The Spoon Podcast

Up until now, every morsel of food astronauts eat in outer space was created and packaged on earth. However, as we embark on the era of long-term space flight, NASA and other space agencies realize that that will need to change.  As the Senior Project Manager for Space Crop Production and Exploration Food Systems for NASA, this is the problem Ralph Fritsche has been thinking about for the past decade. Ralph, who helped develop the Deep Space Food Challenge, works with his team to try and figure out how exactly they'll feed astronauts when they set up camp on Mars over a decade from now.  If you've ever wondered about how we feed space travelers today and far into the future, this is the podcast for you! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this week's episode we catch up with Rachel Konrad, a former journalist who has spent the last decade-plus working for Tesla, Impossible Foods and now the Production Board. Rachel joins Michael Wolf and Carlos Rodela to talk about her background, the recent controversy around Bloomberg's article declaring plant-based meat a fad, and how she helped Impossible bring food tech to CES in 2019 with the launch of the Impossible 2.0 burger. It's a really fun conversation that you won't want to miss!   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It's almost the end of 2022 and so we decided to catch up with S2G Managing Director Tonya Bakritzes. In this podcast we talk about: -The impact of inflation and global macroenvironmental headwinds on the food tech landscape -The plant-based meat sales slowdown and what it means for the space longterm.  -Some areas to look forward to in 2023 You can find out more about S2G here.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Ben Leventhal has nothing if not good timing.  In 2004 the New York entrepreneur launched Eater at the dawn of the blogging era, back when food media was still mostly legacy publications and message boards.  After selling Eater to Vox, he went on to launch Resy in 2014 just as restaurants were beginning to bristle at the data practices of legacy online reservations systems such as OpenTable. He'd eventually sell his second company to American Express.  And now Leventhal is looking to create his third founder success story with the launch of Blackbird, a company which he describes as “a new loyalty, membership, and payments technology company.” In this episode, we discuss Ben's journey from those early days, how evolution of food media, the changes to reservation and other restaurant tech platforms, and how he envisions Web3 and other new technologies could change the game for small and independent restaurants.  You can find out more about Ben's new company at Blackbird.xyz.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Our guest this week on our weekly food tech news wrapup is Clayton Wood, the CEO of pizza robot startup Picnic. We talk food tech news and then hear Clayton's view on where things are going in the world of food robots. Here are some of the stories we covered: The Food tech venture capital market really dropped hard in Q3.: Food tech venture drops 63% quarter over quarter One sector that seems to be somewhat active in Web3 meets restaurants: Seattle's Forum3 announces funding on heels of launching Starbucks' NFT-centric loyalty program.  Two Fast-Grocery Delivery Giants Have Merged: Turkish fast delivery company Getir has closed its acquisition of German rival Gorillas as fast grocery continues to consolidate. Wonder Lays off 7% of Workers: Marc Lore's food delivery unicorn has its first layoff as growth goes slower than expected. Colleges are embracing delivery robots. Grubhub announced a partnership with Kiwi, adding to their partnerships with Starship and Cartken. Is there something about college campuses that make them a logical testing ground for food robotics? And we put Clayton on the food robot hot seat, asking him: How would you assess the food robot marketplace in 2022? Will we see some consolidation in certain areas of food robotics in 2023? Predictions for the 2023 food robot market. Enjoy!   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We're ramping our Friday food tech casual news wrapups back up again, and this week Mike and Carlos got together to talk about some of the stories that caught their attention this week. The stories we talked about include: Will reusable containers take off at colleges? Maybe. What about restaurants? One startup is trying to make it work. A new smart mixer from GE Appliances stood out as an innovative product in a market that has lacked innovation as of late. Has Amazon's Alexa strategy failed? A startup debuts its new driver-optional electronic tractor.  Is this the future of farming? One sidewalk robot company lands a nice deal with Norway's post office, but how are the others doing? Plus: Cocaine Bear! Join us next week on The Spoon's Crowdcast channel to see the live recording.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In his previous life, Max Elder worked as a futurist, where he helped food brands develop strategies for the future. One of his primary motivations in this work was the hope that he could help steer them away from animal agriculture and towards a future centered around more humane and sustainable foods. Over time, however, Elder realized that to have a meaningful impact, he'd have to create his own product. So in late 2020, Elder left his job as a futurist and created a plant-based meat company. With Nowadays, Elder envisions a future where he can have a bigger impact by scaling meat utilizing production techniques perfected for traditional animal agriculture. In this episode, we talk about his transition from strategist to entrepreneur and Elder puts his futurist hat back on to look at where things are going in the world of alternative protein. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

WTF is going on with alternative protein? To find out, we decided to catch up with one of our favorite people in future food, Indiebio's Po Bronson. Po went from being one of the early chroniclers of the dotcom boom via his novels and nonfiction titles to leading one of the most active investors and accelerators in the future of food in IndieBio, and in this podcast, we talk about his journey and how he become a VC. We also talk about the current struggles facing certain sectors of alt protein and where he sees things going.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Food tech industry is built on intellectual property. Whether a startup builds alternative proteins, cooking technology, automation/ AI or another food tech product, a large part of its future success relies on its intellectual property. A big part of a startup's success relies on managing a patent portfolio. But navigating the world of patents is confusing, so why not bring in an expert to answer some of our questions? That's exactly what we do on this episode of The Spoon podcast with Anas Alfarra. Anas managed IP for one of the world's biggest industrial equipment makers, has secured his own patent for a food cooking system, and advises startups on how to manage their IP. Topics discussed on this podcast include: -What are the different types of patents? -What is a provisional patent? -How to understand patent strategies of large companies like Amazon and Microsoft -The process of applying for a patent -And much more! If you are at all interested in intellectual property and have questions about how to manage it for your food tech startup, this is a must-listen! via Knit Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

As the former head of food chemistry for Eat Just, Jasmin Hume thought there was a lot of white space for innovation and thought a company should exist to build the next generation of ingredients for plant-based food. So she created it. At Shiru, Hume and her team make novel ingredients by identifying proteins with function such as taste, texture and more utilizing cutting edge tools like machine learning. So far, the company has raised over $20 million and just recently hired Impossible Foods' former VP of R&D and strategic ingredients. On the podcast, Mike and Jasmin discuss the following topics: -how the alternative protein market is evolving from early fully vertically integrated brands to companies like Shiru that build ingredients and solutions for a variety of companies -the new cohort of food companies utilizing AI and ML to build the next generation of food -how what Shiru is doing with precision fermentation is different from that of Perfect Day and others trying to create animal-identical proteins -Where Jasmin sees the ingredient industry going in the future -Plus lots more! You can find out more about Shiru at www.shiru.com via Knit Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices