What’s the difference between grade a, organic, natural and free-range eggs? Amongst a sea of misleading food labels, Buying Poultry hopes to take the guess-work out of choosing the most humane and sustainable poultry products and plant-based alternatives. The company, an initiative of farm advocacy group Farm Forward, is working to create a Real Time Farms- esque online buying guide featuring animal, farm worker and environmental ratings for every poultry producer in the country. Free to use via smartphone, tablet and computer, the guide will help combat the secrecy of factory farm poultry production by providing consumers with easily-accessible, real-time information.

As Executive Director of Farm Forward, Buying Poultry Co-founder Ben Goldsmith was constantly being asked for the best option for finding alternatives to factory farming. But there simply wasn’t an easy-to-use nationwide guide. Farm Forward polled its newsletter subscribers and found that 90% percent of carnivores would “definitely” use the guide. And so they decided to tackle the poultry transparency beast themselves. For the past four years they have been working with high-welfare poultry farmers and animal welfare experts to create the beginnings of the site.

To make this comprehensive project a reality, the team has launched a Kickstarter Campaign to raise $40,000. To date, they’ve secured nearly half and have just under 40 days to go. If they reach their goal, the money raised will go towards site design and development, building and programming the massive database, paying for servers, and an eventual API. Though they are raising money through multiple sources, Goldsmith says they believe kickstarter is great source of support because their product is catered towards “tech-savvy, contentious consumers” who are “likely familiar with kickstarter and hungry for more transparency in the food they consume.”

Buying Poultry hopes to connect good farmers with consumers while bringing accountability back to the poultry industry. If executed, the project will empower conscious consumers with the information they need to make the best choices for themselves, farmed animals and the planet.

Check out their in depth POULTRY PRODUCTION INFOGRAPHIC

The post New Site Brings Transparency to Buying Poultry appeared first on Food+Tech Connect.

As the demand for online education grows, Feast, “the online cooking school for the common man,” is betting that the future of cooking education is online. The San Francisco-based food startup, which is currently participating in 500 Startups’ sixth incubator class, is applying a Lynda or Skillshare-like e-learning model to help make cooking education more affordable, convenient and hands-on. The team definitely has their work cut out for them, though. With innumerable cooking websites, the omnipresent Food Network, and popular TV cooking shows launching their own online programs, cooking content has become increasingly difficult to monetize, especially for newcomers without a well established brand.

HOW IT WORKS

Feast’s interactive, skill-focused classes make it easy for people to learn fundamental cooking techniques at home. Students follow a lesson in real time and are able to interact with both their teacher and other students for support and feedback. “The Food Network creates separation between people and their kitchens and cultivates a fear of failure,” says Feast co-founder David Spinks. Feast, he says, aims to “help people get over intimidation factors and feel comfortable experimenting, becoming more confident and capable home cooks.”

WHO’S BEHIND IT

Co-founders David Spinks and Nadia Eghbal may have no culinary training, but they do possess extensive online community building experience, hence Feast’s emphasis on social. Spinks previously created The Community Manager and consulted for online learning startup Udemy. Eghbal co-produced The Startup Product Summit and worked for Newsbound and GreatSchools. Their combined experience in developing active, engaged online communities could help set Feast apart from other popular online cooking education sites like Cook Taste Eat, founded by Michelin-starred chef Michael Mina. Feast’s sole instructor, Chef and Co-founder, Jeremy Umansky is a CIA graduate who previously worked for Whole Foods and Fairway Market and is currently the Sous Chef of Brooklyn Fish Camp.

Though the online cooking space is crowded, Spinks thinks there’s a big market opportunity. He estimates that cooking education is a $1 billion market based on the amount spent on food related experiences and the amount spent on in-person cooking classes, though he is not certain on the number of people currently paying for online cooking content.

THE BUSINESS MODEL

In the beginning, Feast offered $60 class packages that spanned over four weeks and covered a wide range of techniques from kitchen basics to braising. But the team realized that people craved immediate access to entire lessons– they wanted to prepare a feast from soup to nuts in one session. So they revamped their product to better cater to their community, and as of two weeks ago they now offer 6 one-off classes for $10 each on topics like Stockmaking and Indoor Grilling. Modeled after the curated educational experience of Lynda, Feast’s classes include a step-by-step guide with how-to video nuggets that let you cook and learn at your own pace. If Kimchi strikes your fancy you can take the mini class for free and turn your kitchen into a fermentation station immediately, save the class for later, or send it to a friend who’s pickling forays have been subpar.

To further differentiate Feast from others in the online cooking world, Spinks hopes to grow the site into a marketplace for local cooking teachers, a curated database where all videos and content are packaged using Feast’s easy-to-follow style. So for that amazing cooking teacher down the street who doesn’t quite have a knack for design or UX, Feast may one day offer a ticket to online success. But for now, they will focus on perfecting the platform with their one charismatic instructor. Through curated, easy-to-follow content and an engaged online community Feast hopes to float in the over saturated online cooking space and build a loyal community of empowered, confident Feast-ers.

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From home cooking to the restaurant experience, technology-focused food startups are enhancing the way consumers engage with food. These startups are creating significant value for consumers and notable opportunities for restaurants and brands to better understand and provide value to their customers. As the food tech sector matures, we are seeing an increasing number of these companies being funded or acquired by industry players. This monthly column highlights the most interesting acquisitions, financings and partnerships within the Food Tech & Media ecosystem – digital content, social, local, mobile, e-commerce, payments, marketing and analytics – to give you insights into the latest funding and growth trends.

“Food Tech” investing has been a hot topic this past month, with perhaps the most discussed article being this New York Times piece focused on food startups. The article broadly lumped all food startup investments into one category, however mainly focused on consumable food products, and got some flak from industry players as one source expressed doubt over the long term-promise of food startups. The article also caps 2012 food tech investing at $350m, according to this CB Insights report. My data, however, reveals over $700m was invested in food-related tech and media companies (digital content, social, local, mobile, e-commerce, payments, marketing and analytics) in 2012 - which doesn’t include the numerous innovations in the agricultural, supply chain, nutrition and CPG spaces. Bottom line: we have only begun to scratch the surface of the food tech opportunity and continued innovation will lead to increasing investment in the space.

Meanwhile, the theme of  “delivery” dominated the news in April, as it did in February. Rather than creating a digital infrastructure for existing delivery services, a lot of the recent activity in this space has focused on leveraging existing systems and resources, like underutilized kitchen capacity or social and corporate networks, to create new products and services. Given the steep challenges with gaining meaningful traction among the pillars of the food space – restauranteurs, CPGs, grocers, producers, farmers – it will be key for many startups in the food tech industry to build products that harness existing infrastructures.

M&A

No M&A activity this month.

FUNDING

Relay Foods Raises $8.25m. The online grocery marketplace partners with local farmers and producers as well as grocery stores (including Whole Foods, and other national retailers) to offer a combination of local products and grocery staples that customers pick up at a central location in their city. The team has expanded market share in the Mid-Atlantic, and will soon be live in Washington, D.C. and Baltimore. According to TechCrunch, “the next major market – North Carolina – will take place in 2014.” The funding will used to power the build-out of a new mobile platform, expand the executive and development team, and redesign the company’s online marketplace.

Announced: 4/14/13  Stage: Series A  Participating Institutional Investors: Battery Ventures, TomorrowVentures, Quantitative Investment Holdings  Previous Investment: $1.2 Seed Extension, $3.1m Seed  Founded: 2007

HealthyOut Raises $1.2m. The company first launched as an app to help users find healthy, low calorie dishes at nearby restaurants and now, as it became a TechCrunch Disrupt Finalist, the team unveiled its subscription meal delivery service for New York City, with plans to expand to new cities soon. HealthyOut designed the subscription program, which sources meals from restaurant kitchens, to deliver up to 10 tailored meals a week based on health goals and flavor preferences, and charges a monthly fee to manage the orders and diets.

Announced: 4/29/13  Stage: Seed  Participating Institutional Investors: 500 Startups, Bradley Harrison Ventures  Previous Investment:  Blueprint Health Incubator  Product Launch: October 2012

Plated Raises $1.4m. The NY-based meal kit delivery service, which compiles gourmet recipes from noted chefs and delivers all of the pre-portioned ingredients to make the meal, closed on a large seed which, according to VentureWire, was raised in two separate convertible debt rounds. A member of the current TechStars class, Plated is working to expand delivery regions and is actively growing its full time staff. TechCrunch points out that part of the seed funding was used to develop a new section of the site called “Social Recipe Pages,” which appears to be a cooking version of Rent The Runway’s “Our Runway” where users add tips and upload photos of meals they have made.

Announced: 4/09/13  Stage: Seed  Participating Institutional Investors: ff Venture Capital, TechStars, Alain Bankier, Andrew McCollum, Paige Craig  Previous Investment: Angel  Founded: June 2012

SavingStar Raises $9.1m. The digital grocery coupon and loyalty service enables shoppers to link deals to their grocery and drug store loyalty cards and then receive the rewards in the form of a cash payment, giftcard, or donate it to charity. Rather than aggregating deals, the company works directly with grocery stores to create exclusive deals. The round was led by corporate benefits provider Edenred, and as part of the strategic investment created a joint venture to integrate the SavingStar product into a healthy living rewards program, called NutriSavings (as noted in the “Partnerships” section below).

Announced: 4/05/13  Stage: Series D  Participating Institutional Investors: Edenred (lead), American Express, DCM, Flybridge Capital Partners, First Round Capital  Previous Investment: $9m Series C, $7m Series B, $2.3m Series A  Founded: June 2010

Kitchensurfing Raises $3.5m. On the heels of a $1m seed round in February to expand to additional metro areas, the private chef marketplace continues to grow its chef network, which includes nearly 1,500 chefs, as well as its funding. AllThingsD notes that the team currently vets chefs manually, but in order to scale, the team will need to use a portion of the proceeds to create a system where new chefs get approved via peer-review.

Announced: 4/04/13   Stage: Series A  Participating Institutional Investors: Union Square Ventures (lead), Spark Capital  Previous Investment: $1m Seed  Founded: 2011

Chewse Raises $1m.  The LA-based B2B group delivery/catering platform distinguishes itself by presenting only high quality restaurants/dishes that it curates for its corporate clients rather than aggregating all catering options available in the area. Chewse also limits restaurants to those that already do catering and delivery, and have proved they can handle the demands of complex group orders. The team will use the new funds to expand its workforce and add new markets.

Announced: 4/01/13  Stage: Seed  Participating Institutional Investors: 500 Startups, Telegraph Hill Partners, InnoSpring  Previous Investment: $250k seed  Founded: July 2011

Eatclub Raises $5m. The lunch-ordering service has approached the task of feeding office workers in a unique way from other delivery options by limiting the selection to 10-15 dishes from three or four restaurants each day, and managing all of the operations logistics and delivery for the restaurants, including the delivery fleet. The team will use the funding to expand beyond the San Francisco Bay Area into other metropolitan areas around the US, although specific cities have not been mentioned.

Announced: 4/01/13  Stage: Series A  Participating Institutional Investors: August Capital (lead), First Round Capital, Siemer Ventures, Great Oaks Venture Capital, Launch Capital, Tekton Ventures  Previous Investment: $1.5m Seed  Founded: 2010

PARTNERSHIPS

Locu partners with Yelp. The digital menu company will integrate Locu-managed menu information to augment Yelp restaurant listings with real-time menus and prices.  It is actually surprising that it has taken Yelp this long to incorporate menus in a meaningful way, and this partnership will be a boon to operators and customers alike.  As we noted last month, this partnership comes on the heels of Locu’s recent WordPress integration.

LevelUp and Merchant Warehouse partner to launch $1m fund to encourage developers to build mobile-payment apps.  The co-sponsored development fund was created to encourage more developers to build apps leveraging LevelUp’s mobile payments platform. Qualified merchants will receive a sponsorship of 25% of the cost of a custom-developed LevelUp White-Label mobile payment and loyalty app. As The Next Web notes, Sweetgreen, small chain in the DC area, was the first company to take advantage of this service in February with its Sweetgreen Rewards app.

Mobile restaurant payment app TabbedOut partners with Harbortouch POS system. The new integration will allow Harbortouch terminals to accept mobile payments, and will be installed on all future HarborTouch POS systems, with the option to install on existing terminals as well. Partnership with POS companies  is essential to the growth of TabbedOut, and over the past couple of years, the company has partnered with Micros, Aloha, Future, Focus, Dinerware, Digital Dining, and Jumpware.

Recipe Kit Service HelloFresh Partners With Weight Loss App Noom.  Noom users will now be able to integrate their diet plan into HelloFresh’s delivery meal service, so they can make calorie appropriate meals from scratch in under 30 minutes, and have the info automatically uploaded in the app. As TechCrunch points out, this is “essentially a white label version of HelloFresh inside of the Noom app,” as Noom is taking responsibility for managing both the partnership and the customers and shares revenue with Hello Fresh for each purchase.

Digital grocery coupon and loyalty company SavingStar and global employee benefits firm Edenred create joint venture to launch NutriSavings. Putting the strategic investment (see “Funding” section above) in SavingStar right to use, Edenred is promoting the NutriSavings program as an employee benefits program to encourage healthy and balanced diets (thus reduce healthcare-related expenses). The program provides nutritional info for grocery purchases as well as incentives such as digital eCoupons for healthier products.

Pizza Hut teams up with Microsoft to create an Xbox Live app where gamers can order pizza directly from console. Kurt Kane, chief marketing officer at Pizza Hut, positioned the partnership as a family-focused move, “With today’s avid gamers and busy modern families gathering around their gaming consoles as much as they gather around a dinner table, we felt this was a natural next step for Pizza Hut as we continue to own the digital ordering experience for pizza lovers everywhere.” As the first tangible good ever made available via the Xbox Live platform, it show an interesting potential for the merging of food and technology. However as Forbes points out, the app is more of a gimmick than a solution, as gamers need to exit out of the game in order to order the pizza – which is not as convenient as just picking up the phone or other online ordering options.

INDUSTRY LANDSCAPE

As The Food Tech & Media ecosystem continues to see rapid change, we created The Food Tech & Media Industry Map  to help entrepreneurs, participants and investors understand this quickly evolving landscape.

Let us know about your recent or upcoming funding, partnerships or acquisitions here.

Check out last month’s round-up here.

Would you be interested in a round-up of agriculture-related funding, partnerships and acquisitions? Let us know in the comments below.

The post Food Tech Media Startup Funding, M&A and Partnerships: April 2013 appeared first on Food+Tech Connect.

Calling all hackers, food industry “steakholders,” entrepreneurs and creatives: Registration for Hack//Meat Silicon Valley is now open!

June 21-23, 2013 //  Palo Alto, California

WHAT IS HACK//MEAT SILICON VALLEY?

Following the success of Hack//Meat NYC, we heard nonstop from our friends and colleagues on the West Coast that they wanted a chance to hack the sustainable meat business, too. So we’re putting out a call to the Bay Area’s best and brightest: can you help us figure out ways to use technology to bridge the divide between pasture and plate and create a better future for meat?

Hosted by Food+Tech Connect in partnership with the GRACE Communications Foundation and Applegate, Hack//Meat Silicon Valley invites technologists, entrepreneurs, creatives and industry “steakholders” (farmers, butchers, processors, artisans, restaurateurs, retailers, policy advocates and non-profit leaders) to help us reimagine the business of meat.

Click here to register for the event and visit the Hack//Meat website for more details.

HOW IT WORKS:

Over the course of three days, participants work together to break down business- and consumer education-related sustainable meat challenges and then rapidly prototype new solutions.

Guided by industry experts, mentors and design-thinking facilitators from the Institute of Design at Stanford and The Design Gym, hackers will then have an opportunity to pitch their products to an expert panel of judges, including leading industry VCs, sustainable food entrepreneurs, and farmers. For more info, check out the event schedule.

Along the way, participants will enjoy sustainable food from some of the Bay Area’s best sustainable food producers, gain hands-on design thinking experience and develop invaluable new connections.

LOOK BACK: HACK//MEAT NYC:

In December 2012, we gathered 150+ innovators from across the country for the first Hack//Meat in NYC, which resulted in countless insights, new relationships and, most importantly, 12 new products.  Check out coverage from that event in New York Times, Grist, Fast Company, Forbes, Ars Technica, GigaOM, and right here at Food+Tech Connect.

Interested in collaborating with us as sponsor, API, or media partner? Please email mariana [at] foodtechconnect.com for more information about how you can get involved.

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The post Lick Your Chops: Register for Hack//Meat Silicon Valley appeared first on Food+Tech Connect.

If you’re interested in the intersection of food, publishing, technology and enterprise you won’t want to miss the second ever Food Book Fair, happening this weekend, May 2-5, in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. The event celebrates food writing, reading and eating and features a variety of panels, book signings, tastings, a coffee crawl, cooking demonstrations and a Foodieodical event! The following are two events that may be of particular interest to the Food+Tech Connect Community.

Food+Enterprise

With hopes to inspire, Food Book Fair and Slow Money NYC will partner at FBF’s Food + Enterprise event to consider the advantages that ensue when investment policies and food system change connect. This May 5^th, in order to provide burgeoning food startups with useful tools and invaluable advice, the comprehensive program will begin with a Resource Fair from 1-4PM. The fair will gather a variety of resources, or innovators involved in the sustainable food and farming industry across the Northeast, together under one roof. Their backgrounds range from book publishing to social impact investing, from education to food activism, and from community economic development to entrepreneur services. Here they are:

Vermont Creamery

Good Food Jobs

The Moderns

Fleisher’s Grassfed and Organic Meats

Down to Earth Markets

B Lab

CADE

Clean Plates

EWVIDCO

Farmers Web

Good Eggs

Hot Bread Kitchen

IOBY

Just Food

Local Food Lab

Nutshell Projects

NYC Hospitality Group

Slow Food NYC

Slow Money NYC

Cookstr

cookNscribble

Haymakers

Accion USA Loan Fund

Multiple Organics

Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce

The BLK ProjeK

Sixth Borough Society

Authors of enterprise-related food books will also be on hand for a book signing!

Following the fair, the Pitch Competition from 4-6PM will give seed-stage food enterprises a chance to sum up their business concept in 5 minutes to a group of discerning, business-savvy judges. Attendees and judges will collectively decide the best pitch!

Come get inspired and celebrate the undeniable Food + Enterprise connection! Tickets here.

Foodieodicals

Food + Periodicals = Foodieodicals! A zine fest within the fair celebrating creative food publishing in the magazine world featuring over 20 of our favorite inspiring food publications. Come meet the editors and writers, participate in some fun book-focused activities and buy your limited edition copies! Round out your literary celebration experience with gratis snacks and a free beer from Brooklyn Brewery.

At last year’s Foodieodicals: A Celebration & Marketplace, over 200 people came out to mingle with editors and writers, partake in book-focused crafts, sample scrumptious snacks and acquire the most desired of all objects: limited edition Foodieodicals! This May 4, from 2-8PM come check out the publications below and more! Get your tickets here!

Acqtaste (Ontario, Canada)

Acqutaste may have lofty goals but only because they can achieve them. Striving to be the “voice of a food movement around the world” the pioneering zine seeks to redefine the public’s view of food publications. At Acqtaste food culture mingles with art and design, architecture, film, fashion and even music, just as amateurs and doyens are considered to be one in the same, equally deserving of the foodieodical’s marvels.

American Food Roots (Arlington, VA)

American Food Roots delves into the mechanisms behind why we eat what we eat. The publication embraces recipes, stories, and photos from readers in order to examine the origins behind American eating traditions. In understanding regional, religious, ethnic, political and familial histories, our rich heritage are  better celebrated. Come meet the editors at the Foodieodical event and share your own food story for a chance to be published on the American Food Roots website!

A-Z Coffee (Voyenenga, Norway)

A-Z Coffee is the sleek, minimalist brainchild of Lars Kolstad Huse, a Norwegian beer and coffee geek illustrator living in London. The publication is both a conversational guide to the caffeinated lifeblood and a coffee art book. Java and design have never been so beautifully one in the same. Huse will also lead FBF’s Williamsburg Coffee Crawl on Friday, May 3!

Cereal (Bristol, UK)

Enviously minimal and impossibly cool Cereal Magazine explores food and travel in a literary context, devoting a chapter to each exposition. The quarterly profiles notable individuals and covetous travel spots using photography as their main medium for capturing a design-as-paramount visual quality.

Chickpea Magazine (Rochester, NY)

Chickpea, observes seasonal, local food practices and although they come from a vegan-minded angel, their recipes are delectable enough to entice a finicky omnivore. The zine reflects its equitable mentality with free online versions of every issue and a policy to accept submissions from individuals of all skill levels. Stunning photographs of everything beautifully vegan, from root vegetables to soda, evoke delight in the present season, whatever it may be

Diner Journal (NYC)

From Andrew Tarlow, the restauranteur responsible for Williamsburg staples Diner, Marlow & Sons, and FBF host site the Wythe Hotel’s in-house foodie establishment Reynard’s, Diner Journal employs the innovations of its many employees in fashioning each page. With unparalleled enjoyment, the wonder team explores the “community creativity” inherent in food. Delightful illustrations and a three-hole punch design add to its playful touch.

Edible Magazine (NYC)

Edible exalts in seasonal, locavore, “place-based taste.” With over 75 branches, the publication manages to detail food happenings far and wide. From Martha’s Vineyard to the San Juan Mountains, Edible spotlights remarkable restaurants, noteworthy cookbooks, extraordinary events and distinguished foodies throughout North America.

Gather Journal (NYC)

Gather concentrates on mindful habits when it comes to food. The bi-annual zine triumphs seasonal ingredients, and offers up gorgeous snapshots and delectable recipes, all the while the emphasizing food’s capacity to unite. It’s Gather’s mission to remind us how cooking and eating gather loved ones and bring them together.

Good Company (NYC)

The formula goes like this: your favorite people + the right tools + seasonal ingredients = good company. Good Company recognizes that the finest meals are not the one’s involving the most labor or monetary investment, but are those with good company. With that in mind, GC highlights remarkable people, restaurants and recipes, in order to provide readers with the tools to impress their own good company.

Graze (Chicago, IL)

Graze celebrates food with reference to the people, histories, memories and stories surrounding it. Taking into account the stories of notable individuals, and those that are involved in our daily food traditions, this human-centric approach avoids recipes in favor of a dialogue on food with respect to politics, relationships and events.

Lucky Peach (NYC)

This literary embodiment of the souls of David Chang, Peter Meehan, and the various iterations of the Momofuku concept, is punk and posh, haute and bas, subtle and ostentatious. Their website calls for submissions not only of recipes, but of dirty jokes and tall tales.  Sometimes it’s all about balance.

Modern Farmer (Hudson, NY)

Modern Farmer revels in all things farmer. Always maintaining a dependably farmer-steered perspective—whether it be a professional rancher or amateur dabbler—the zine covers all you need to know with regards to the farm. From intricate exploratory features on whether cattle are being slaughtered humanely enough, to profiles on extraordinary farmers and guides to must-have gear, we can all gain enlightenment from the stunning and informative Modern Farmer.

Put A Egg On It (NYC)

This art and literary bi-annual zine considers food, cooking and the collective bliss of sharing meals with friends and family. Inside it’s green, digest-sized pages you will find simple cooking tips, personal and photo essays, illustrations conveyed with a refreshingly irreverent tone.

Remedy Quarterly (San Francisco, CA)

The literary and inventive, Remedy Quarterly travels across vast expanses to access the food memories and recipes of inspirational foodies from across the globe. The people surrounding the meal are the chief characters of the story in this platform that revels in food and memory.

ROCKET Magazine (Tokyo, Japan)

ROCKET Magazine is the natural outgrowth of Tokyo’s ROCKET gallery, an art space showcasing food and art. The high-concept, ubercool foodieodical introduces new food culture, and sums up food related parties, exhibitions, travel destinations and innovators associated with the gallery.

Saucy Magazine (NYC)

Indie mag Saucy scrutinizes our “fallible relationships with food and each other.” Exercising the mediums of photography, illustration, story-telling and poetry, the publication eschews traditional content, like recipes, in favor of themes.

Swallow Magazine (NYC)

Swallow conveys each reported journey with a comical tone and a Pop-Art aesthetic. The zine dedicates each issue to an atypical travel destination, like Siberia and Mexico City, and shuns fads in foodie culture—don’t expect to find features on bone marrow or truffle oil here. Food and travel are instead viewed through the lens of art and fashion as their latest, highly anticipated issue reflects, as it highlights history and art more than food in some ways.

Sweet Paul Magazine (NYC)

Sweet Paul Mag showcases the work of the “incredibly talented posse of food-geek, photography-obsessed, craft-genius friends” of Norweigan craft and food stylist, Paul Lowe Einlyng. Guided by the motto “perfection is boring” Sweet Paul hopes to sweeten everyday life with easy to create ideas, craft-projects and recipes, “filtered through the lens of [Paul’s] seasoned stylist’s eye.”

Sweets & Bitters Quarterly (NYC)

Sweets & Bitters is a design-focused quarterly that aims to capture “the good life” in a series of photo essays presented alongside themed mini-cookbooks. In highlighting seasonal and local ingredients, the foodieodical also recognizes the practicality and viability of their suggested tips within the context of our modern world. One flip through the vivid spreads will leave you wishing there was some way to dive headfirst into the pages.

The Runcible Spoon (Washington, D.C.)

The Runcible Spoon invokes “daydreaming about food and cooking.” Equal parts food and art mag, the Washington D.C. publication features a collections of stories, collages and recipes with an artful aesthetic. Even better, it’s free.

Wilder Quarterly (NYC)

Geared toward the gardeners, growers, foragers of the food community, Wilder Quarterly imparts the horticulture-minded with an ever-useful gardening tool. WQ uniquely examines how culture, travel, food, and design interconnect with the growing world. viagra viagra

The post This Weekend: 2013 Food Book Fair Food+Enterprise+Foodieodicals appeared first on Food+Tech Connect.

Update: Event name has been changed to Hack//Meat Silicon Valley to better reflect our awesome Palo Alto location.

MARK YOUR CALENDAR!

From June 21- 23, Food+Tech Connect, GRACE Communications Foundation and Applegate are bringing together industry “steakholders” (farmers, butchers, processors, artisans, restaurateurs, retailers, policy advocates and non-profit leaders),  technologists, entrepreneurs and creatives for Hack//Meat Silicon Valley, a hackathon to reimagine the business of meat.

Over the course of the weekend, participants will work together to develop data-driven technologies and communication platforms that help to democratize the way meat is produced, processed, distributed, sold and consumed.

In December 2012, we gathered 150+ innovators from across the country for the first Hack//Meat in NYC, which resulted in countless insights, new relationships and, most importantly, 12 new products. Following its success, we heard nonstop from our friends and collaborators on the West Coast that they wanted a chance to hack at these issues, too. So we’re putting out a call to the Bay Area’s best and brightest: can you help us figure out ways to use technology to bridge the divide between pasture and plate and create a better future for meat?

HOW HACK//MEAT WORKS:

Over the course of three days, participants will gather at The Institute of Design at Stanford, where, guided by design-thinking facilitators, they will work together to break down business- and consumer education-related sustainable meat challenges and then rapidly prototype new solutions.

We will be launching the official registration next week, at which time we will also begin announcing some of the great speakers, prizes and judges we’ve lined up. As always, you can be sure to expect great food, lots of learning and invaluable new connections.

LEARN MORE

Check out the 12 exciting projects that resulted from Hack//Meat NYC, or read coverage on that event from The New York Times, Grist, Fast Company, Forbes, Ars Technica, GigaOM, and Food+Tech Connect.

Please email mariana [at] foodtechconnect.com for more information about how you can get involved as an event sponsor.

The post Save-the-Date: Hack//Meat Silicon Valley, June 21-23 2013 appeared first on Food+Tech Connect.

There is an exciting opportunity for food and health startups to secure $100,000 in non-dilutive money through the Data Design Diabetes Innovation Challenge (DDD). The Challenge, which is open until April 7, asks innovators to develop solutions that use or produce data for decision-making that may improve health outcomes for people living with diabetes.

Through the third annual DDD, Sanofi US, in partnership with the Health Data Consortium, aims to support innovators working to advance patient-centered diabetes solutions that meet the following criteria:

• EVIDENCE-BASED HEALTH OUTCOMES: Ability to demonstrate in an evidence-based way how the concept can improve the outcomes and/or experience of people living with diabetes in the US.
• TARGET AUDIENCE: Ability to support one or more members of the healthcare ecosystem and provide them with data-driven tools or evidence-based insight that can help them make better contributions to staving the diabetes epidemic in the US.
• DECISION-MAKING: Ability to illustrate how the concept can enable better data-driven decision-making at a particular stage across the spectrum of type 1 or type 2 diabetes, from lifestyle and environmental factors to diagnosis, treatment, maintenance, and beyond.
• DATA SCIENCE: Utilize new or traditional data methodology — such as baseline knowledge models, evidence-based practice, and predictive analysis — to create a tool that may change the landscape of diabetes management through richer insight, more timely information, or better sets of decisions.

Finalists will participate in an Innovators’ Bootcamp in San Francisco where they will focus on refining their prototype, as well as engage with mentors and industry experts on topics such as health, design, user experience, marketing, and technology. This all culminates in live presentations at Demo Day, which will be held at Health Datapalooza on June 3 in Washington, DC. The esteemed panel of judges, which includes Deborah Estrin, co-founder of Open mHealth, Bob Kocher, Partner at Venrock, Jon Brilliant, CFO at WellDoc, and Sanofi US’ own Dennis Urbaniak, VP of the U.S. Diabetes Patient Centered Unit, will then select one winner to receive $100,000.

Participants may submit their concept until midnight EST on April 7. Concepts may be in early stages at submission, but capable of being fully defined by Demo Day if chosen as a finalist.

You can read about past winners here and Sanofi’s approach to innovation here.

The post Win $100k & Mentorship For Data-Driven Diabetes Startups & Concepts appeared first on Food+Tech Connect.

So often talent is wasted in Silicon Valley. It is commonplace for developers to build games that throw birds at walls, but what if that energy could be focused on solving local, regional and national food problems? Our local economies are suffering; our environment is in peril; and heart disease, diabetes and obesity rank as some of the greatest challenges of our time. It is safe to say that our food system is broken. On April 6th and 7th, 2013, I will launch Food Hackathon with the goal of gathering some of our best and brightest minds to hack our food system.

This marathon of hacking, creating and collaborating will be a place for everyone (civilians, corporations, gov’t, etc.) to come together for a greater good. This first Food Hackathon is meant to catalyze further civic engagement for a follow-up Food Hackathon 2.o event on June 1st and 2nd, taking place as part of the National Day of Civic Hacking, a day where communities across the country will come together to build solutions using publicly released data.

We tweet, text, post, snap, click and pop thousands of times per day. We live in a time of unimaginable opportunity, where information is easier to access than ever before in history. But despite the availability of these amazing technologies, our kids are still, for the most part, growing up without an education of where their food comes from or why it matters.

Food is our greatest common denominator. If we begin to address the challenges in our food system, then we will begin to solve the problems in our economy, our environment and our healthcare all while building community. After all, community is the X-factor. With community we can grow. With community we can educate each other. With community we can live in peace.

Join us now in launching www.FoodHackathon.com to build a happier, healthier and tastier world. Learn more about sponsorship opportunities here.

Can’t make it to San Francisco? Join our Google Hangout, like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter.

