivers will pick up the pizzas for last-mile delivery, 

• Blue Horizon Ventures, which mainly invests in alternative proteins, has closed a new €183M ($222M) fund, attracting more than 100 investors. 

• A new study from Virginia Tech (and supported by dairy trade organization Dairy Management, Inc) has found that removing dairy cows from the U.S. food system would have a minimal impact on U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. Dairy cows currently represent 1.6% of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions.

  

  Dairy cow. Morgan Lieberman, Flickr CC BY-NC 2.0

• Brazilian AgTech startup Ecotrace has taken in appr. $600K in a fresh funding round. The startup deploys a mix of e.g. machine learning, IoT, Big Data, and blockchain technologies to tag cows (which farm a cow came from, where it was slaughtered when it was put into refrigeration, etc). The startup also does poultry and cotton.

• Indian AgTech startup DeHaat has closed a $30M funding round. The company has built an online platform that offers a one-stop-shop to farmers. It helps farmers sell their yields to bulk buyers, provides farmers with free personalized advice on what to plant in any given season, helps farmers secure working capital, and more. The company serves around 400,000 farmers so far.

• Fascinating read in the Counter on food traceability, more specifically by Aanika Biosciences, which claims to be able to identify the source of foodborne contaminations by using genetically engineered bacterial spores that cling to food.

News from the FoodTech Weekly community 

• Noopur Desai and her team at the World Economic Forum are hiring a Project Specialist, for their new Food Innovation Hub in India.

• Carolina Sachs at pre-seed VC Marta's Explorers is looking for precision bio and ingredient startups in Scandinavia. Feel free to reach out to her!

• Jake Keller manages a FoodTech co-working and lab space, Cell Valley Labs, in the San Francisco Bay Area. They currently have some space available for a few more FoodTech companies. If you want to learn more, email him.

• Dr. Laura Canevari will host a 6-week online course ($) on climate resilience in agricultural value chains. Scholarships are available for people in LATAM and the Caribbean. Free Master class on Jan 27, 2021.

• Wendy Yared of Evolve.ag is putting together a free, virtual fireside chat with Benjamin Lorr (author of 'The Secret Life of Groceries) on Feb 1, 7pm EST. The chat will explore the ethical conclusions Lorr made about the food system after having researched his book. The conversation will be recorded and added to Evolve's YouTube channel.

Want to share some FoodTech news/project with other FoodTech Weekly subscribers? Hit reply.

Random Stuff

• This fish robot from Aquaii is pretty cool. It can collect tons of data (visuals, salinity, pH etc), and makes life a little easier for fish farmers.

• Not in Kansas anymore: Japanese toilet maker Toto has unveiled a (concept) Wellness Toilet at CES, that analyzes metabolic biomarkers from human poop and pee, and then gives dietary advice based on that.

• Speaking of CES, Samsung has released a video of a smart home robot companion (that nags its owner for being on her computer for too long, but then goes on to do all the household chores, giving its human owner no reason whatsoever to get up). 

• In Tokyo, you can rent a person who does nothing. Says Shoji Morimoto, 37: 'I'm not a friend or an acquaintance. I'm free of the bothersome things that accompany relationships, but can ease people's sense of loneliness.' 

​I love you.
Daniel
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This issue was produced while listening to Glæður by Ásgeir.  Follow me on LinkedIn and Twitter. Did your brilliant friend forward this to you? Subscribe here.

Disclosures: I'm a consultant to the Rockefeller Foundation Food Team. I'm an operating advisor to VC firms Nordic FoodTech VC and Fynd Ocean Ventures. I'm a mentor at accelerators Katapult Ocean, Big Idea Ventures, and Norrsken Impact Accelerator. I'm an advisor to Noquo Foods, BIOMILQ, Volta Greentech, VEAT, Hooked, IRRIOT, Rootically, Urban Oasis, Holistal, Vultus, and Ignitia; in some of these startups, I have equity. 

Boring disclaimer: The newsletter content is intended only to provide general and preliminary information to folks interested in FoodTech, and shall not be construed as the basis for any investment decision or strategy. I assume no liability in regards to any investment, divestment, or retention decision taken by readers of this newsletter content.