Startup Spotlight: FENIK

Startup Spotlight: FENIK

Originally known as Evaptainers, Fenik started out as a student project at MIT. The team’s goal was to develop a low-cost method for preserving fruits and vegetables in remote areas. Five years and many prototypes later, Fenik recently wrapped up a successful Kickstarter campaign and launched production of its Yuma No-Ice Cooler.

While the new product will keep your camping supplies nice and cool, Fenik’s mission is to provide an inexpensive food-preservation solution for people in developing countries who lack access to electricity and refrigeration. We caught up with co-founder Spencer Taylor to hear Fenik’s latest news.

What’s your founding date?

September 2013.

How big is your team?

Five people.

What problem are you solving?

Last-mile food insecurity in arid developing nations.

What’s been the biggest surprise about running your business?

How few true-impact investors actually exist. They are often talked about, but you rarely meet one.

What was the big idea that got you started?

In an MIT class called Development Ventures, on the first day the professor said, “I want you to come up with a good or service that will change the lives of one billion people.”

Whom are you competing with?

Primitive evaporative coolers, such as the Zeer Pot, or draping wet cloth over food to help to preserve it.

The coolest food system innovation I’ve heard of is…

the sheer amount of innovation going on in the food space these days.

The scariest thing about today’s food system is…

the amount of waste that is endemic throughout the cold chain in both developed and developing markets.

What’s your latest big news?

We’re taking delivery of our first production units of the Yuma in January 2019.

Best advice you’ve received?

Hardware is hard.

What advice do you give to potential startup founders?

Start with a problem you have experienced, or one that you deeply understand through others. Assume nothing and validate your approach compulsively as you progress with your client base. Constant course corrections are not the product of inexperience; they are critical to success.

The Yuma No-Ice Cooler assembles easily and needs only water for evaporative cooling. The water is stored in the cooler’s walls and lowers the internal temperature 10-20 degrees — or more in drier environments.

Startup Spotlight: Ten Acre Organics

Startup Spotlight: Ten Acre Organics

Urban farming is a hot topic in food production right now, but creating a profitable farm in the middle of a city is a hard field to plow. We caught up with 2015 Food+City Prize winner Ten Acre Organics to find out how they did it.

Ten Acre Organics (TAO) co-founders Michael Hanan and Lloyd Minick have been working on their urban aquaponic farm since 2013. Since then they have been through several iterations of products, processes and procedures. Thanks to determination and their perfect-looking, colorful variety of Bibb, Romaine, Oak Leaf and Red and Green Leaf lettuces that have attracted Austin’s top chefs, TAO became profitable in early 2018. Their five-year journey has required patience and persistence — qualities that are emblematic of every entrepreneur.

Bootstrapping the capital to get started via a Kickstarter campaign, they stayed afloat in the early years with grant money and the support of friends and family. Ten acres of land, Hanan and Minick thought, “was the ‘just-right’ size for a diversified farm to achieve economies of scale and profitability while still being able to distribute 100 percent of its produce locally,” Minick says.

Working on the farm as a “garage project” for the first year, they painstakingly developed about one-tenth of an acre from scratch in their backyard in north Austin, consuming most of what they produced. At that point the co-founders faced a question all entrepreneurs must address: How do I quit my job and work on this full time?

Raising a seed investment round is a good way for startup founders to earn the ability to work on their company full time. It’s also validation that other people see value and promise in your idea. TAO was looking for both. Then, in 2015, a panel of industry expert judges named Ten Acre Organics the Grand Prize winner of the inaugural Food+City Challenge Prize, which came with $10,000 in prize money. While the money helped them float the operation for a few months while they continued to raise money, the more important thing, according to Lloyd, was the validation.

“Winning the Food+City Challenge Prize proved to us that we had a good idea, and that investors recognized the opportunity. It really helped in terms of our reputation,” he says. Later that year, TAO closed their seed investment round with $500,000.

Receiving validation and investment are big milestones for startups. But the work doesn’t end there. With big milestones come big expectations. Scaling a business from working prototype to profitable company is often more difficult than drumming up initial success. And in the farming business, where margins are notoriously thin, economies of scale are the only way to have financial success.

But expanding an urban farm can be challenging because city land is expensive. Hanan and Minick could have moved a few miles outside of town to save on land and utilities, but their dream was to grow a community, not just food. Creating a place for community workshops, think-tank style dinners and private events is their way to help people understand and appreciate where our food comes from, how it’s grown and by whom.

“We want to make an a place that is not just a farm but a community center as a change agent, where people who feel disconnected and alienated by the modern industrial food system can experience social cohesion,” Micinic says.

With the community in mind, they stayed true to their dream and in 2016 purchased an existing urban farm just a few miles from downtown Austin. Hanan and Minick saw potential in an urban farm that was struggling operationally and financially. They decided that they could improve upon the business with things like better system design and engineering, better staffing and personnel management, improved horticultural practices to maintain product quality and consistency, and an increased focus on sales and customer development.  With these improvements, they thought, Agua Dulce farm could be the model profitable urban community farm. In early 2018, they celebrated their first profitable month. Their certified organic, aquaponically grown leafy greens are the opposite of ugly produce, and the quality of the product is one of their most significant accomplishments. It’s also a differentiator that helped them catch the attention of some of the most high-profile restaurants in Austin.

All it took was four years of back-breaking labor, day in and day out. And that’s just on the farming side. There are also business duties and decisions to be made regarding human resource management, accounting, sales and marketing, and disaster control. While he stops short of telling people not to build more urban farms, Minick has a strong warning for the folks who think urban farming is more romantic than rigor.

“Farming is hard. Starting a business is hard. And starting a farming business is just insane,” Minick says. But if you’re insane enough to work long hours in the Texas heat for several years, you just might end up with a successful business.

A variety of lettuces growing at Agua Dulce farm in Austin.
Ten Acre Organic co-founder Lloyd Minick in front of their aquaponic system at Agua Dulce farm in Austin.
 Watch the recap video of the 2015 Food+City Challenge Prize featuring Ten Acre Organics as the Grand Prize winner.
Agua Dulce farm in Austin

Where Are Food+City Startups Headed?

Where Are Food+City Startups Headed?

If the 2018 Food+City Challenge Prize entrants are any indication, we’re well on the way toward improving our food system.

Four years into our competition for food supply chain startups (read about all four years’ of finalists), we’ve noticed some interesting trends, including changes in the way entrepreneurs think about innovation. Progress is apparent despite food regulations, a lack of consistent data standards and the companies’ need to achieve scale while remaining small and agile. For many startups, technology is central — but it’s not necessarily all about apps anymore.

Instead, futuristic tools that bring new rigor to agriculture and warehouse management are on the horizon. UAV-IQ Precision Agriculture, one of three $10,000 Food+City Prize winners, provides precision crop monitoring for farmers using drones and sensors. The new technology enables farmers to use the gathered data to make decisions about resources to maximize their yields and reduce crop losses.

“UAV-IQ is attacking the fundamental lack of precise knowledge of where variability exists within fields,” says co-founder Andreas Neuman, former assistant director of operations for the U.S. Air Force’s Global Hawk Unmanned Aerial System. “This lack of knowledge and suitable toolkits to first identify and then manage variability leads to massive inefficiencies due to one-size-fits-all approaches, which often result in over-usage of water and chemicals.”

Another high-tech agriculture solution is Transaera, which is commercializing a material developed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology that absorbs moisture within greenhouses. The product gives indoor farmers more control over their growing environments and enables them to reduce plant disease and increase yield while also reducing energy consumption.

“To feed nine billion people by 2050, we need new agricultural systems,” says founder Sorin Grama. “Indoor agriculture could be an answer, but it is an energy-intensive operation that will not scale unless we figure out how to grow foods using less energy and water.”

Entrepreneurs are also using technology to connect links in the food supply chain. For example, Stowga, a London-based business-to-business startup, connects retailers to unused warehouse space. This “Uber for warehouses” helps firms with excess storage use their space more efficiently; and it offers below-market options to businesses that may need space for only a short time.

Team mentor PJ Tanzillo, head of product at Favor Delivery, has high expectations for Stowga, led by CEO Charlie Pool. “Charlie and team are not your typical early-stage startup,” Tanzillo says. “They have a clear line of sight to a sustainable business, and they have achieved product and market fit. I’m confident their success will continue.”

Making connections across chain links continues to be a key draw for startups. Vinder is a digital platform that connects home gardeners who grew more than they can eat with community members who seek freshly grown food. Sam Lillie launched Vinder by going door to door in his hometown of Port Townsend, Washington, asking residents whether they had home gardens and if they ever had extra produce they’d be willing to sell. It wasn’t long before Lillie connected dozens of home gardeners with produce-hungry families, moving more than 300 pounds of fruits and vegetables among them.

“We have been trained over the last 70 years to buy our produce and processed goods from a giant supermarket chain that sources products from all over the world,” says Lillie. “Vinder reduces the food waste that happens in every city across the country while efficiently reducing delivery miles because you are buying from your neighbor and not some farmer in Argentina.” With the Vinder website and app, consumers in dozens of cities in 11 states can connect with nearby growers to buy the produce they seek, reducing food waste and putting money back into their communities, literally at the grassroots level.

If you don’t have a garden but want to grow your own food, Indiana-based Aggressively Organic, one of three Prize winners, can help. It offers micro-gardening systems for people without access to earth-based gardens. Users can grow lettuces, tomatoes and other fresh veggies in just one square foot of space in their homes. Anchored by cardboard “micro-growth chambers,” the hydroponic systems use a mere 16 ounces of water to grow a head of lettuce. In contrast, conventionally grown lettuces require 25 gallons of water per head.

“Instead of cut-and-kill or pull-and-ship — like all other current modalities of agriculture that end up shipping already dead and dying goods that end up being wasted — our stuff stays living, and we harvest when hungry,” says founder Jonathan Partlow.

Vinder and Aggressively Organic aren’t the only companies working on solutions to curb the growing amount of food waste. The 2018 submissions included ideas for moving excess food to consumers and methods for repurposing waste such as spent grains from beer breweries as ways to limit the amount of waste that ends up in the landfill.

The most tenacious and complicated problems that startups try to solve involve aggregating and transporting food from local producers to markets, restaurants and grocery stores. It’s a problem that food hubs have tried to solve for years. Today’s startup teams are working on a range of platforms: from apps that aggregate farm inventories to hauling and logistics businesses that focus on the transport of food from local producers to consumers. One of our contestants, GrubTubs, retrieves food waste from restaurants, turns it into compost for local chicken farms and then provides eggs back to the restaurants.

Another, Houston-based Grit Grocery, brings the grocery store right to your neighborhood, using a food truck model. Consumers no longer have to travel to the fringes of their communities to shop at energy-gobbling big-box grocery stores. Instead, Grit Grocery trucks bring locally grown produce, local honey and meal kits — featuring, for example, shrimp from the Gulf of Mexico — right into communities, shortening the last food mile and cutting the distance from farm to table.

“The shopping experience fundamentally shapes the flow of food, not only by creating limitations on what kind of food can be supplied but also by subtly creating demand for certain foods or even entire categories of food,” says Dustin Windham, who founded and operates Grit Grocery with partners Michael Powell and Jamal Ansari. “Building on that, we want to develop a new kind of localized supply chain that is specifically tailored to retail experiences, which is more curated, community-driven and socially intimate.”

Some of these startups rely on volunteers and are modeled more like nonprofit organizations that rely on grants and donations. Others are attempting to create value for both farmers and consumers by charging either the farmer or the consumer for their logistics services. These startups are responding to increasing consumer demand for local food from small producers. But it’s not clear if this local supply chain can find a way to make money without working with the larger food distributors.

In Kenya, where large food distributors aren’t as common in the food system, Taimba seeks to tame a chaotic and fragmented supply chain by connecting farmers with retailers and vendors through a cashless business-to-business app. Vendors order their produce via the app, then Taimba retrieves it from the farmers and delivers it to the marketplace. Farmers receive a fair price for their goods, and vendors receive inventory at below-market prices.

“The ability to offer a market and good prices to small-scale farmers has really boosted farmers’ earnings by reducing wastage and paying promptly,” says founder Dominique Kavuisya. Taimba went home with one of three $10,000 Prizes.

While consumers everywhere want more local food, the system to deliver the goods is still awkward, unsustainable and encumbered by capital equipment expenses and the lack of technology and tracking on the small-producer side. We are anxious to see how our finalists work on solving these issues.