_________________

Tim West is a Slow Food chef turned Social Entrepreneur. He is passionate about combining technology with human networks to make the world a happier, healthier and tastier place. Tim is a culinary cross pollinator with 10+ years of experience in sustainable food service and event production. He has founded two food and technology companies and FoodHackathon.com while living in Silicon Valley. His favorite animal is the earth worm.

The post Food Hackathon Aims to Build a Happier, Healthier & Tastier World appeared first on Food+Tech Connect.

From home cooking to the restaurant experience, technology-focused food startups are enhancing the way consumers engage with food. These startups are creating significant value for consumers and notable opportunities for restaurants and brands to better understand and provide value to their customers. As the food tech sector matures, we are seeing an increasing number of these companies being funded or acquired by industry players. This monthly column highlights the most interesting acquisitions, financings and partnerships within the Food Tech & Media ecosystem – digital content, social, local, mobile, e-commerce, payments, marketing and analytics – to give you insights into the latest funding and growth trends.

Digital media startups focused on expert and user-generated content hit the spotlight in March with investments, acquisitions and partnerships ranging from recipes to the restaurant experience. While many content companies are searching for the best way to monetize in a time when many consumers aren’t willing to pay for content, as we pointed out in the fall, food-related content is a driving force of consumer engagement both in terms of traffic and interactions with brands. In a 2012 AOL/comScore case study focused on the key drivers of video engagement, food content easily trumped both the entertainment and style categories.

Beyond the ability for highly targeted ad and marketing campaigns for brands, the everyday nature of food-related content drives repeated use cases for consumers and often converts into actionable leads: coupons, grocery shopping, restaurant reservations, travel, e-commerce and more. As pointed out in a recent Restaurant SmartBrief article, food dominates all other categories on Pinterest, and in one survey 33% of respondents claim to have purchased food or cooking-related items (the biggest category in the group) after having seen the item on Pinterest. Furthermore, consumers are increasingly depending on their mobile devices to deliver (and interact) with this content through email, apps and the web, thus most companies featured below have included mobile strategy as part of their next phase of growth.

M&A

TripAdvisor Acquires Tiny Post. The travel and local reviews site purchased Tiny Post, which is “like Instagram for Yelp reviews.”  According to TechFlash, TripAdvisor CEO Steve Kaufer recently stated that “rich user-generated content is the lifeblood of the business.” Given the high engagement factor of food content – especially photos – and TripAdvisor’s recent restaurant data partnership, TripAdvisor seems to be eyeing the food vertical as a driver of traffic. TechCrunch reports this was an acqui-hire as well as a product acquisition.

Announced: 3/22/13  Terms: Not Specified  Previous Investment: Not Specified  Founded: August 2011

Coupons.com Acquires KitchMe. As Coupons.com unveiled the public beta launch of their new next-generation meal planning and savings web/mobile application, the company revealed it had actually completed the acquisition of the base product, KitchMe, almost a year ago (Q2 of 2012). The visual recipe saving, meal planning and shopping list service was acquired before ever publicly launching, and the two founders joined Coupons.com to continue working on KitchMe. The shopping list capability is powered by the same technology used in Coupons.com’s Grocery iQ – a product that I personally find clunky and inelegant – so perhaps the new capabilities and interface will help Coupons.com compete with the numerous apps and websites in this sector.

Announced: 3/21/13  Terms: Not Specified  Previous Investment: Not Specified  Founded: April 2011

Pinterest Acquires Livestar. With its second acquisition, Pinterest scooped up the engineering talent of the personalized recommendations mobile app and will be shutting down the operations of Seattle-based Livestar immediately. This comes after the recent acquisition of Punchfork, which was also an engineering aqui-hire, and on the heels of the wide launch of Pinterest’s redesign. As GigaOM points out, user experience is key to Pinterest and the management is constantly pushing the team to come up with new ways to engage people’s attention on the site.

Announced: 3/20/13  Terms: Not Specified  Previous Investment: $2m. Institutional investors included: SV Angel, Allen and Co, Betaworks, Mitch Kapor, The Chernin Group, William Morris Endeavor, Morado Ventures  Founded: January 2011 (Launched June 2012)

Target Acquires Cooking.com and Chefs Catalog. In order to expand its presence in the $3bn+ cooking and kitchenware market, and serve customers who are increasingly spending time both in the kitchen and shopping online, Target  acquired two established cooking e-commerce companies in separate transactions.  Following the closings, the two businesses will be combined to create a new, wholly owned subsidiary of Target and both brands will continue to operate under their current names.

Announced: 3/14/13  Terms: Not Specified  Previous Investment: Cooking.com: $101m; Chef’s Catalog:  JH Partners acquired Chef’s Catalog in 2004 from The Neiman Marcus Group for $14.4m  Founded: Cooking.com: 1998; Chef’s Catalog: 1979

FUNDING

Food52 Raises $2m.  With plans for a unique online shop, improved mobile experience and expanded publishing platform, the recipe and cooking community Food52 announced their Series A investment was led by (quasi-strategic) investment firm Bertelsmann Digital Media Investments. Food52′s growth plans also include an “innovative” publishing partnership with Random House (which is owned by Bertelsmann AG).

Announced: 3/27/13  Stage: Series A  Participating Institutional Investors: Bertelsmann Digital Media Investments, Vocap Ventures, Zelkova Ventures, Gary Vaynerchuk, Lerer Ventures, 15 Angels, Joanne Wilson  Previous Investment: $750k  Founded: 2009

Skinny Mom Raises $100k.  The online mom community focused on fitness, food, fashion and family will use this first tranche of an estimated total of $500k in seed funding to “continue building the brand by delivering daily, weekly and monthly content” by adding a virtual Recipe Index, Fitness Video Index, city-specific & category-specific virtual mom groups, and personal profile pages for users.

Announced: 3/14/13  Stage: Seed  Participating Institutional Investors: Cincy Tech Previous Investment: Not Specified  Founded: 2011

500friends Raises $5m.  The loyalty and marketing SaaS company, which has made its name in online loyalty initiatives for mid- to enterprise-sized retail companies, will use the new funding to bolster its omichannel loyalty solutions (i.e. linking brink & mortar to digital platforms). According to PandoDaily this means “building out the research and development team, building out its mobile software development kit, expanding its sales and marketing team, and building a platform that supports Android devices.” In addition to the equity raise, the company also raised $2m in debt.

Announced: 3/12/13  Stage: Series B  Participating Institutional Investors: Intel Capital (lead), Fung Capital USA, Crosslink Capital  Previous Investment: $4.5m Series A; $1.4m Seed  Founded: 2010

Tastemade Raises $5.3m. The You-Tube-centric multi-channel food programming network, founded last year by three top executives from Demand Media, will use the proceeds to build out its network of affiliated channels and develop more original content for the Tastemade channel. According to the Los Angeles Business Journal, the company received financing from YouTube as part of YouTube’s strategy to increase high-quality original content (a strategy that did not pan out for most partners), and built a 7,000-square-foot production studio in Santa Monica that features a kitchen set. According to Geoff Yang, the lead investor at Redpoint Ventures, the team is focused on creating “what traditional networks like Food Network, Cooking Channel, or Travel Channel did – with one difference: building it for a connected, broadband world.”

Announced: 3/04/13  Stage: Series A  Participating Institutional Investors: Redpoint Ventures  Previous Investment: Undisclosed Amount from YouTube  Founded: 2012

PARTNERSHIPS

TripAdvisor Partners with Factual to Create Global Restaurant Data Partnership. To bolster TripAdvisor’s dining options and reviews with location-specific restaurant data, the company partnered with Factual, one of the largest global geo-location databases which will in turn, receive TripAdvisor’s user-generated review data to help to maintain Factual’s Global Places data. According to PandoDaily, Factual already has “relationships with Foursquare, Yelp, LivingSocial, SimpleGeo and Trulia, while it is widely reported, though not confirmed publicly, that it also powers elements of Facebook’s and Google’s platforms.”

