August 2012
12 posts
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Product-Ratings Site GoodGuide Acquired by...
Earlier this month, GoodGuide, one of the first startups to rate products on health, social and environmental factors using a scientific, research-driven approach, was acquired by Underwriters Lab Environment (UL Environment). This acquisition brings it under the umbrella of a global company that, in part, helps manufactures create more environmentally-responsible products and customers to make...
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Relay Foods Raises $1.2M to Scale Local Online...
Today, Relay Foods, an online grocery marketplace for local foods, announced it has acquired Arganica Farm Club and raised $1.2 million to expand into the greater Washington, Baltimore and Philadelphia areas. The Charlottesville, Virginia-based company raised this round of financing from existing investors of both companies. Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed. The company previously...
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3 Examples of Tech Innovation in Food Retail
Here’s a sampling of experiments that offer a window into the future of food retail. They play off a recently-compiled list by the Hartman Group that features 9 experiments and includes predictions for which innovations will succeed or fail.
Virtual Stores. Online grocers are not new but they are starting to push the boundaries in terms of advertising and customer acquisition. Take this...
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Infographics of the Week: Food Waste Facts
Earlier today I reported on the new Natural Resources Defense Council report examining the areas of the U.S. food supply chain generating the most waste  and opportunities for reducing such waste.
The following infographics further break down and visualize variations of  staggering food waste data. Which do you think is most effective?
The first infographic from Face the Facts USA...
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How the US Looses 40% of Our Food: Problems &...
How often do you find yourself throwing away wilted greens or leftovers that have sat too long in your refrigerator? Probably a lot, according to a new report by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) entitled “Wasted: How America Is Losing Up to 40 Percent of Its Food from Farm to Fork to Landfill.” On average, people in the U.S. throw away 20 pounds of food each month, which...
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Which APIs & Mobile Websites Should USDA Launch by...
The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) is looking for  input from the public to help determine the Application Programming Interfaces (API) and mobile optimized websites they should prioritize development of between now and May 23, 2013. This Digital Strategy roadmap is part of their commitment to fulfill the Office of Management and Budget’s government-wide mandate to make...
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Ness Enters Stage 2 and Expands Beyond Restaurant...
There are a lot of restaurant-recommendation services — by our count 29 — that want to help you find the right restaurant or dish. They generally break down by those that display user reviews and those that offer personalized recommendations.
Ness launched about a year ago with a “personal search engine” serving up the best restaurants for you. More that just a way to aggregate user...
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2013 SXSWi Food+Health+Tech Panel Recommendations
South By South West, the largest digital-interactive conference in the United States, offers a unique opportunity to connect with and learn from a diverse group of people using digital technology to make the world a better place.
Here at Food+Tech Connect, we often write about the innovative companies and people using information and technology  to disrupt, democratize and bring transparency to...
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Good Nutrition Data: No Longer Hard To Find?
Changing diets and consumer preferences are forcing restaurants and food brands to find ways to share nutrition and ingredient information with their customers. Also, restaurant chains with 20 or more locations are now required to  provide detailed nutrition information on their menus, thanks to a provision upheld in ”Obamacare.” But many don’t have  have central databases to...
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4 Startups Revolutionizing Food Distribution and...
At the July Food+Tech Meetup, the theme was distribution — more efficiently getting food from farm to fork. Presenters from three startups outlined how they are tackling the issue, their business model and their vision for a new food system, including Matt Hatoun of Wholeshare, Jennifer Goggin of FarmersWeb and Arnie Katz of Relay Foods. Also presenting was George Fatakhov on behalf of...
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The Food52 & Real Time Farms Partnership: Will...
Crowdsourced local food guide Real Time Farms announced Sunday a new partnership with Food52, an online community for home cooks. Real Time Farms co-founder Karl Rosaen, a former Google engineer, will join Food52 as their VP of Technology. Other members of the core team will also be joining Food52.
“We have a shared mission, which is for people to eat better- to understand not only where...
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Innovator Video: I AM WHAT I EAT
[Full Disclosure: The first episode of Erik Shirai’s I AM WHAT I EAT features my boyfriend Mike Lee. This article is not about Mike Lee or his supper club Studiofeast, but rather about Shirai’s short films and IndieGoGo campaign.]
Can the human condition be understood through the lens of food?
I AM WHAT I EAT, a new film project by Erik Shirai,  a cameraman on No Reservations and...
July 2012
15 posts
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Why Your Groceries May Be More Expensive in 2013...