Through the innovative work of our contestant startups, we are optimistic that we will see more locally produced fresh produce reach consumers, less food waste in the landfill and better and safer products in our food system.

Prize winner Andreas Neuman of UAV-IQ with Food+City’s Robyn Metcalfe.

UAV-IQ’s monitoring technology in use.

Transaera founder Sorin Grama makes his pitch at the 2018 Challenge Prize.

Transaera’s technology absorbs moisture in greenhouses.

Map by Stowga representing available storage space in the United Kingdom.

Vinder founder and CEO Sam Lillie.

F+C’s Robyn Metcalfe with Prize winner Jonathan Partlow of Aggressively Organic.

Aggressively Organic’s hydroponic growing system with leafy greens.

Grit Grocery truck in Houston.

Grit Grocery founder Dustin Windham, right, visits with a supplier in the field.

F+C’s Robyn Metcalfe congratulates Dominique Kavuisya, Taimba founder and Prize winner.

FOOD+CITY Challenge Prize

Innovation in food takes all forms, from making improvements to pallets to creating new avenues for delivering food or designing packaging that increases shelf life. Since 2015, we’ve hosted a challenge prize for startups in the food space that are challenging our notions of how the supply chain works. The 2018 Challenge Prize was awarded on March 13, 2018, at SXSW Interactive. Visit foodandcity.org/prize to learn more about this year’s entrants and winners.

Route Optimization That Allows for Constant Change

Route Optimization That Allows for Constant Change

When Layla Shaikley began brainstorming with three classmates, it was to fulfill an assignment in a class on entrepreneurship at MIT. The professor had challenged them to devise a technology that could change a billion lives. Focused on developing countries, the foursome looked at how to use data from volatile zones to draw conclusions about crime and personal safety. They decided to target cell phone data and searched for partners outside the U.S.

But when they began asking around, they learned that companies of all sizes had a more pressing problem: navigating day-to-day deliveries. While routing solutions such as Roadnet® — one of the largest — do exist, these technologies planned routes the night before. They couldn’t make real-time adjustments if a snowstorm hit, traffic got snarled, loading docks filled up or the customer didn’t turn up to receive delivery.

Along with potential customers voicing their needs, MIT advisors noted the same challenge existed in the U.S. Using harvested data as a backbone, the team tackled the complex problem of route optimization for the shipping and logistics industry. Here was the answer to their assignment: a technology to offer nimble routing using big data, machine learning and cell phones.

The first thing they discovered was that most traditional delivery routing systems weren’t accounting for the volume of available open-source data that could reveal historical patterns such as traffic and weather. The team created several algorithms that take in passive data, including historical service times or traffic patterns as well as direct feedback from drivers using their prototype — a straightforward mobile app for drivers to follow, paired with a web-based tool for managers to review.

The students searched for companies willing to share data so they could test it. That part was easy.

“We would cold-call companies on LinkedIn and say, ‘MIT and big data,’” says Shaikley with a laugh. Apparently, that combination was enough to pique interest. To better understand drivers’ challenges, Shaikley rode along with them. “I’d hop in these giant trucks and watch them use our app,” she says. “It was like standing in front of a crowd naked. Drivers are sharp and they know what they’re doing.” And they had immediate feedback: Drivers were critical of the abundance of in-app messaging. How could they deal with a ton of pop-ups while on the road?

After two years of fine-tuning their proof of concept, the team made it official, incorporating the business and naming it Wise Systems. After graduation in 2014, they joined an MIT startup accelerator. When they wrapped that, they searched for paying clients.

Through an advisor at the MIT Center for Transportation and Logistics, they were introduced to Anheuser-Busch. They walked the beer giant through their process, explaining that by using data such as traffic, cancellations, late customers and weather, the Wise algorithms adjust drivers’ schedules on the fly. This means “they can make the most efficient decisions possible” about navigation and order of delivery, according to Chazz Sims, Wise Systems CEO and co-founder.

In 2016, Anheuser-Busch agreed to run a pilot using Wise Systems in two locations: Seattle and San Diego. The company still used Roadnet, its existing technology, for its route pre-planning, but it used Wise for day-of routing. Several months later, when Anheuser-Busch reviewed the metrics — driver satisfaction, shorter routes, quicker work time — they were impressed enough to roll the Wise launch out to every single U.S. wholesaler, plus two locations in Canada.

