The Spoon Podcast

Wildtype, a cultivated seafood startup, announced it has raised a $100 million Series B funding round, the largest to date for a cultivated seafood startup. I sat down with company CEO Justin Kolbeck to learn more about the company's plans. Justin and I talk about: -How he and his cofounder started the company -Expansion of production capacity for cultivated seafood -Where the FDA is in its approval process -Convincing consumers to eat cultivated seafood -And more! via Knit Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hyphen announced this week that they'd raised a $24 million Series A funding round. We caught up with Stephen Klein to hear about his food robot platform and his vision for building the Shopify for restaurant robotics. via Knit Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

One night Mattew Fonte's young daughter suggested they make an instant home ice cream making machine. A few years later, the idea became a reality. Only the ColdSnap does a whole lot more, including margaritas, cold coffee, frozen yogurt and, of course, ice cream. In this conversation we walk with Forte about the appliance that stole the show at CES 2021 and how he sees it changing the home ice cream (and beverage) market. via Knit Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When Bill Lee and Brett Beller started talking about the idea of using a DAO and an NFT to buy a McDonald's, they were mostly joking around. Before long, they had started a Discord server and friesDAO had raised over $4 million. Now they had to figure out how to make it happen. In this episode we talk with Bill Lee, an advisor to friesDAO, about their plans to use a DAO to purchase a restaurant (and possibly multiple restaurants) and operate them through a decentralized autonomous organization. The conversation talks about the possibilities of crypto and a Web3 community as a new way to do business in the restaurant industry. via Knit Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week, Cana came out of stealth and announced their "molecular beverage printer", a device the company says will be able to create almost any beverage from the same 80 or so flavor compounds. We talk with Matt about the device, the story behind its creation and where he sees beverage tech going. To learn more about Cana, check out their website at www.cana.com via Knit Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

While the fast growth of the ghost kitchen industry is exciting, it has some downsides. The industry's rapid expansion has often meant low-quality food, a lack of transparency, and, even health code violations. Kristen Barnett wants to change all that with her newest venture, Hungry House. Barnett, who was formerly with Zuul, wants to be transparent about where the food is made and who is making it and to have tight control over the quality. That means growth will be purposeful in the beginning as the company builds its business one kitchen - and chef - at a time. via Knit Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When Steve Simoni originally started BBot, the idea was to create restaurant robots, But things don't always go as planned, and for Simoni and BBot, that's a good thing since BBot is a fast-growing restaurant tech software startup. Mike and Steve catch up on all things restaurant tech, including ghost kitchens, virtual restaurants, the food metaverse and, yes, restaurant robots. Enjoy! via Knit Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Unlike many computational biology startups that have emerged in recent years, Kingdom doesn't use precision fermentation technology or genetic engineering to build its new ingredient building blocks. Instead, the company is applies artificial intelligence to analyze a massive database of existing cultures to discover new and interesting potential microbial combinations that could provide new functionality, flavors and more. In this interview, we talk with Ravi Sheth and Kendall Dabaghi, the cofounders of Kingdom Supercultures, to discuss how they are using modern compute to create new novel ingredients at a much faster pace than traditional biology. via Knit Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Collagen is used everywhere, from cosmetics to food to health and wellness applications, and because animal-derived collagen is a by product of the animal farming industry, it has all the same downsides as the factory farming industry. While some companies, like Geltor, are using precision fermentation technology to create animal-identical collagens using precision fermentation technology, a relatively new arriver to the alt-collagen space by the name of Jellatech is using cell-based technology to produce collagen, which the company then harvests for use in a variety of different applications. Jellatech's approach is similar to that of Turtletree Labs, which uses cell-based approaches to create human-identical breast milk. For TurtleTree - and Jellatech - the cells are not the products sold to or consumed by the customers - it's the collagen produced by those sells. via Knit Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In 1985, Adam Lloyd Cohen was in Paris working on a documentary about ancient robots as a project during his senior year in college. After steeping himself in the history of automation during the day and dining on French cuisine at night, he began to think about how we might use robots to make food. It took nearly four decades, but Cohen has built his food robot and is ready to bring his vision of distributed dining to the world. You can listen to the podcast and also read about Adam's journey at The Spoon: https://thespoon.tech/after-almost-40-years-adam-lloyd-cohen-is-bringing-his-vision-for-food-robots-to-life/ via Knit Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices