Now Available: Food Routes

Now Available: Food Routes

Even if we think we know a lot about good and healthy food―even if we buy organic, believe in slow food, and read Eater―we probably don’t know much about how food gets to the table. What happens between the farm and the kitchen? Why are all avocados from Mexico? Why does a restaurant in Maine order lamb from New Zealand?

In Food Routes, Robyn Metcalfe explores an often-overlooked aspect of the global food system: how food moves from producer to consumer. She finds that the food supply chain is adapting to our increasingly complex demands for both personalization and convenience―but, she says, it won’t be an easy ride.

Networked, digital tools will improve the food system but will also challenge our relationship to food in anxiety-provoking ways. It might not be easy to transfer our affections from verdant fields of organic tomatoes to high-rise greenhouses tended by robots. And yet, argues Metcalfe―a cautious technology optimist―technological advances offer opportunities for innovations that can get better food to more people in an increasingly urbanized world.

Metcalfe follows a slice of New York pizza and a club sandwich through the food supply chain; considers local foods, global foods, and food deserts; investigates the processing, packaging, and storage of food; explores the transportation networks that connect farm to plate; and explains how food can be tracked using sensors and the Internet of Things. Future food may be engineered, networked, and nearly independent of crops grown in fields. New technologies can make the food system more efficient―but at what cost to our traditionally close relationship with food?

Food Routes is now available for purchase on Amazon. 

 

Trending: Grocery Stores, Meet Smart Kitchens

Trending: Grocery Stores, Meet Smart Kitchens

As i was leaving for the Smart Kitchen Summit in Seattle in October, my toaster broke. The ashen heating elements failed to flicker for one last slice of bread. In fact, all toasters — those kitchen staples since 1893 — may be on the way out.

Based on what I saw at the Summit, toasters — and practically all other kitchen appliances — are about to be unfamiliar in every way. Manufacturers promised that my appliances will recognize my face and voice to know my food preferences and biomedical data to produce the most perfect toast the world has ever tasted. And it won’t be a toaster, but a device that may toast, boil, sous-vide, fry or braise. Transforming ingredients into meals will be the goal of our new Smart Kitchen.

Imagine this: Your kitchen in 2030 will use voice activation to operate the handful of kitchen tools and appliances that remain after designers remove wires, Instapots, trash cans and microwaves. Your kitchen will be smaller and wireless, maybe even portable. Croatian startup Dizzconcept makes portable, pop-up kitchens that fit into any space. Perhaps our new homes will come without kitchens, and we’ll simply select these movable, modular, personal kitchens to drop into our new spaces.

Countertops will be charging surfaces for your devices. Screens will be voice activated (so you don’t have to touch a screen with fingers sticky from the syrup dispenser). These new surfaces will show what’s in your refrigerator and pantry, with data about the shelf life of all perishables. Your fridge will sense when you need to buy more milk — and will order it for delivery when your house knows you will be home. Garbi, another startup, is working on a trash can that recognizes what you discard, sorts it for recycling and reorders items.

Recipes will be personalized. No more single recipes from that book on the shelf, printed on paper, that may be good for someone but not you, with your recent calcium deficiencies and preference for mild flavors. Your kitchen will know what’s in your pantry and will design what to cook based on its knowledge about your health and preferences. Big Data for food has arrived.

Where does that leave grocery stores and restaurants? Many will be left out of this new food landscape, while others will get smaller and prepare food for delivery services. Still others will become experience centers, with more grocerants (restaurants in grocery stores) where you select your ingredients and the grocery store chef cooks it for you to eat in the store. Grocery stores, themselves smarter because of all the customer data they now own, will be fulfillment centers, some modeled after Amazon, and many integrated into Amazon’s platform.

Because your kitchen will be so smart, it will become a commerce center. You will shop from home, with tools such as augmented and virtual reality that give the sensation of being at the store. You will smell and touch what you buy, without the headache of parking or standing in a checkout line.

Perhaps these new kitchens will be maker spaces, educational centers that will teach us how to cook, what to cook and inspire us to tell stories around our food making. We’ll be content makers for a new media — food — a far cry from the static food photos we post on Instagram. We’ll stream our cooking experiences in our kitchens.

And who really likes to peel potatoes or chop onions? Food printers now produce fresh food from organic ingredients, freeze-dried and pulverized. The Last Mile is now no mile at all.

Kitchens, grocery stores and restaurants will be hubs for innovation. The engineers and designers at Bosch, GE, Kenmore and Siemens are fiddling with a whole new world in our former kitchens. Appliance makers have become hardware and software companies. Grocery stores and restaurants will fill new roles as they adapt to these new “platforms,” as our kitchen counters and frying pans will come to be known.

We might miss the joy of cooking. Or the satisfaction of making. Or the delight of creativity and the unexpected. Where along the road of automation will we pause? As our kitchens change into service centers that defrost and heat food delivered to our home, will we yearn for the temperamental toaster?

