Crypto comes for food technology

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I’m a little embarrassed to admit it now, but at the start of the year I kind of dove head first into the world of cryptocurrencies. I picked up books like The Basics of Bitcoin, The Infinite Machine, and Kings of Crypto. I bought my first cryptocurrencies and was fascinated by the ever increasing value.

To be fair, I was and am more interested in the mechanics of blockchain and smart contracts, the technology powering Bitcoin and Ethereum. So when internet ubiquitous Gary Vaynerchuk showcased his new NFT restaurant concept and Brave Robot announced that he was accepting crypto payments, my gut reaction was to roll my eyes, but after sitting down with it, I understood it.

On Friday, Vaynerchuk’s VCR group announced the next NFT restaurant, which does not appear to have a name yet and will not open until fall 2022. The website describes the restaurant as follows:

To discover the restaurant, customers will need a subscription. Memberships can be purchased through an NFT (non-fungible token).

The NFT will represent the ownership of your membership which will grant access to the restaurant throughout the month, in addition to the unlimited fun of the lounge bar and access to private dining experiences.

There will be 3 different NFT tokens representing a multitude of experiences in the restaurant.

Each NFT is an asset and can be sold or transferred to the secondary market.

The emphasis is on that last part, but that’s also why I’m not just going to dismiss Vaynerchuk’s idea. Subscription restaurants aren’t a new idea, but generally when you’re done with your subscription you’re done. You don’t have to show anything for this except memories. With the NFT concept, however, you could potentially sell your seat at a profit if the value of the restaurant’s NFT increases. Vaynerchuk didn’t discuss this up front, but since your membership is a smart contract, it might include provisions to ensure that his restaurant receives a share of any secondary or subsequent sales from that membership. This is additional income for the restaurant.

Look, I’m not saying this is a great solution, or that more restaurants should embrace it, or that I would ever buy such an NFT (I wouldn’t). But at least it’s an NFT with some utility. Unlike Taco Bell’s digital collectibles or the NFT virtual restaurant, Gary V’s idea gives you access to a real meal you can eat.

The NFT restaurant wasn’t the only blockchain news item in the food tech world last week. On Thursday, Brave Robot, which makes animal-free ice cream from Perfect Day’s fermented dairy protein, announced that you can now pay for your pints of ice cream with cryptocurrency. The company’s direct-to-consumer site will accept payments in Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, DAI, Ethereum, Litecoin, or USD Coin. Cryptocurrencies are quite volatile, so this could be a very good idea or a bad one, depending on which direction the markets are going.

What these two announcements have in common, however, is how cryptocurrencies are gradually seeping into the mainstream – and how the food industry is adjusting to these changes. Creating restaurant subscriptions from smart contracts and accepting Litecoin for ice cream is a far cry from the 10,000 bitcoins Laszlo Hanyecz paid eleven years ago to have Papa John’s pizza delivered. But these are not ridiculous notions either.

As Brave Robot noted in its announcement, part of the reason for its acceptance of digital currencies was for millennials and Gen Zs to embrace the technology. This does not guarantee that young people will carry cryptocurrency to become the de facto payment method of the future, but neither Gary V nor Brave Robot should be hampered by their recent blockchain moves.

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