Consumers will likely be facing increased food prices of 4 to 5 percent in 2013 - as opposed to the average inflation of 2.5 to 3.5 percent - according to Consumer Price Index (CPI) data released by the USDA last Wednesday. Why? The U.S. is currently undergoing a severe drought, which is devastating farms throughout the Midwest. As a result, there has been a significant decrease in corn and...
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Connecting at the Food+Tech Meetup [Video]
We were really fortunate to have Brad of  heartyfilms.com film our most recent Food+Tech Meetup where Relay Foods, FarmersWeb, Appetude and Wholeshare demoed their innovative food distribution solutions. The video does an excellent job of capturing the energy and connections that emerged from our event. You too can join the community here. Our next event will be a happy hour. Videos from last...
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500 Startups' Dave McClure & Roy Yamaguchi on Food...
In the video below, TechCrunch’s Anthony Ha talks to chef Roy Yamaguchi and investor Dave McClure about food and tech at the âAloha Fridayâ event hosted by McClure’s 500 Startups incubator and early-stage investment firm.
Chef Yamaguchi, founder of Hawaii-based Roy’s and co-organizer of the Hawaii Food & Wine Festival, admits that he is still just “getting his...
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Using Challenges to Spark Innovation: Sanofi US...
Sponsoring challenges can be a great way for companies to discover new partners and products.
Sanofi US’s Diabetes division is using them to reinvigorate its business model. Its first nationwide challenge, Data Design Diabetes 2011, was organized in six weeks, helped develop a way to use mobile phone data to measure how people are feeling — a potentially useful tool for the diabetes...
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Food Tech & Media a $1.5 Billion Industry,...
Anyone who regularly reads this website or subscribes to our Food Startup & Marketing Newsletter is likely aware of the explosion in food and agriculture-related startups over the past two years. Food-related tech and media companies - technologies that help consumers discover, cook, buy and learn about their food - have experienced significant growth in terms of the number companies created,...
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Infographic of the Week: What's In Your Hot Dog
In honor of National Hot Dog Month, Applegate Farms is inviting eaters to learn about what’s actually in the hot dogs they love so much. The company recently sponsored a national survey, conducted by Toluna Omnibus, to better understand how Americans feel about what is in their hot dogs and what they put on them. While they found regional differences in what people like on their hot dogs,...
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Fujitsu to Launch SaaS For Food and Agriculture...
Fujitsu announced yesterday that it will be launching “Akisai,” a cloud-based platform to improve management of Japan’s food and agriculture industries, this October. Â The company says it has spent three years researching Japanese farming practices and markets before developing the new platform.
The SaaS-based agricultural production management solution will provide...
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Innovation Challenge Winners Tackle Diabetes...
Earlier this week, the winner of Sanofi US’s 2012 Data Design Diabetes Innovation Challenge, an open competition that encourages the use of data and design to improve diabetes care, was announced: n4a Diabetes Care Center. n4a is developing a way to target diabetics that are not properly managing their condition in order to stage interventions that might prevent hospitalizations. It will...
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USDA To Host Google+ Hangout & Twitter Chat to...
In March, I wrote about how The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) is “stepping up its online engagement and open data efforts.” Now, they are taking it one step further.
On Tuesday, July 17, USDA will launch an updated version of  Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food Compass (KYF), a digital resource detailing USDAâs involvement in local and regional food...
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5 Startups Revolutionizing the Restaurant Industry...
The June Food+Tech Meetup featured five startups that are revolutionizing the restaurant industry, including yumspring, Clean Plates, Mirth, Single Platform and BuzzTable. Presenters gave a 5-minute pitch followed by Q&A with attendees. The conversation covered the problems each startup is solving, their business models and their growth plans. Each is taking on a unique slice of the food...
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Launching a Startup While Raising Kids
I often chuckle when I get my TechCrunch fix for the day. Headline usually reads something like âEx-Googlers wants to be [insert name of hot startup] for [insert emerging market].â The stories are strikingly similar. They usually involve some young twenty-somethings. Red Bull is their staple beverage and theyâre pulling all-nighters just like they did in college just a few years or even...
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Submit Entries for The 5th Computer Cooking...
The 5th Annual Computer Cooking Contest invites individuals, research groups and companies applying AI technologies to home cooking - such as case-based reasoning, semantic technologies, search and information extraction - to compete for a chance to win up to 1,500 â¬. Entries can include anything from websites and software that allow you to create or find recipes to hardware like cooking...
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Survey Reveals Lack of Transparency on Antibiotic...
This week, Congresswoman Louise Slaughter of New York released the results from a survey of over 60 fast food, retail, production and grocery companies asking them about their policies on the use of antibiotics in meat and poultry production. The goal of the survey was to evaluate their level of transparency about antibiotic use and to reveal to consumers the extent to which antibiotics are used...
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FixAntibiotics Helps Consumers Find Meat Raised...
Last week, food tech startup Real Time Farms, in partnership with FixFood’s ”Meat Without Drugs“ campaign,  launched the FixAntibiotics Food Finder. The first of its kind map enables consumers to find retail locations, farmers markets, farms and restaurants selling meat from animals raised without antibiotics.
Their current farm data has been crowdsourced over the past...
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FAO Launches Data Portal to Help Increase...
In anticipation of the impending challenge of feeding 9 billion people by 2050 , the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) Â and the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) recently developed the Global Agro-ecological Zones (GAEZ) Portal. This new online data platform allows users to identify the geographical areas with the greatest potential to...
June 2012
8 posts
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[Infographic of the Week] Superbugs: From Farm To...
Earlier this week we reported on growing consumer demand for meat raised without antibiotics. An overwhelming 72 percent of consumers are concerned about the agriculture industry’s widespread use of antibiotics creating new “superbugs,” or bacteria resistant to one or more antibiotics, according to a recent Consumers Union poll.
The following infographic from FixFood’s...
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When Food & Pharma Connect
[caption id=”attachment_7847” align=”aligncenter” width=”553”] Photo Credit: Erich Ferdinand[/caption]
You can pay your farmer, or you can pay your doctor.â Arguably the most memorable line from 12-year-old sustainable food advocate Birke Baehrâs TEDx talk, these words of wisdom hit home. You can either choose whole foods grown sustainably, or you can...
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Consumer Insights: Growing Demand for Meat Without...
Imagine a world where the medicines we use to treat common illnesses, like strep throat and ear infections, no longer work.
Public-health advocates argue this kind of public health crisis could fast become a reality if antibiotic use in the agriculture industry is not reduced or eliminated.  Currently, 80 percent of antibiotics sold in the U.S. are used by the meat and poultry industries...
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Viral Video Lessons: PBS's Visualization of...
PBS’s America Revealed, a series exploring the systems that power America, attached a GPS tracker to a pizza delivery bike messenger to visualize “the delivery end of a vast and complicated machine”- the Dominos supply chain. The short video above is part of the Food Machine episode, where host Yul Kwon travels across the food supply chain, offering a detailed look at the...
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FoodMood Measures Global Food Sentiment
What can tweets tell us about global food consumption and its impact on emotional well-being?
A lot when combined with country Gross Domestic Product data from CIA World Factbook and obesity level data from World Heath Organization, finds Affect Lab, Ai Applied, and Jana + Koos. The groups recently created FoodMood, an interactive data visualization project that aims to measure...
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Infographics of the Week: American Waistlines Grow...
Americans may be spending less money on food, but dollars saved are just being spent on the resulting costs of poor health that plague the nation.
What America Spends on Groceries, the most recent article in NPR Planet Money’s Graphing America series, highlights how American spending on food has shifted over the past 30 years.  According to data from the Department of Labor, we spend...
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Milk Jugs + Tech: Are They Solving Real Problems?
Milk is becoming an object of interest for those looking to bridge analog and digital worlds, but are these designers and technologists solving actual problems?
I recently wrote about a milk jug and accompanying Android mobile app R&D project that alerts users when they are low on milk. Now a new smart milk jug project has won the Quirky + GE Project, a competition co-hosted by crowdsourcing...
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Snack Data: An Illustrated Database of Snacks
Here at Food+Tech Connect we love food data and design, which is why I was excited to learn about Snack Data, a visual database of snack foods, from an interview in Bon Appétit. Created by Beau Johnson, each snack illustration - 176 to date - is accompanied by a description of the food and a tasting note. The wide range of snacks currently include everything from apples and okra to tamales and...
May 2012
13 posts
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Kickstarting The Future of Cooking
Crowdfunding website Kickstarter offers a trove of insights for making predictions about future product and publishing trends. Two innovative recipe projects - Panna and Culinary Pal- recently caught my attention. Both projects highlight digital home cooking tool trends worth keeping an eye on- video, increased focus on technique, interative iPad experiences and voice-enabled search and...
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[Infographic of the Week] How to Create 189k Jobs...
USDA dietary guidelines recommend that 50 percent of our daily food intake should be fruits and vegetables. The growing obesity epidemic in the U.S. and it’s impact on the economy and public health, underscores the importance of these recommendations. But there is clearly a disconnect between the guidelines and the mere 2 percent of U.S. farmland actually growing such foods, according to a...
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Future of Food Trends: How Technology Will...
How do we create a sustainable food system in the face of growing population pressures, changing weather patterns, declining natural resources, and a sharp decline in soil health?
