Food Tech Weekly: AI’s Impact on Food Accelerating, Whirlpool Lays Off Yummly Team – The Spoon

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Over the past month, we’ve seen more and more signals that AI is having a once-in-a-generation transformative impact on the food business. To note:

Yum, the owner of Pizza Hut and Taco Bell, sees its franchises becoming AI-first organizations where the technology will impact every phase of operation.

Chief Digital and Technology Officer Joe Park “sees a future where AI is in every aspect of Yum’s restaurants, with generative AI—the technology behind ChatGPT—in the pockets of franchisees.

“A lot of that gets automated in the future, where you don’t have to interface directly with the technology,” he said. “You can do it through generative AI.”

Google released a new Food Mood tool that uses generative AI to create a fusion recipe between two types of cuisine. 

“This playful fusion recipe generator creates recipes inspired by multi country cuisine with the help of Google AI.

Choose whether you would like to cook a starter, a soup, a main course, or a dessert, and select the two countries you want to create your unique food fusion from. You can even select a dietary preference from the options provided, and include specific ingredients of your choice.”

Researchers released a study that found that survey participants prefer AI-generated images of food over images of the real thing.

“Study supervisor and co-author Professor Charles Spence (Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford) said: ‘While AI-generated visuals may offer cost-saving opportunities for marketers and the industry by reducing the cost of commissioning food photoshoots, these findings highlight potential risks associated with exacerbating “visual hunger” amongst consumers—the phenomenon where viewing images of food triggers appetite and cravings. This could potentially influence unhealthy eating behaviours or foster unrealistic expectations about food among consumers.’”

Food brands are exploring small language models as a way to supplement food understanding and fluency of the large language models behind generative AI platforms.

“LLMs’ shortcomings in creating credible and trusted results around those specific domains have led to growing interest in what the AI community is calling small language models (SLMs). What are SLMs? Essentially, they are smaller and simpler language models that require less computational power and fewer lines of code, and often, they are specialized in their focus.”

There’s a lot happening at this intersection of food and AI, something that clearly is going to have an impact on the old way of doing things. One of the potential impacts is on employees, including editorial and content creators. The Spoon has heard from some industry sources that some big brands are exploring replacing the bulk of their editorial teams with generative AI. While we haven’t confirmed that this is what was behind the recent decision by Whirlpool to let go of the entire Yummly team, it does make you wonder if that’s something the company is pondering. 

The impact of AI on the food business is something we’ll be exploring deeply at the Smart Kitchen Summit in June (as well as the Food AI Summit in September – more on that soon).

We’ll also be talking about this on Friday on The Spoon’s Weekly Food Tech Show, which you can watch on YouTube, Linkedin, Twitter and Streamyard at 1 PM Pacific April 5th. Join us and ask questions during the live show!

Talk soon,

Mike

Whirlpool Lays Off Entire Team for Cooking and Recipe App Yummly

Appliance giant Whirlpool has let its entire Yummly team go. 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.

The news of the layoffs marks a significant de-emphasis on creating a connected cooking experience tailored around custom-designed recipes with step-by-step cooking.

After Whirlpool acquired Yummly, it beefed up the content team and hired content creators to build a recipe catalog with cooking guidance. It also added features such as built-in food image recognition capabilities and put out a Yummly-connected thermometer (which is still available for purchase). The company announced an update with new features as recently as last fall.

To read the full exclusive story on Yummly, head to The Spoon.

Are You Building The Kitchen Of The Future?

The Smart Kitchen Summit, the pioneering executive summit focused on the digital transformation of the consumer meal journey, is excited to announce its return in 2024. In 2024, SKS will return to its birthplace, Seattle, Washington, scheduled for June 4-5th. Use discount code NEWSLETTER to get 15% off tickets today.

Is The US Power Grid Prepared For The Transition To Induction Cooking?

In case you haven’t heard, electricity demand is shooting through the roof.

After more than two decades of flattened usage due to more efficient lightbulbs, appliances, and factories, the growing adoption of EVs and the explosion in new data centers for compute-intensive applications such as AI over the last few years has resulted in skyrocketing demand for electricity, according to a new report in the New York Times. In fact, forecasters estimate that peak demand in the summer will grow by 38,000 megawatts nationwide in the next five years, which is akin to adding another California to an already overburdened grid.