Startup Spotlight: Bento Picnic

Startup Spotlight: Bento Picnic

It’s not easy or cheap to open a restaurant in a growing city, and entrepreneurs are coming up with creative ways to realize their dreams of a traditional storefront restaurant. We caught up with Leanne Valenti, founder of 2016 Food+City Challenge Prize participant Bento Picnic to find out how she did it.

Leanne Valenti, founder of Bento Picnic, learned her craft from a master. Just after graduating from the Natural Epicurean culinary school in 2011, a close friend offered Valenti an opportunity she couldn’t pass up to move to Tokyo, live with her family and learn traditional Japanese cooking from everyone’s favorite chef: Mom.

During her time in Japan, Valenti became enthralled by the beautiful and healthy style of Japanese cuisine. She was particularly inspired by the bento box lunches that, according to a recent study, nearly half of the population of Japan eats each day. Seeing potential to serve delicious and healthy food to an increasingly on-the-go American market, she set a goal to provide healthy food at affordable prices.

“When I founded Bento Picnic in 2015, I did not have a storefront or a distribution plan,” she says. Undaunted, she dove right in, seeking opportunities to sell her products whenever possible. In addition to catering, she sold bentos at farmers markets and had pop-up shops, including one in a kids activity center and one in a rock-climbing gym that remains operational today. But she gained the most momentum from businesses who brought in lunches for their employees. With their compartmental style, Bento Boxes can be easily customized to fit many dietary preferences — which makes it easy for customer to order from one restaurant and please omnivores, vegans, vegetarians and gluten-free folks.

After a year of doing business in a variety of settings, she knew she had a product that people loved. Her challenge was finding “the best way to expand my footprint beyond farmers markets, pop-up pushcarts and catering.”

Prompted by a mentor, Valenti entered Bento Picnic into the Food+City Challenge Prize in 2016. She points to the competition as a time when she really started thinking more critically about how to grow and scale her business.

One piece of advice I received from a Food + City judge stuck with me, and it proved to be true,” she recalls. “He said that it is very difficult to bring a new product to market AND develop a new method of coming to market concurrently. Since I am first to market with homestyle (as opposed to sushi-restaurant-style) bento boxes in Austin, he suggested that I would have more luck if I could come to market in a more traditional way, like a storefront.” Good advice, but easier said than done.

Opening a restaurant in Austin is tricky business. Despite the city’s reputation as a destination for foodies, more than 70 restaurants and food trucks closed in 2017 alone. Meanwhile Austin’s growing population continues to drive up real estate prices for retail and residential properties. The competition from large restaurant groups and corporate chains is also increasing, and the actual number of viable restaurant properties is limited.

Because of this, many entrepreneurs start small, channeling their dreams of would-be restaurants into food trucks, food carts, pop-up stores, catering operations run from commercial kitchens and farmer’s market businesses. Their goal is to build momentum and secure enough capital and customers to scale up and enter the brick-and-mortar scene. It’s a model that has proved successful for some Austin’s restaurants, including places like Franklin Barbecue and Veracruz All Natural, which started as food trucks.

The two main things that kept me from launching a storefront from day one were the upfront capital investment required and the difficulty of acquiring a second-generation restaurant space in Austin,” Valenti says.

Focusing instead on catering and a pop-up kiosk model, Bento Picnic achieved slow but steady growth in 2016 and 2017. Renting a kitchen space in the back of a marketing firm’s office was a good way to keep overhead down and establish a customer base for its catering, pick-up and delivery business.

Leanne Valenti, founder of Bento Picnic, talks with a customer in their restaurant in East Austin.

Vegetarian Bento from Bento Picnic

 Watch the recap video of the 2016 Food+City Challenge Prize featuring Bento Picnic as a finalist.

Grab-and-go kiosk with a variety of Bento Boxes at Bento Picnic.

By the end of 2017, growing demand offered an opportunity to expand. That’s when a bit of serendipity occurred. When the marketing business decided it was time to move on, Valenti says she jumped at the opportunity to buy the place and open a bento shop storefront.

“We felt really lucky that the space became available, and it was too perfect to pass up,” she says.

The move is paying off. “So far, it has been a good move, with Bento Picnic seeing a noticeable increase in brand awareness, catering sales up 60 percent and the daily lunch business exceeding the sales that used to occur in a full week,” Valenti says.

While the jump to a brick-and-mortar establishment is never easy, most entrepreneurs know there’s a leap of faith that goes along with getting bigger. And for some, unlimited faith in their growing business comes naturally.

Valenti says she’s considered taking one of her original creations, “guacamame” (edamame guacamole), to market as a consumer-packaged-good (CPG) product. And having opened a storefront in the ultra-competitive Austin market, opening in other cities now seems achievable.

“Now that I’ve honed my business model and launched my brick-and-mortar space, I’m looking to expand Bento Picnic’s presence statewide,” Valenti says. It seems the scaling never ends for food startups.

Former accountant’s office turned into Bento Picnic restaurant.

“Guacamame” (edamame guacamole) with crudités from Bento Picnic