Evernote Food Integrates OpenTable and Foursquare with new update. In order to improve functionality for Evernote’s mobile app dedicated to documenting cooking and dining experiences, the new features allows users to discover restaurants and dishes through Foursquare’s ratings and reserve a table through OpenTable, directly within the app. The company also added additional recipe sharing, ability to import recipes from Evernote into Evernote Food, and regional recipe content partnerships in China and Japan.

Locu Partners with Automattic to Bring Real-Time Menus to WordPress.com Restaurant Sites. After launching a restaurant-focused vertical in November, WordPress.com improved restaurateurs’ ability to update their menu through a new integration with the menu management system and dashboard, Locu. The integration provides menu templates, printable menus, enhanced SEO and free advertising to Locu’s content partners (including OpenTable and CitySearch).

LevelUp Announces Several Key Mobile Payment Partnerships. Heartland, one of the largest payments processors, partnered with LevelUp to accelerate national acceptance of m-payments through a national rollout of a mobile payment solution. As FastCasual notes, “In addition to the LevelUp app for individual merchants, the companies will also co-promote white-labeled apps for businesses with multiple locations.” At SXSW, LevelUp partnered with Nokia to demonstrate the service, and also debuted a newly-refined version of its mobile phone scanner which it designed using a 3-D printer from MakerBot to prototype the hardware.

INDUSTRY LANDSCAPE

As The Food Tech & Media ecosystem continues to see rapid change, we created The Food Tech & Media Industry Map  to help entrepreneurs, participants and investors understand this quickly evolving landscape.

Let us know about your recent or upcoming funding, partnerships or acquisitions here.

Check out last month’s round-up here.

Would you be interested in a round-up of agriculture-related funding, partnerships and acquisitions? Let us know in the comments below.

The post Food Tech Media Startup Funding, M&A and Partnership Deals: March 2013 appeared first on Food+Tech Connect.

From home cooking to the restaurant experience, technology-focused food startups are enhancing the way consumers engage with food. These startups are creating significant value for consumers and notable opportunities for restaurants and brands to better understand and provide value to their customers. As the food tech sector matures, we are seeing an increasing number of these companies being funded or acquired by industry players. This monthly column highlights the most interesting acquisitions, financings and partnerships within the Food Tech & Media ecosystem – digital content, social, local, mobile, e-commerce, payments, marketing and analytics – to give you insights into the latest funding and growth trends.

“Delivery” was a major investment theme in February. Ranging from restaurant dishes to subscription-based models to in-home chefs, investors and startups are betting that a huge number of consumers will continue to increase their reliance on the convenience of online ordering and delivery. While these cash flow businesses can be appealing (as investor Gary Vaynerchuk noted on a recent panel: “When people buy [stuff], you make money. That’s good.”), managing the costs of distribution (mainly shipping) for food businesses has proved to be challenging. Profits are elusive without considerable scale. Furthermore, beyond the simple transaction, successful new models need to merge the physical and virtual worlds by utilizing data, analytics and ingenuity to generate new methods of creating and capturing value.

M&A

Fancy Acquires Samplrs. Commerce-focused photo-sharing social network Fancy, which itself has raised $44.4m, made its first acquisition with Samplrs, a NYC delivery/subscription startup for local artisan food. The acquisition will likely bolster Fancy’s own subscription service, Fancy Box, and as Techcrunch notes, the new food offerings can be used “to steer the site further into direct commerce.”  This month Fancy also partnered with Google+ to power ecommerce functionality with a recently-launched commerce platform.

Announced: 2/22/13  Terms: Not specified  Previous Investment: Not specified  Founded: May 2011

Yahoo Acquires Alike. In a move to push deeper into local mobile discovery, Yahoo acquired mobile app Alike, which helps users discover nearby venues (restaurants, local businesses) based on their personal interests. The team will join the mobile product group at Yahoo, joining other recent acqui-hire mobile talent including the team from Stamped, and the existing iPhone and Web apps will be shut down. As CEO, Marissa Mayer has often emphasized, Yahoo is looking to mobile to rekindle growth in its user base and will continue to focus on smaller acquisitions under $100m.

Announced: 2/12/13  Terms: Not Specified  Previous Investment: Not Specified  Founded: 2011

Jawbone Acquires MassiveHealth. Wearable computing hardware company Jawbone acquired mobile app maker MassiveHealth, in a move to improve user experience for the personal health focused wearable computing device UP. Known for its photo-based nutrition app The Eatery, TechCrunch reports it was primarily a talent acquisition.

Announced: 2/04/13  Terms: ‘Mid to low tens of millions’, stock + cash  Previous Investment: $2.25m  Institutional investors included Felicis Ventures, Mohr Davidow Ventures, Greylock Partners, Andreessen Horowitz, Charles River Ventures, Collaborative Fund  Founded: December 2010

FUNDING

LocalResponse Raises $1.5m.  The New York-based social advertising platform helps marketers respond to consumer “intent” in real-time and works with over 125 advertisers, working with brands ranging from Coca-Cola to Arby’s to 7-Eleven. With the recent launch of the company’s new product, Desktop Intent Targeting, CEO Nihal Mehta states that the company’s goal is to “make ads way more contextual and relevant so they become more like content that consumers can engage with.” TechCrunch reports that the “startup is almost at profitability, and the company is now on a $10 million annual run rate.”

Announced: 2/27/13  Stage: Seed  Participating Institutional Investors: Cava Capital (lead), Extreme Venture Partners, Verizon, Advancit Capital, WIN  Previous Investment: $5m Venture Round; $1.5m Angel Round  Launched: April 2011

EatStreet Raises $2m.  The Madison, WI-based restaurant ordering and marketing platform is focused on secondary markets across the US, and providing small and medium sized restaurants with competitive tools they often can’t afford. CEO Matt Howard tells TechCrunch, “EatStreet’s main goal is to give restaurants websites, their own mobile apps, their own mobile websites, their own Facebook ordering – we’re giving them everything they need for online ordering…we push more of a platform approach”.  The company has already grown to 20 cities, and will use the money to expand into new (secondary) markets.

Announced: 2/26/13  Stage: Series A  Participating Institutional Investors: Cornerstone Opportunity Partners (lead), Great Oaks Venture Capital, Independence Equity, gener8tor  Previous Investment: Not Specified  Founded: 2009

Blue Apron Raises $3m.  Positioned as “a new concept in grocery delivery,” the Brooklyn-based subscription meal kit startup delivers weekly boxes that include the fresh ingredients and recipes to make three meals. Currently only available on the East Coast, AllThingsD reports that “Blue Apron will be using the funding to expand nationwide over the next several months and to increase marketing. It will also be looking for ways to accommodate customers with specific dietary restrictions.” Even with the handful of recent shutterings in the space, the subscription meal/kit-delivery arena is becoming increasingly crowded.

Announced: 2/19/13  Stage: Series A  Participating Institutional Investors: Bessemer Venture Partners, First Round Capital, Graph Ventures Previous Investment: $800k Seed  Founded: Summer 2012

Kitchensurfing Raises approximately $1m.  The marketplace for hiring private chefs and “community for a unique food and social experience” took in an angel round to expand beyond New York and Berlin, and announced the launch of its third city, Boston. Co-founder Chris Muscarella explains Kitchensurfing’s positioning to PandoDaily, “We’re shifting the cost structure of how a restaurant works.”  In addition to the impressive recent addition of Ben Leventhal (the co-founder of Eater) as its President, Kitchensurfing attracted an elite set of investors beyond the institutional names below, including Chris Dixon, David Tisch, Tumblr founder David Karp, Joanne Wilson, Homeaway co-founder Brian Sharples, Blue Hill Farm executive chef David Barber, angel investors Josh Stylman and Peter Hershberg, former Tumblr president John Maloney, and Groupon founding CTO Ken Pelletier.

