Matias Muchnick started NotCo in 2015 with a singular idea: Could AI be used to reinvent how new food products are discovered and made? Seven years later, his company is eating up market share in the plant-based milk and other alt-protein categories and he just inked a joint venture with one of the biggest food companies in the world. In this episode., Matias talks about those early days, what he saw as broken in the traditional food development process, and goes deep into how Giuseppe, NotCo's AI platform, helps create new food products. via Knit

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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

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ADM is one of the world's biggest food companies, so when they share thoughts about where the alt protein market is going, it's worth listening. In this episode, I catch up with ADM's president of global food and specialty ingredients, Leticia Gonçalves to talk about the company's recent prediction report. We discuss cultivated meat pricing, new novel ingredients, fermentation as a service and much more. You can find my write up about this conversation and the report at The Spoon, and you can find a link to the ADM report there as well. via Knit

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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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