Starbucks Animal-Free Milk Review, Bitcoin Restaurants, Alternative Meat Sales Fall

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It may be almost vacation time, but food technology news keeps pouring in. Plant-Based Meat Slowdown, Starbucks Animal-Free Milk Trials, Bitcoin Restaurants. Read all about it.

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Will Jack Dorsey block the arrival of the Bitcoin restaurant era? Here’s what we know: On Monday, Jack Dorsey announced he was leaving Twitter’s top job immediately. On Wednesday, its payments company Square announced that it would change its name to Block and that it would double, among other things, cryptocurrency, blockchain and building a decentralized payment system. I haven’t checked the information today, but I’m guessing he may have announced that he is setting up a robot company or has plans for a teleportation system.

What does all of this mean (other than robots and teleportation)? For one thing, Jack Dorsey has had a busy week. But it also means the same guy who helped usher in real-time social media and democratized digital payments for small businesses can now be the one who helps make it easier for an average Joe to buy everyday things with crypto. -cash.

Because at the moment, it is not easy. Crypto is not as liquid as other conventional payment methods such as cash or credit. Of course, you can trade crypto with no hassle – anyone with a Coinbase or Robinhood account knows that – but good luck paying for a bottle of mouthwash or buying a Big Mac with that wad of Dogecoin burning a hole in your pocket. crypto wallet.

So what can Dorsey do about it? Simple: With Square Block, it has all the elements to create a payments value chain for crypto that will take it from what is primarily a highly volatile investment vehicle today to a retail currency usable in the market. street of tomorrow.

Click here to read the full article on Bitcoin betting by Jack Dorsey.

The Spoon and CES bring food tech to the world’s largest tech show

Did you know that food tech will be a theme first showing at the world’s largest tech show in January and that The Spoon is the exclusive CES partner to help make it happen?

There is still time to take a stand! If you would like to sponsor the event, let us know. See you in Vegas!

Starbucks is testing animal free milk. I decided to give it a try to see if it tastes and foams like regular milk.

In case you haven’t heard, Starbucks is testing animal-free milk in the Seattle market. No, we are not talking about oats or another vegetable milk, but milk with proteins identical to cow’s milk made in the laboratory.

The alternative milk comes from Perfect Day, a company that uses precision fermentation to create its proprietary, animal-identical lactoglobulin milk protein. The company’s protein, which received GRAS approval from the FDA last year, has mostly been sold to consumers as ice cream (and soon to be cream cheese), but not as a dairy product. . However, this move could mean that one could be on the way.

The company created a special 2% “barista mix” version of its alternative milk specifically for the Starbucks trial. Starbucks is currently testing milk at two locations in the Seattle market, Bellevue (a city east of Seattle) and Renton (south of Seattle).

Since I live in Seattle, I decided to head to Bellevue and see the taste of fermented milk accurately in a cup of Starbucks coffee.

Click here to see how Perfect Day Animal-Free Milk froths and tastes.

Zippin registers at JFK with standalone payment technology

Are you in a rush but still hoping to grab a snack before you jump on your flight? If you are at JFK in New York, you might be in luck, at least if you walk through gate B 42. Because that’s where the airport just teamed up with Zippin, a technology maker. AI-powered cashierless checkout, and SSP America, an airport catering operator, to launch a new take-out convenience concept called Camden Food Express.

According to the statement sent to The Spoon, here’s how it works: Customers enter the store through a turnstile by tapping on their credit card as they enter and begin shopping by choosing items from the shelves. As they do, Zippin’s artificial intelligence system automatically identifies the items and creates the customer’s virtual shopping cart with the corresponding monetary value. When the customer leaves the store, the total amount spent is automatically debited to the card that the customer used to check in at the store entrance.

For Zippin, its partnership with JFK and SSP is a nice feather for a company with a portfolio of deployments, including hotels, stadiums and grocery stores. Zippin’s move to airports follows other cashierless tech platforms like Amazon’s Just Walk Out, which appeared at Dallas Airport earlier this year.

Click here to read the full story of Zippin’s deployment at JFK.

What causes plant-based meat to slow down?

No doubt: meat of plant origin has seen a decline in sales.

According to recent data from market watcher SPINS, sales in the overall plant-based meat market fell 1.8% year-on-year for the four-week period ending October 3. This follows an even larger drop in the category earlier in 2021 from April, when the herbal category fell more than 15% year-over-year.

The decline in overall plant-based meat sales is in line with what some industry indicators are seeing. Maple Leaf Foods CEO Michael McCain said its plant-based meat sales fell across all of the company’s sales channels in the third quarter of this year. McCain was puzzled as to why and said the company was reassessing its “investment thesis.”

Maple Leaf was not the only one. Beyond, where company CEO Ethan Brown stepped out and said the plant-based meat business has seen sales drop 13.9% year-over-year and is forecasting a road ahead potentially bumpy.

So what is going on here? Rapidly growing emerging markets are supposed to rise, not fall and fall further.

Although there is no way to know for sure without more data. it’s worth tackling the potential causes of the decline in plant-based meat.

You can read why plant-based meat sales are suddenly slow here.

The media were mesmerized by a TikTok video of a robot at Denny’s. Here is what it means.

Maybe it was a slow news week. Perhaps it was the sight of robot-mounted pancakes at a late-night American diner. Whatever the reason, it seemed like all news agencies wrote the same story about a TikTok video of a robot waiter showing up to cook breakfast at a Denny’s.

They all had a variation of the same title: “Viral Robot Video at Denny’s Sparks Debate.” From there, the authors sifted through comments from TikTok viewers, with some encouraging the idea of ​​faster service and lower tips, others angry with a robot stealing a job.

While the sudden interest in a social media post about a robot waiter may say as much about the modern media landscape as it does about the use of robotics in restaurants, the reality is that Denny’s robot deployment is a big problem. After all, as America’s most famous 24-hour restaurant, Denny’s holds a special place in our collective consciousness, a place where almost anyone can get a cheap meal as well as apply for – and often get – a use.

And it was these two things that Denny’s stands for – a place with affordable food and an employer of ordinary Americans – that seemed to be in tension with each other watching both the comments on the video on TikTok as well. than framing by the media.

To read the full story of Denny’s server robot, click here.

Hazel Technologies Announces New California Hub to Expand Product Preservation Technology

Beginning in the mid-twentieth century, the advent of new fertilizer production technologies allowed the world to grow crops on a new scale. While this so-called green revolution has helped producers feed more people than ever before, it has also focused on agricultural production rather than system efficiency. And that unbalanced focus has led to a global agricultural system that wastes about a third of the food it produces, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.

During a stint as a chemistry researcher at the Institute for Sustainability and Energy at Northwestern University, Dr Aidan Mouat wondered what could happen if we used chemistry to create a new revolution, the one that targeted the food supply chain. This idea led to the 2015 launch of Hazel Technologies, a Chicago-based company that manufactures high-tech product packaging and storage solutions to extend shelf life.

Read the full story of Hazel’s new hub, head over to The Spoon.

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