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- FoodTech Weekly #53 by Daniel S. Ruben
FoodTech Weekly #53 by Daniel S. Ruben
News on FoodTech, food, and society
Daniel S. Ruben
June 11, 2021 • Estimated Reading Time: 12 minutes
FoodTech Weekly #53
Hi there,
I said I would pause the 'Conversations' section over the summer...but then I was given the opportunity to speak with Lauren Sweeney of DeliverZero, so make sure to check out our conversation below.
I'm a mentor to the Big Idea Ventures Accelerator, which focuses on alternative protein, and helps startups with commercialization, scaling and fundraising. Applications are open for Cohort 4 until June 14, 2021. Startups accepted into the Accelerator receive a $125k cash investment and a $75k in-kind investment.
On with the show!
Highlights
Conversations: Lauren Sweeney (DeliverZero)
Noteworthy: Alt. protein startups Simulate, Float Foods, and Horray Foods raise new rounds; childhood food allergy prevention startup Ready, Set, Food raises $3.5M; Danish tomato producers launches ugly tomato brand in bid to reduce food waste; 1 in 5 calories eaten by U.S. kids are from junk food; how Saffron Tech will disrupt the saffron market; Geltor debuts world's first vegan collagen.
News from the FoodTech Weekly community
Random Stuff: A $100,000 chicken nugget. And more.
Conversations
Spoke with Lauren Sweeney, Co-Founder and CMO of DeliverZero this week. DeliverZero supplies containers for takeout food, that can be reused over 1,000 times. That eliminates a significant amount of emissions and waste. Lauren comes from a startup background, and previously worked in industries as different as e.g. fashion, commercial real estate, and food service. At one point, she started stopping by a juice place every day to pick up a drink, and she noticed how much plastic waste she generated. That got her thinking. She went to a meetup for founders in New York, when a guy got up and said he wanted to start a zero waste startup, and needed help on the marketing side. That guy, Adam Farbiarz, was driven by a climate passion, and wanted to tackle the wastefulness of how New Yorkers eat (some people in the city never cook, but just order takeout or eat out, every single night of the week). Lauren grabbed coffee with Adam, and not long after, they founded DeliverZero together with Byron Sorrells. How big is the problem they're trying to solve? In New York alone, DeliverZero estimates they could eliminate the use of at least 1 billion takeout containers every year. DeliverZero today has 175 connected restaurants, but is in active conversations with the major food delivery app platforms / marketplaces to integrate the DeliverZero solution there, which means the number of participating restaurant could soon expand to many thousands. Restaurants like the solution because its cheaper than the one-time use plastic containers. Consumers like the solution because it's better for the environment. DeliverZero is raising a small seed round this summer, and plans to expand to other cities. DeliverZero would love introductions to restaurant operators across the U.S. (e.g. their CMOs, COOs, Sustainability Officers etc) -- in particular in New York, Chicago, L.A., and Atlanta. To get in touch with Lauren, you can email her here.
Image: DeliverZero
Noteworthy
Plant-based chicken nugget producer SIMULATE has raised a $50M Series B; Float Foods, which produces plant-based whole eggs, has bagged $1.6M in seed funding; plant-based bacon maker Hooray Foods has closed a $2M seed round. And OmniFoods of HongKong released a new plant-based seafood line of products. Meanwhile in Singapore, VC firm Good Startup has raised $25M in a first close for its Good Protein Fund I, which will invest in 32 alternative protein companies worldwide.
Cell-cultured seafood startup Finless Foods is launching its first product -- a plant-based tuna, in early 2022. The product is made from 9 whole, plant-based ingredients. For more on Finless Foods and its CEO Mike Selden, check out my conversation with him from April.
Hong Kong-based VC and accelerator Brinc has partnered with Blue Horizon Ventures to invest $3M in global FoodTech startups.
Childhood food allergy prevention startup Ready, Set, Food! has raked in $3.5M in a new funding round. The company, which was launched in Los Angeles in 2018, offers a complete early allergen introduction system for nine common allegens: almonds, cashews, eggs, milk, peanuts, sesame, soy, walnuts, and wheat.
Image source: Ready, Set, Food!