Wise’s success with the beer giant demonstrates the novelty of their solution — real-time route optimization.

“People think this is solved, but it’s not,” says Sims. Case in point: UPS spent billions to create its in-house system, called Orion. Initiated more than a decade ago, the system didn’t launch until 2016, with the help of 500 staffers working on the technology. In contrast, Wise has a staff of 15. While UPS has incredible numbers — handling 15.8 million packages on an average day — imagine how much technology has changed since Orion was initiated. A UPS spokesperson noted that real-time optimization, including real-time navigation and updates after each stop, won’t be fully deployed until 2019.

Wise’s app makes extensive use of third- party tools — including mapping, weather, traffic and navigation — and focuses solely on the algorithms that take in the data and create flexible day-of schedules.

“We pull real-time traffic, we look at history, we make projections of what the rest of the day will be like,” says Sims. Taking into account that specific route’s history, the software determines that if a driver continues with his or her current route, a delay is likely. At this point, the Wise app alerts the driver to a route change, which the driver can accept or reject based on his or her experience with the trip.

Shaikley calls drivers’ collective experience “tribal knowledge.” A driver who hits the same stop week after week knows some customers have good and bad times for deliveries. Maybe the Coke delivery guy will be there at the same time, maybe parking will be terrible, perhaps the customer is out for his daily coffee.

“They [drivers] can add their own knowledge and insight into the app, and we can take in the feedback,” says Sims, noting that future algorithms for a specific route would include those updates. Shaikley emphasizes their goal of being a driver-first solution.

With several new contracts on the horizon, Wise Systems is making progress expanding the business and plans to capture new market segments in 2018. They will have helped the delivery of 10 million packages by the end of this year by homing in on a single part of the puzzle: flexible routing. For a project that started as a grad school lark, Shaikley says they’re chipping away at the original goal of changing a billion lives by focusing on drivers. “Understanding what is in their heads is the most valuable.”

Wise Systems co-founder Layla Shaikley isn’t your run-of-the-mill MIT architecture grad. Yes, she co-created a tech startup that’s improving the way logistics companies optimize deliveries. But she also interned at NASA, co-founded TEDxBaghdad and co-produced a video featuring #mipsterz, aka Muslim hipsters. Creativity and impact are guiding themes for Layla and key pieces of a lesson her own Muslim parents instilled early on. “They had one rule for me growing up: Do whatever you want, just be the best at it.”

Keep up with the latest in logistics entrepreneurship and follow Layla Shaikley on Twitter @laylool.

Startup Spotlight: 2017 Prize Finalists Keep Sparking Change

Startup Spotlight: 2017 Prize Finalists Keep Sparking Change

Whether they were newly hatched companies or enterprises needing a little help getting to the next level, competitors in the 2017 Food+City Challenge Prize are still going strong. We checked in with several finalists to hear about their progress.

Evaptainers logo

Refrigeration is an invention of the supply chain. You can’t safely transport perishable food without it (unless you employ centuries-old preservation tactics like salt curing or pickling). But in the 100 years since refrigeration technology was invented, it hasn’t changed much, and it almost always requires electricity to work.

In many developing countries, electricity is not assured, and many people suffer from food insecurity because they can’t save or preserve enough food. Nearly half of the produce grown in Africa goes to waste before it reaches the consumer. Evaptainers, a Boston- and Morocco-based startup, has reimagined refrigeration technology and is bringing it to those who need it most.

Evaptainers’ refrigeration systems don’t run on electricity. Instead, they use sunlight and water. A collapsible box, small enough to sit on a countertop, cools food the same way humans cool themselves — through evapotranspiration. In other words, when water evaporates, cooling occurs.

This simple yet revolutionary technology has been garnering lots of attention and gaining traction. Following the capital infusion that came with winning the gold prize at the 2017 Food+City Challenge Prize, the company went on to win more awards: One award at the pitch competition Foodbytes! in San Francisco and a United Nations innovation award at the Seeds and Chips global summit in Milan. They have also been featured in Ag Funder News, The Boston Business Journal and TechCrunch. Their acceleration continues, with support from LAUNCH Food and funding from USAID, and they are finalizing the production of 400 prototypes slated for a field trial in Morocco this summer. A commercial launch is likely in 2018.