The Times report does a good job highlighting how EVs and higher usage air conditioning in homes are two of the biggest culprits for reversing the trend, but largely omits any discussion of another potential big driver of electricity usage in the future: induction cooking.

And from the looks of it, induction could significantly impact the overall electricity usage of a family home. While it’s more energy efficient in general, a household switching from gas to electric induction cooking will use more electricity. How much? According to some sources, an hour of induction cooking will use between 1.4 kW and 2 kW per day. That compares with about 2.5 kW per day in charging for the typical EV.

Read the full story at The Spoon.

Podcast: The Story of Mill With Matt Rogers

If you follow the world of kitchen and consumer food tech startups, you know there hasn’t been much in the way of venture-funded startups targeting food waste in the home.

That changed last year when Mill lifted the veil on the company and its first product, the Mill Bin, a smart food recycler. The company’s unique approach included a subscription-based home food waste recycler and an accompanying service that would turn the food grounds into chicken feed. 

We decided to catch up with the company’s CEO, Matt Rogers, to hear about the journey to making Mill. During our conversation, we also talk about:

• The early lessons in building a tech-powered food recycling appliance and service
• Why Matt decided to target food waste after building a smart home company in Nest
• The challenges in getting consumers to think about wasting less food
• How better data can help us change consumer behavior 
• The future of food waste reduction technology in the consumer kitchen

You can listen to the full episode below or find it on Apple Podcasts or on The Spoon.

Is The Keto Cereal Craze Over?

I have a soft spot for sugar cereals.

Having grown up in the 80s eating big boxes of Captain Crunch, Lucky Charms, and Life (my friends called me Mikey!), I still salivate when I see big, colorful boxes with leprechauns and monsters in the grocery store cereal aisle.

So when keto-friendly, processed sugar-free sugar cereal substitutes started appearing in 2018 and 2019, I was excited. Like any self-respecting adult, I’d moved on to more responsible breakfast offerings, but saw these new keto-free cereals as a guilt-free time travel machine back to the land of the magically delicious.

I wasn’t the only one. The product’s early success accelerated during the pandemic, a time when people were bored at home and ordering lots of food via delivery. This led to an impressive series B in 2022, where the company scooped up $85 million. That funding fueled the company’s expansion into retail, and now you can find Magic Spoon in places like Costco, Target, and Walmart.

With widespread availability, the company should now be beating the old-school, better-for-you cereals like Grape Nuts and granola, right?

Maybe not. According to a tweet by Andrea Hernández of Snaxshot, Magic Spoon cereal has hit the clearance bin at Sprouts, a chain specializing in premium brands. The pic, which Andrea also posted on Linkedin, led to much discussion about whether the better-for-you keto cereal trend is over.

Read the full story at The Spoon. 

PoLoPo Unveils ‘SuperAA’ to Turn Potatoes Into Protein Factories Via Molecular Farming

Last week, Israel-based startup PoLoPo announced it has deployed its molecular farming technology, a system that uses a genetically engineered potato to produce egg proteins, at greenhouse production scale. The company’s protein production system, which it has dubbed the SuperAA platform, grows proteins within a potato’s tuber, which is then harvested and extracted into protein powder.

Molecular farming, which produces animal protein using seed crops, has gained traction in recent years. The technique, which the Good Food Institute named the “fourth pillar” for alt protein, uses genetic engineering to introduce animal DNA directly into the seeds, transforming the resulting crops into protein factories. Once the genetically engineered seeds are planted, traditional farming management techniques can be employed to grow the crops until they are ready for harvest.

The technique has gained momentum in recent years, partly because of the cost savings it promises to introduce. After all, there is no more efficient way to produce calories for human consumption than by sprouting them from the ground. By transforming plants into small bioreactors, molecular farming companies can take advantage of the scalability and cost-effectiveness of leveraging traditional row crops as protein production engines.

Read the full story at The Spoon. 

Watch as This 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.

That’s because Simmons, who I wrote about last year as he experimented with utilizing pizza automation technology in his San Diego area restaurant, has open-sourced his learnings as he continues experimenting with various forms of technology. And boy, is he experimenting!

And it’s not just automation (though that’s a big part). He’s constantly tinkering with every part of his restaurant tech stack as he expands beyond his original restaurant and looks to create a nationwide chain of tech-powered pizza restaurants. Add in the fact that he’s utilizing a crowdfunding model in which he sells subscriptions and a share of future pizza profits, and Simmons has created a live in-process testing lab for how to build a next-gen pizza chain that everyone can learn from.