Announced: 2/13/13  Stage: Angel  Participating Institutional Investors: SV Angel, Founder Collective  Previous Investment: Not Specified  Founded: 2011

ClubW Raises $3.1m.  The Los Angeles-based subscription-based wine ecommerce company is, as PandoDaily cleverly put it, “what the wine of the month club would be if it were invented in 2012 rather than 1972.” The company curates and personalizes the wines based on each member’s taste profile, and in early 2012 stated that it was already on track to sell $1 million worth of wine for the year. PandoDaily’s Michael Carney is astute to point out that “given the uncertainty around e-commerce in general, and many of the local category leaders in specific, ClubW is fortunate to have raised this round. Its atypical fundraising strategy may have contributed.”  With 10 employees, and fulfillment outsourced, the use of proceeds is to ramp up customer acquisition efforts through both online marketing, and offline grassroots campaigns.

Announced: 2/07/13  Stage: Series A  Participating Institutional Investors: Crosscut Ventures (lead), Guild Capital, Siemer Ventures, Brener International Group, 500 Startups, Amplify  Previous Investment: $500k Seed  Founded: August 2011

MomentFeed Raises $1.8m.  After launching out of beta in January 2012, the location-based analytics and campaign management enterprise platform is used by multi-store chains (including 8,000 7-Eleven stores) to both manage and understand all social media activity around their physical locations. According to PandoDaily, “The decision to raise a seed round wasn’t one of limited interest. Rather, the company is growing so fast, according to founder and CEO Rob Reed, that the insiders decided to raise as little as possible and keep the action to themselves.” Although “initial adoption of the platform was actually slower than expected,” it is important to note that Reed has seen an evolution in the priorities of large brands, and that they “are increasingly recognizing the value of the social presence of each individual local.”

Announced: Feb 2013  Stage: Seed Extension  Participating Institutional Investors:  Gold Hill Capital, DFJ Frontier, DFJ-JAIC Venture Partners, Double M Capital, Daher Capital  Previous Investment: $1.2 m Seed  Founded: April 2010

Perkville Raises $500k.  The San Francisco-based SaaS loyalty program platform helps merchants build customized loyalty programs, and links rewards to customer’s email addresses. POS integration includes MerchantOS, Vend, Erply, VisualTouch, Revel Systems, and the loyalty platform also has a cloud-based interface for a tablet or desktop. The funding will be used to bolster Perkville’s sales and marketing team, as well as enhance platform functionality.

Announced: 1/30/13  Stage: Seed Extension  Participating Institutional Investors: Band of Angels, Keiretsu Forum  Previous Investment: $700k Seed  Product Launch:  October 2011

PARTNERSHIPS

Foursquare partners with Visa and MasterCard; users sync cards to receive targeted discounts from participating merchants. With the new partnerships, which will be a core part of the company’s revenue model going forward, Foursquare will be paid on a cost-per-transaction basis. Burger King, and its 7,000-plus locations, signed on as the pilot partner. In other news from Foursquare this month, the partnership with Voice Media Group went live, which adds local content from the regional magazines like Miami New Times, L.A. Weekly, and Village Voice to the “Explore” recommendation feature in Foursquare.

General Mills and Procter & Gamble Co. partner with CircleUp Networks, an equity-based crowdfunding startup that promotes early-stage consumer brands. A compelling value exchange for all parties involved, the partnership gives the CPG giants the ability to interact with, mentor and invest in innovative consumer products companies with early traction. And, according to the Wall Street Journal, CircleUp is also providing insightful industry data by “providing trend reports to General Mills and P&G about startups in 18 categories, including pet foods, beverages, snack foods and infant products.”

ShopKeep POS and LevelUp launch payment platform which integrates iPad POS and mobile this payments on a single device. In a move that will benefit the growth prospects for both companies, ShopKeep, an iPad point-of-sale solution and LevelUp, a mobile payment and loyalty system (which offers zero payment processing fees), will now offer an alternative way for customers to complete their payment and allow merchants to consolidate cash, credit and LevelUp transactions all in one spot. ShopKeep has been strategically going after partnerships with mobile and online payments companies, and has announced similar partnerships with Paypal and Dwolla. Similarly, LevelUp has been focused on the transition from product to platform with its recent launch of public APIs, and an SDK for its white-label solution.

INDUSTRY LANDSCAPE

As The Food Tech & Media ecosystem continues to see rapid change, we created The Food Tech & Media Industry Map  to help entrepreneurs, participants and investors understand this quickly evolving landscape.

Let us know about your recent or upcoming funding, partnerships or acquisitions here.

Check out last month’s round-up here.

Would you be interested in a round-up of agriculture-related funding, partnerships and acquisitions? Let us know in the comments below.

The post Food Tech Media Startup Funding, M&A and Partnership Deals: February 2013 appeared first on Food+Tech Connect.

Harvard Common Press and Food + Tech Connect are excited to bring together the vibrant food community at SXSW for the first-ever SXSW Food and Tech Cocktail Party. We’re inviting food entrepreneurs, product manufacturers, technologists, investors and other food system innovators to join us for networking, drinks and delicious Oaxacan appetizers on Friday, March 8 from 4:30-7pm at El Naranjo (85 Rainey Street off of East 1st).

As the largest digital interactive conference in the United States, SXSW brings together some of the best and brightest minds, including a growing community of food tech entrepreneurs. But, as anyone who has attended in past years can attest, the festival’s size and scope make it difficult to meet and take advantage of the wealth of talent and shared passions present in Austin. Which is why we’re hosting this Food and Tech Cocktail Party to make it easier for those working at the intersection of food, innovation and technology to convene in one place and start conversations that can carry forward throughout the rest of the festival and beyond.

You can register for the event below or by going here .

We look forward to seeing you at SXSW!

** Planning your own event? List it here and we will share it with the Food+Tech community.

The post Announcing the SXSW Food & Tech Cocktail Party appeared first on Food+Tech Connect.

2012 was an amazing period of growth for FTC. I secured fellowship funding from CUNY to hire my first paid employee and validate key business model assumptions. With that employee, I launched a new website, increased our editorial coverage and created a product development strategy. I also produced 6 events, consulted for a wide range of food-related companies and traveled around the country speaking about the emerging food tech sector.

Then, in November, everything changed due to some unforeseen circumstances. My employee took a higher paying job at another company 5 weeks before Hack//Meat, our marquee event. I scrambled to pull together a new team for the event (thank you Veronica and Rachael) and began working 14-18 hour days. Hack//Meat was a major success (we even had a forward in The New York Time Green Blog!), but the loss of my employee set me back close to 4 months with other things we were working on.

When January hit, I quickly discovered it would be impossible for me to balance hiring a new team, finalizing event and product strategy for 2013 and selling sponsorships, as well as managing consulting projects and editorial. There are, after all, only so many hours in a day! I knew that I had to prioritize planning, building a team and income generation to ensure the future sustainability of the company. So that's what I've been doing for the past couple of weeks and will continue to do through the end of February. It's why editorial will continue to be a little light for now. But I promise we're working on some really exciting things that I look forward to sharing with yo

u in early March.

Some major takeaways from my experience over the last couple of months:

The Hardest Conversations Are The Most Important Ones to Have: Setting clear expectations from the beginning is important in any kind of relationship, especially in working relationships. Addressing the topics or issues you find yourself pushing off will likely save you time, money and peace of mind in the long run.

Always Be Hiring: Much like the adage “always be closing,” always be hiring is my new mantra. Most startups don't have the luxury of time or budget to find the perfect candidates when an employee leaves. As a startup, it can also be difficult to find people that share your vision and can handle the inevitable uncertainty that working at a startup brings. I'm going to start taking meetings with more people that inquire about positions at FTC, and I will be looking for people at events that I host or attend.

Rest & Work-Life Balance Are Key: I was completely burnt out and stressed after Hack//Meat. I had trouble sleeping, which meant I was less productive. Once I committed to sleeping 8 hours a night no matter what, focused on planning and made time for my friends and family, everything suddenly felt manageable and I've been able to make significant progress.

Now, it's your turn. What have you learned from your fails? How have you overcome some of your greatest challenges with securing funding, launching and growing your company? Being an entrepreneur is not easy by definition, but there are some unique challenges in the food and health tech sectors, and we all have a lot to learn from one another's experiences.