This is one of the questions asked at the second annual  National Sustainable Food Summit in Sydney, where visionaries came together for dialogue about how we can co-create the future of Australiaâs food...
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Online Restaurant Marketing: How to Use Daily...
“How do I use the internet to attract more customers?” is one of the most frequent questions asked by restaurant and bar owners. Listing services like Google Places can help restaurants get found on Google. Social networks like Facebook, Twitter, FourSquare and Yelp allow for discovery and interaction. Websites like Seamless, GrubHub, FoodToEat and Delivery.com help drive to-go and...
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[Innovator Video] Internet of Things: Got Milk?
Interactive design agency Teehan+Lax’s “Labs” has developed a milk jug and Android mobile app that alert you when you are low on milk in your refrigerator . The 3D-printed jug has weight sensor attached to it’s bottom, which sends an alert to your phone when the milk “reaches dangerously low levels,” and uses GPS to suggest nearby grocery stores.
You can...
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Can FarmersWeb Help Local Food Go Mainstream?
More and more restaurants, supermarkets, universities, hospitals, and food service providers are trying to figure out how they can start sourcing more ingredients locally. And while this interest theoretically creates new opportunities to grow local and regional food economies, both farmers and wholesale buyers face a multitude of infrastructural and operational challenges -Â price, transaction...
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Insights from the NRA Show: Better Tech, Happier...
Most years there is a dominant tech solution at the National Restaurant Association Show (NRA). Not this year. This year, we saw a range of technologies clustered around a common theme: guest experience.
Wait list management apps, tablets for table top ordering, and customer guest loyalty solutions are all new solutions to old problems — not just incrementally higher-tech versions of the same...
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Infographic of the Week: Weight of the Nation &...
Americans know they are fat. A staggering two-thirds of adults and one-third of children in the United States are overweight or obese, hampering the overall productivity and health of the nation. Obesity-related illness treatments cost an estimated $190.2 billion annually, for example, which is 21 percent of annual medical spending in the United States.  Researchers project this will only get...
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Innovator Video: Food Startups Q&A
San Francisco’s growing food and tech community gathered together to explore the state of the emerging sector at the recent Food Startups Meetup, organized by Matthew Wise, founder of FounderLY. The Q&A panel, moderated by Xconomy San Francisco Editor Wade Roush, featured industry leaders, including:
Andrea Cutright, co-founder of Foodily
Naithan Jones, founder of AgLocal
Aihui Ong,...
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Dining on Data: How APIs Are Transforming The Way...
I am a self-proclaimed foodie in New York City. My latest discoveries: Littleneck of Brooklyn for amazing oysters, and tasty Ramps used in scrambled eggs for cooking. Any city that has such diversity, density, and distractions boast a certain excitement for the culinary universe.  So between the digital tools of Zagat, Fresh Direct and Seamless you wonât go hungry. But this isnât...
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Infographic of the Week: Organic Food & Beverage...
The Organic Trade Association (OTA), a membership-based business association for organic agriculture and products in North America, sees growth in organic sales as evidence that the consumer is willing to pay for value-added products. In fact, OTA forecasts for 2012 and 2013 indicate that organic food and non-food sales will continue to grow nine percent or higher annually.
According to results...
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Innovator Video: Food Chain
While consumer demand for information about where our food comes from and how it’s grown is increasing, thus far there has been relatively little interest in the people that actually harvest it. Commonly used labels such as ”natural,” “free range,” “genetically engineered,” “heirloom,” “organic” and “local,” indicate...
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Food Book Fair: Food+Low-Tech Connect
New York’s first ever Food Book Fair is this weekend, May 4th-6th, in Brooklyn, at Williamsburg’s newly opened Wythe Hotel. The event is a celebration of food writing, reading, and eating and features a number of ticketed panels, free book signings, and other even more festive events. Our gracious host here at Food+Tech Connect, Danielle Gould, will be taking part in our...
April 2012
12 posts
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Social Media For Restaurants Made Easier Through...
I like eating, especially burgers. I like telling people about it, especially through social media. In fact, in certain circles I am known as “The World’s Most Socially Connected Burger Blogger.” For some people, the world of social media is pretty intimidating. It can be difficult to figure out the best way to connect and communicate with customers across the numerous social networks tools out...
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Microsoft Imagine Cup Finalists Tackle Real-Time...
On April 23, 2012, two student groups tackling hunger and agriculture management challenges emerged as winners in the U.S. Finals of Microsoft’s Imagine Cup Software Design Competition. The annual competition is designed to encourage students to develop technology-based solutions for pressing global issues.
Flash Food, a real-time food donation delivery platform, took first place in the...
