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. 

Hospitality in the Era of Web3 with Ben Leventhal

Join host Michael Wolf and the Spoon editors as they explore the world of food tech.

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This episode's guest is Assaf Pashut, the founder of Chefee, a company that makes home cooking robots.   If there's a category in kitchen technology where there have been lots of startups over the past few years, it's food robotics. Zume, Flippy, Remy Robotics, BurgetBot, and Picnic to name a few. Even Travis Kalanick is getting into the act.   However, most food robots are made for commercial kitchens and that's for good reason. As consumers tend to like appliances we're familiar with, so the idea of having a robot to make our food seems like something out of a science fiction future.   But Assaf Pashut had a vision for using robotics to help us make better food and so he built Chefee, a home food robotic system that is different than anything out there. It's not a countertop appliance that has automated things within a box, or a system that has big robotic arms attached to the wall. With Chefee, the robotics recede into the background.   In this conversation, we discuss how Assaf came up with the idea for Chefee, how he got to where he is today, and his vision of the future. He also tells the story of pitching Chefee on Shark Tank.   If you'd like to see Assaf in person you can do so at the Smart Kitchen Summit. Just use coupon code PODCAST at smartkitchensummit.com for 15% off.

The Story of Chefee, The Home Cooking Robot

Nick Holzherr is well-known in the smart kitchen space. With the rapid growth of his startup Whisk and the acquisition of the company by Samsung, it's one of the true success stories in this market.   Whisk was the first recipe startup to explore early on how to use AI and apply it to recipes. As we find out in this interview, Nick and his team were building everything from the ground up, including buying computer chips to run his AI models a decade ago.   Nick also tells the story of going on the British version of The Apprentice and appearing before Lord Sugar (the British version of Donald Trump) to pitch the company.    Over the years, Nick's company started working with grocers in Europe and eventually appliance brands, and it wasn't long before he started getting calls about acquiring the company. Nick talks about those heady days in which he got three companies all making bids to buy the company.   Nick also discusses what he is excited about and where he sees the use of AI in the kitchen going.    If you'd like to see Nick and hear his story in person, I'd encourage you to head to Smart Kitchen Summit. You can use the discount code PODCAST to get 15% off tickets at smartkitchensummit.com.

The Story of Samsung Food With Nick Holzherr

This week Mike and Carlos be joined by Future Market’s Mike Lee to talk over some of the most interesting stories of the week. Mike Lee also tells us about his new book Mise,  which paints four different scenarios depicting the potential direction of our future food system. Here are all the stories we’ll be talking about. Bored & Hungry Closes – Food & Web3: A check in on where things are In March 2022, NFT and crypto investor Andy Nguyen purchased Bored Ape #6184 along with three Mutant Apes and soon decided to establish a Bored Ape-themed restaurant named Bored & Hungry. The restaurant opened its doors on April 9, and by the end of its first day, it had served 1,500 burgers and had lines stretching around the block. Two years later, Bored & Hungry has closed. Last week, Nguyen announced on Instagram that the restaurant’s original location in Long Beach, California, was closing. He shared that they had sold the concept to a franchising company from Asia known as HUNGRY Dao.  Is AI-Powered Customer Interaction at Fast Food & Retail Giving Up too Much Privacy? A Fast Company article titled “How fast food is becoming a new surveillance ground” looks at how new customer interaction layers using things like bio-authentication, cameras, profile information, and more are a new risk for gathering information about the public.  And earlier this week, we saw Steak n Shake launch facial recognition nationwide for check-in. Are we going through an airport or going to buy a surf and turf?  Vow Thinks Imitating Meat We Eat is Bad Approach. Enter the Quail Parfait.  Green Queen: The Syndey-based startup is today launching its cultivated Japanese quail in Singapore’s Mandala Club, after the country’s regulator gave it the go-ahead to sell the product. But unlike other rollouts of cultivated meat, where chefs are supplied with the meat itself (which they then incorporate into dishes), Vow is taking a novel approach. What restaurant kitchens get is a parfait containing its cultivated quail. Mike’s Book about The Future of Food The four future visions in Mise (pronounced “meez”), which range from the year 2033 to 2067, are created to help people understand the potential long-term impact of things that are happening today in the world on our food system. The book identifies 5 major happenings in society, technology, the economy, the environment, and politics (abbreviated and referred to as the STEEP factors) that will have a profound impact on the way the world produces and consumes food.   We'll be talking about some of these food futures and how it will shape our lives at the  Smart Kitchen Summit on June 4-5th in Seattle. If you'd like to join us, you can use the discount code PODCAST for 15% off tickets at checkout.   

The Food Tech News Show: A Look at Our Food Lives in The Year 2055

This week on the Food Tech News Show we are joined by Scott Heimendinger, one of the inventors of the home sous vide circulator and a long-time kitchen tech inventor.  Here are the stories we talk about:  Apple is working on robots for the home! – From Bloomberg: “The original concept for the robot was a device that could navigate entirely on its own without human intervention — like the car — and serve as a videoconferencing tool. One pie-in-the-sky idea within Apple was having it be able to handle chores, like cleaning dishes in a sink.  Google has used its latest AI to create a new tool that creates a fusion recipe between two culinary cultures. Lifehacker: “According to Google,  Food Mood can provide creative inspiration for your next meal. Select two countries and this fusion recipe generator will create one for you. You can choose whether you would like to cook a starter, a soup, a main course or a dessert. For example, why not try a unique blend of flavors from Sri Lanka and Uganda or mixing influences from Oman and Belgium? This experiment was created by artists Emmanuel Durgoni and Gaël Hugo, and uses Gemini 1.0 Pro via Vertex AI.”  Whirlpool has let the entire Yummly team go. Appliance giant Whirlpool has laid off its entire Yummly team. According to industry sources, the company recently laid off all the employees for the recipe and cooking app and website. These sources tell the Spoon that it’s unclear what the company plans to do with the property it acquired in 2017.  Amazon Pulling ‘Just Walk Out’ from Amazon Fresh Grocery Stores – According to a story published in The Information, Amazon is planning to pull its Just Walk Out cashierless technology from its large-format grocery store, Amazon Fresh.  One Robot Pizza Chain Operator Breaks Down the Cost Each Part of the Pizza-Making Process – For small operators (and big ones as well) in the pizza business, Andrew Simmons’s posts on Linkedin have become must-read material. Scott will be at the Smart Kitchen Summit, talking about some of the lessons he's learned building the kitchen of the future. If you are interested in seeing Scott at SKS, you can use the discount code PODCAST for 15% off tickets. 

Food Tech News Show: Apple Eyes Home Robots

On this week's Food Tech News Show, Mike and Carlos welcome Rachel Konrad, former head of communications for The Production Board, Impossible Foods and Tesla. The stories we catch up on include:  People are Scared Sh**tless: It gets real on stage from pessimistic VCs  Startup Polopo shows off tech to create egg-derived proteins in potatoes using molecular farming techniques Is the Keto Cereal Craze over?  Trader Joe’s opens new small-format store  Robot of the week: The Chefee robot You can find the video version of this Weekly Food Tech News show at The Spoon and you can find the audio-only podcast on Apple Podcasts.   A reminder: It's the last two days to get early bird pricing for the  Smart Kitchen Summit. Use discount code PODCAST at checkout for 15% off of tickets.       

Hospitality in the Era of Web3 with Ben Leventhal

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