In addition to vital funding, a key result from their experience at Food+City’s Challenge Prize has been relationships with other startups.

“We met startups working on different aspects of food and food waste and have learned so much from our conversations with them about the arduous yet fruitful process of growing a small social impact business,” says chief strategy officer Serena Hollmeyer Taylor. Starting a company is often a struggle, as Prize competitors know. The opportunity to interact with others going through similar challenges, who can share knowledge and lessons learned, is a powerful outcome of Prize.

Evaptainers‘ electricity-free refrigeration device, made especially for use in developing countries where the electricity grid is unreliable. Using evapotranspiration, the box keeps produce and other products cool and prevents spoilage.

Nüwiel logo

The Last Mile is a supply chain concept ripe for innovation. It is often the most expensive and complicated leg of the supply chain journey for food products. Narrow roads, city traffic and generally limited space contribute to the challenge of this final stage in the supply chain. Large, cumbersome trucks have traditionally been the go-to mule — and scapegoat — for these deliveries.

Nüwiel, a startup in Hamburg, Germany, has taken on that challenge. The company created electric-powered bicycle trailers specifically for last-mile delivery in urban settings. Their technology knows exactly when to accelerate, decelerate and brake to make last-mile delivery via bicycle more efficient and realistic. In addition to improving delivery efficiency and reducing road traffic, the bike trailers don’t contribute to the pesky urban problems of noise and air pollution.

After winning the bronze prize at the 2017 Food+City Challenge Prize, Nüwiel used the attention to accelerate their development.

“The Prize has certainly helped us a lot. We received significant media attention, getting mentioned not only in Germany but also in the U.S., U.K., Austria and Italy,” says co-founder Natalia Tomiyama.

In the months since Prize, Nüwiel has been accepted to a second stage at the biggest trans-European accelerator, Climate KIC; they’ve scheduled pilot projects with four different partners; attended South By Southwest; updated the design of the trailer; built a prototype; and were selected as to pitch and exhibit at the CUBE Tech Fair in Berlin. Last summer, they got out of the building to bike across Europe — from Hamburg to Italy, passing through the Netherlands, Belgium, France and Spain — and test the durability of their trailer.

Nüwiel’s powered trailer for making urban food deliveries; hooked up behind a bike.

Phenix logo

The issue of food waste is under attack on multiple fronts. Entrepreneurs are coming up with new ways to use food waste, while public awareness campaigns aim to induce behavior change. Some progressive governments have even joined the battle. In France and Italy, laws ban food waste and remove barriers to food donation. This means that French supermarkets can’t throw out unsold produce. While well intentioned, the law leaves French groceries in a bind, with hundreds or thousands of pounds of food that can neither be sold nor thrown away.

Enter Phenix, a 2017 Food+City Challenge Prize finalist, which is addressing that logistical issue in their home country of France. Phenix’s digital platform connects grocery stores with nonprofit organizations whose mission is to feed the underprivileged and food insecure. They organize pick-ups and drop-offs and connect surplus supply with demand in real time, employing their fleet of vehicles to transport the food. Phenix is saving 20 tons of food before it hits landfills, while supplying their charity partners with 27,000 meals — every day.

Since Prize, Phenix was a finalist for the French American Entrepreneurship Award (FAEA). At its headquarters in Europe the company has continued to expand into new regions in France and by finding new segments of the market.

Phenix’s mission goes beyond food waste, which is why they have created a lab to incubate new projects around the circular economy, a system that challenges the more linear system of make-use-dispose by inventing ways of maximizing the value of a resource and regenerating it into another purpose when it reaches its functional end. So instead of trashing unused food, for instance, a circular economy maximizes value buy feeding it to people in need or, when that’s not possible, transform it into a different usable product such as nutrient-rich compost. A planned grocery store with shelves full of strictly unsold products will serve as an example of of this model.