One example of his highly detailed learnings that I found fascinating is his post today detailing the cost-per-pizza after allocating the costs of the different pizza-making automation he’s deployed in one of his restaurants. The video, seen below, shows how much each part of the process — dough making, doughball prep, dough-pressing, toppings allocation — costs and how he arrives at a 2024 price-per-pie of $1.91.

You can see the full story (and watch the video) about Andrew Simmons’s new cost breakdown of his food robotics stack at The Spoon. 

Watch The Figure 01 Robot Feed A Human, Sort The Dishes, And Stammer Just Like Us

While much of the startup funding for food-centric robots has been for task-specific fast-automation from the likes of Picnic Robot and Chef Robotics, some of the more intriguing – and creepy – action is happening with humanoid robots.

The latest entry into the “watch a humanoid robot handle kitchen tasks” files is from Figure, which just showed off the latest capabilities of the Figure 01 robot by showing how it can identify food and sort through kitchen tasks.

What really stands out to me is the weirdly human voice of the robot, which includes very human-like pauses and slight stammers. As an example, in one exchange, a human interviewer asks Figure 01 to explain why it handed over an apple. Figure 01 responds with a quick “On it” and then goes on to explain, complete with an “uh” pause that makes you almost think there’s an actor behind the curtain spitting out the lines.

You can see the full story (and watch the video) about Figure 01’s cooking prowess at The Spoon. 

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.

As part of the move, the company will begin to deploy its Dash smart shopping carts. Like Just Walk Out, the Dash carts have embedded computer vision, allowing customers to scan products as they put them in the cart.

“We’ve also heard from customers that while they enjoyed the benefit of skipping the checkout line with Just Walk Out, they also wanted the ability to easily find nearby products and deals, view their receipt as they shop, and know how much money they saved while shopping throughout the store,” Amazon spokesperson Jessica Martin told Chain Store Age. “To deliver even more convenience to our customers, we’re rolling out Amazon Dash Cart, our smart-shopping carts, which allows customers all these benefits including skipping the checkout line.”

That Amazon pulled it from Fresh stores (of which there are 44 locations, nearly half in California) isn’t the end of Just Walk Out. The company plans to continue using the technology in its small-format Amazon Go stores and stadiums (such as Lumen Field).

Read the full story at The Spoon. 

Check Out This Session at Smart Kitchen Summit!

We’re putting together two action-packed days at our upcoming Smart Kitchen Summit, where we’ll discuss how technologies like AI and electrification and emerging trends like the invisible kitchen will change the consumer meal journey. 

One session we’re really excited about is How AI Changes the Game For The Consumer Kitchen, a visionary talk from the founder of Samsung Food, Nick Holzherr. Nick will talk about lessons learned as an early pioneer using AI for consumer recipe recommendation, how Samsung is leveraging AI for its new food app, and where he sees all this heading in the future. 

You can hear Nick’s talk and connect with him, as well as our other great speakers, at the Smart Kitchen Summit on June 4-5th in Seattle. 

Tickets for SKS can be purchased now. Use discount code NEWSLETTER to get 15% off the price of tickets at checkout. If you are interested in sponsoring SKS, you can find out more at the SKS website.

Our Next Food AI Co-Lab Event is on April 18th!

Last month, we kicked off our Food AI Co-Lab with our first ever event!

As I wrote earlier, the Food AI Co-Lab is a collaboration that aims to be a meeting space and learning center for leaders who are building the future of food through artificial intelligence. We will explore different topics, engage with our community, and provide information such as industry surveys about what people are doing at the intersection of food and AI.

We had a great time at our first event talking to Dr. Patrick Story, a professor of Philosophy at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo, and Kevin Brown, the CEO of Innit, about how they see AI changing food. You can watch our conversation here.

And you definitely won’t want to miss our next event, which will feature Chris Young, coauthor of Modernist Cuisine and founder of ChefSteps and Combustion, and Antonio Gagliardi, technology and design lead for Barilla’s BluRhapsody 3D printed pasta project. You can sign up for this exciting conversation on April 18th here.  I also encourage you to join our Linkedin Group where we will be featuring special content from these conversations as well as more of our projects for the Co-Lab. 

We hope to see you there!