The largest tomato grower in the Nordic countries, Alfred Pedersen & Søn of Denmark, is launching a new brand called 'Pedersen's Fravalgte' (appr. 'Pedersen's Unselected'). Ugly tomatoes and other produce will be sold under the brand, at a lower price than regular produce, in the Danish retail chain Salling Group. In recent years, Alfred Pedersen has produced and sold ketchup and tomato sauce from ugly tomatoes. This has helped reduce the company's tomato waste from 8% in 2018, to 1.7% in 2020. More here (in Danish).
Canadian AgTech company Croptimistic has snagged $5.2M in Series A funding; the company provides e.g. famers with high resolution soil foundation maps, that help farmers apply correct amounts of seed, herbicides, water, and so on. Croptimistic has 18 staff across North America and South Africa, and had a $2M turnover in 2020.
Nearly 1 in 5 calories eaten by U.S. kids are from junk food (not counting soda or other drinks), with no decline in the last two decades, according to a new study by Mozaffarian et al.
Solar-powered ice making plants in Indonesia, funded by Germany's GIZ, are producing up to 1.2 tons of block ice per day. This saves 40 tons of CO2 and 14,000 liters (quarter gallons) of diesel per year. Small scale fisheries use the ice keep their catch cold, so that more can be sent to market and less of it spoils.
IDH Farmfit Fund of the Netherlands has acquired a 21% stake in African AgriFintech company LendXS. Some 270M smallholder farmers worldwide live in poverty, and are often unable to access financial services. LendXS, with operations in Kenya, Ghana, Uganda, and Cote d'Ivoire, provides low-cost digital tools for data collection, loan monitoring, and credit scoring, which helps accelerate loans to smallholder farmers.
Ripe Robotics of Australia has started commercial trials with its automated fruit harvester. The robot, called Eve, can do e.g. apples and oranges. Here's a cool 1 min video of Eve in action (with the typical tacky music added to such videos). For a list of 13 innovators pushing harvest automation forward, check this out.
Saffron is one of the most expensive spices in the world, as it can only be grown in certain places, and is a very labor-intense thing to produce. Saffron Tech in Israel is aiming to disrupt this market. For more on why Israel is a global innovation leader in FoodTech and AgTech, this article is helpful.
Source: Wikimedia Commons
Where's the Impossible Burger of cheese? Nice write-up by Vox. And while you're at it, I liked this BBC piece on why some processed foods can be better than their non-processed counterparts. OK, one more - this Anthropocene Magazine on why insect-as-animal feed is about to become big.
California startup Geltor (which has raised $91M so far) has debuted the world's first vegan collagen, aimed at the food and beverage space.
A new academic study estimates that the food system is responsible for 30% of total global greenhouse gas emission (slightly higher than the oft-cited 25% figure).
Scientists at Cornell University have made a breakthrough in being able to measure the water status just inside a leaf's surface. They hope this discovery will enable more drought-resistant crops.
News from the FoodTech Weekly community
Dutch accelerator StartLife is hiring a AgriFoodTech Startup Scout... NovoNutrients is looking for a CTO... GFI is recruiting a Philanthropy Officer... The World Food Program USA has an open role for Chief of Staff... Volta Greentech is recruiting a Business Developer... Hooked Foods is hiring a Head of Growth... Wild Earth is looking for a Chief Marketing Officer.
Ron Shigeta is doing a Clubhouse Saturday June 12, 9am Pacific / 6pm CET on starting out in foodtech/biotech.
Want to share some FoodTech news/project with other FoodTech Weekly subscribers? Hit reply.
Random Stuff
The White House press charter plane scheduled to leave Washington D.C. Tuesday evening this week was delayed by cicadas. The airline, Delta, apologized to its charter customers 'for this rarest of entomological delays.'
A chicken nugget shaped like a crewmate from (insanely popular) multiplayer game Among Us was sold on eBay for (*checking my notes*) $99,997.
At least the resealable ISTAD bag from IKEA was just $1.99 for a 60-pack.
I love you.
Daniel
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This issue was produced while listening to Bella Ciao (Remix) by House of Paper. Follow me on LinkedIn and Twitter (I'm @danielsruben on Clubhouse). Did your brilliant friend forward this to you? Subscribe here.