Despite similarities in the ways France and the U.S. treat tax deductions for donations, operating in the U.S. can be difficult because of regulation around food expiration dates. “France has a very detailed and clear framework on what expiration dates mean and what can be donated,” says Sarah Lenoble, director of Phenix USA. “Whereas it is much less clear in the U.S., where there is no real regulation on expiration dates, and every state can have its own regulation.” Phenix is searching for the right partner to launch a pilot program in the U.S.

Phenix workers and partners pick up and recycle or reuse uneaten foods in France.

A worker from Phenix organizes supplies for reuse.

Rise Products logo

There’s a movement brewing that includes turning surplus bread into beer, aquafaba — aka chickpea cooking liquid — into vegan mayonnaise and food waste into new packaging and products. With all the attention food waste is getting, it makes sense that “upcycling,” the process of using a discarded material and creating a valuable product with it, is quickly gaining traction in the marketplace.

Rise Products takes unspent barley from microbreweries in Brooklyn and uses a proprietary process to turn it into flour, which can be used to make the same products as traditional wheat flour. And they’re working with well-known Brooklyn bakery Runner and Stone to develop recipes for all kinds of carby treats. The flavor of the flour Rise produces varies based on what type of beer was produced from the grain — flour from ales tastes nutty and light, while porters create a dark and rich flour that smells like chocolate.

By participating in events like the Zero Waste Food conference and the Make It in Brooklyn Pitch Contest, in which it was selected as a top-five finalist, Rise has firmly entrenched itself in the upcyling-to-beat-food-waste movement.

Since winning a silver award at the 2017 Food+City Challenge Prize, Rise has continued to gain momentum. They completed their time at the Food-X accelerator, gaining valuable mentorship and connections, and came away with a prototype for a production facility. From their spot in the Brooklyn Navy Yard as part of the 1776 Accelerator, Rise is working with the New York Economic Development Board to develop their own production plant.

Making the most of the Prize experience, they have stayed in touch with other startups from the competition, as well as their mentor, Ashley Shaffer of IDEO.

“Participating was an awesome experience for us, especially since we met our mentor, Ashley. We’ve kept in touch with her and with the other participants since then, even meeting some of them recently in Milan during the Seeds & Chips conference,” says COO Ashwin Goutham Gopi.

Bags of ready-to-use Rise Flour, made from spent brewery grains.

Smallhold logo

Some say the future of agriculture is in cities. As the world’s urban population continues to expand, it is easy to imagine how growing food in nontraditional areas, like skyscrapers and downtown warehouses, will benefit the food system. But while vertical farms, urban and rooftop gardens, and shipping container farms are all making progress in the area of urban farming, none has a foothold quite yet.

Distributed farming is the latest idea in this sector. The process enables a business or restaurant to re-route the last food mile and finish growing a product in the location where it will be consumed.

Brooklyn-based Smallhold is leading the charge for distributed farming. At the 2017 Food+City Challenge Prize, co-founders Andrew Carter and Adam Demartino pitched the idea of distributed farming through restaurant mini-farms that produce mushrooms. Today they’re cultivating several unusual varieties of mushrooms, from lion’s mane to yellow and pink oyster, and they plan to expand into other products like leafy greens soon. Top chefs and restaurants in New York are taking notice and endorsing the products.

Since Prize, three new restaurants have come become clients, welcoming Smallhold farms into their kitchens. Smallhold also sells their products directly to grocery stores and intends to use connections from Prize to pursue expansion in major retail stores.

“Food+City introduced us to some amazing stakeholders and thought leaders from places like Whole Food and Walmart, and we are extremely happy we attended,” Carter says. The company is gaining momentum in the tech circles as well. The team benefited from the mentorship and guidance of the TechStars Boston program, which wrapped up in May 2017. They have also seen their team grow 100 percent since Prize and have expanded their farm with a custom-built shipping container to grow more mushrooms.

Mushrooms grown by Smallhold.

FOOD + CITY CHALLENGE PRIZE

Innovation in food takes all forms, from making improvements to pallets to creating new avenues for delivering food or designing packaging that increases the shelf life of a food. Since 2015, we’ve hosted a challenge prize for startups in the food space that are challenging our notions of how the supply chain works. The 2018 Challenge Prize will be awarded on March 13, 2018. Be sure to visit foodandcity.org/prize to watch this year’s entrants become finalists and compete at SXSW Interactive 2018.