FTC invites you to share your stories as part of our new “Fail Friday” series. Fail Friday will be a place for food and health startups to write about their challenges and lessons learned. We'll do our part to promote your story and encourage feedback from investors and other startups in the community. And as an little extra incentive for anyone that's on the fence, we're guaranteeing a startup profile for anyone that shares their story. Sign up to share your story here.

Thank all of you for your continued support and understanding as FTC grows.

- Danielle

The post Announcing Fail Friday: Learn From Food Startup Failures appeared first on Food+Tech Connect.

From home cooking to the restaurant experience, technology startups are enhancing the way consumers engage with food. These startups are creating significant value for consumers and notable opportunities for restaurants and brands to better understand and provide value to their customers. As the food tech sector matures, we are seeing an increasing number of these companies being funding or acquired by industry players. So, we’re kicking off 2013 with this monthly column highlighting the most interesting acquisitions, financings and partnerships within the Food Tech & Media ecosystem – digital content, social, local, mobile, e-commerce, payments, marketing and analytics – to give you insights into the latest funding and growth trends.

“The digital restaurant” was a major theme in January as technologies focused on loyalty, marketing and ordering/payments saw significant investments and acquisitions. However, substantial disruption in the restaurant industry still has not occurred as rapidly as many entrepreneurs had hoped. As investor Dave McClure impatiently points out in his treatise on the Food Tech Revolution, “everyone eats, everyone is online; what the hell we waiting for?”

It’s true that establishing a digital platform increases visibility, gives restaurants a direct method of communication with customers and allows them to utilize and analyze tremendous amount of data. But competition for consumer and operator mindshare is fierce. Given the slim margins and generally slow adoption by restaurant operators, both established participants and new entrants need to aggressively focus on partnerships and more collaborative approaches if they hope to achieve meaningful growth.

M&A

OpenTable Acquires Foodspotting. The food world was ablaze last week when the visually-focused food-sharing and recommendations app Foodspotting announced it had joined the OPEN family. While there are many different perspectives on which aspects of the acquisition are the most compelling, the somewhat modest pricetag suggests that despite its engaged userbase and recent partnerships designed to increase revenue and utility to users, Foodspotting still faced a challenging environment to scale to the next level. Take note: even with numerous partners, it is increasingly difficult to build a model that requires massive mobile user adoption, and the vast, hyperlocal world of restaurants is a tough nut to crack.

Announced: 1/29/13 Terms: $10m Previous Investment: Approx. $3.75m Institutional Investors: 2020 Ventures, 500 Startups, BlueRun Ventures, Felicis Ventures, High Line Venture Partners, Zelkova Ventures Product Launch: March 2010

Delivery Hero Fully Acquires Hungryhouse and EatitNow.co.uk. The European online food ordering market continues to heat up with the announcement that Berlin-based Delivery Hero fully acquired UK-based Hungryhouse and also purchased EatitNow.co.uk. In February 2012, Delivery Hero acquired a ‘pivotal’ stake in Hungryhouse, but the complete acquisition allows Delivery Hero to triple its monthly business to approximately £6 million in sales across 11,000 restaurants, reports The Next Web. Interestingly, rather than an exit for the Hungryhouse team, they “re-invested 98% of the purchase price of [their] shares [back] into Delivery Hero,” and Hungryhouse co-founder Tony Charles will be taking a product innovation role, helping the company expand and develop its service well into the future. Delivery Hero has grown significantly in the last year through its aggressive acquisition of other companies, and it does not seem to be slowing down anytime soon.

Performance Marketing Brands (dba Ebates) Acquires Pushpins. In a move to expand into the grocery category, as well as offline coupons, PMB, a conglomerate of several online shopping/rewards programs, snatched up the mobile grocery shopping startup Pushpins which includes a mobile coupon app, the grocery product API SimpleUPC, and nutrition comparison app Food Fight!!.

Announced: 1/19/13 Terms: Estimated $10-$15m. The deal was reportedly structured as “cash with some earn-out targets based on product and business incentives.” Previous Investment: “Sub $1m seed round” from Lightspeed Venture Partners, Archimedes Capital. Product Launch: Nov 2010 

Pinterest Acquires Punchfork. Deemed a great outcome for both Pinterest and Jeff Miller, the one-man team behind social recipe curation website Punchfork, and a sad outcome for enthusiastic users, the acquisition means Miller will soon shut down the popular website, API and mobile apps as Miller joins Pinterest’s engineering team to help improve the discovery product. Punchfork’s social ranking of recipes and highly visual UI helped it stand out in the crowded recipe space, however Miller’s focus on building out an API business model with robust technology  (vs. an advertising model) was likely an influencing consideration in the deal. It is notable that this is Pinterest’s first acquisition.

Announced: 1/03/13 Terms: Not specified; CEO to join engineering team Previous Investment: Bootstrapped Founded: May 2010

FUNDING

OLO Raises $5m. The mobile/online ordering platform for restaurants has reached profitability, and more than doubled its users last year to over 2 million. OLO plans to use the new funding to “aggressively” expand the team and scale up operations. The new strategic investment from PayPal speaks to OLO’s ambitions to ultimately expand into a full mobile commerce platform, beyond the restaurant category. CEO Noah Glass explains in an interview with TechCrunch, “Since June 2005, I thought that mobile commerce was a huge and compelling idea, but for it to really gain mainstream adoption, we had to find the right application for it … PayPal’s thinking is about being an online-plus-mobile account… is incredibly aligned.”

Announced: 1/24/13 Stage: Series B Participating Investors: PayPal, David Frankel, RRE Ventures, Core Capital Partners Previous Investment: $7m Series A Founded: 2005 (Previously called GoMobo)

Abe’s Market Raises $5m. With its third round of funding, the online marketplace for natural and organic products Abe’s Market  plans to invest in marketing, hiring more talent, technology enhancements, content creation and product expansion. Although the e-commerce portal has referred to itself in simple terms as an online farmer’s market, it has been able to surpass the growth of other specialty products sites by broadening its focus to include everyday non-food items, and has augmented the shopping experience with a comprehensive product quality system that categorizes every item by every attribute (gluten free, fair trade, GMO free, Petroleum free, etc.) so customers can find exactly what they want through a targeted search.

Announced: 1/17/13 Stage: Venture Round Participating Investors: Carmel Ventures (lead), Index Ventures, Accel Partners, Beringea, OurCrowd Previous Investment: $3.4m Series A, and undisclosed seed capital Founded: Sept 2009

ChowNow Raises $3m. White label SaaS mobile and Facebook ordering startup ChowNow has “hundreds of restaurants in 44 states,” and plans to use the new funding to further build both its team and its product offering. The company also plans to expand into the catering order segment - a rapidly growing space for startups – and add additional CRM and analytics features for restaurants.

Announced: 1/16/13 (Closed in Sept ’12) Stage: Series A Participating Investors: GRP Partners (lead), Daher Capital, Double M Capital, Karlin Ventures, Velos Partners Previous Investment: $1m Product Launch: May 2012, Graduated from Launchpad LA

PARTNERSHIPS

Virgin America partners with restaurant loyalty platform MOGL for Elevate® Frequent Flyer Program. Given the numerous challenges that many restaurant-focused tech companies face as they attempt to scale, this is a tremendous partnership for the startup MOGL, which increases both brand visibility and utility to users, and provides added incentive for restaurants to join the network. Elevate members who sign up for MOGL will be able to earn 10% cash back from every bill at MOGL partner restaurants, and then exchange that cash to Elevate points each month. Adding to the feel-good component, MOGL also donates a meal through Feeding America every time MOGL members spend more than $20 on a check.

Epson bolsters its OmniLink POS solutions by partnering with mobile loyalty rewards platform RewardLoop and operational and consumer analytics provider Livelenz. By partnering directly with the POS provider, both RewardLoop and Livelenz are able to skip to the front of the line and have direct interaction with all OmniLink restaurant operators. RewardLoop’s cloud hosted, self service rewards platform resides on the printer – not the POS system – and prints QR codes on the receipts for customers to scan. Although the current solution is bolstered by printer/POS partnerships, the company views NFC as a more compelling solution and is “poised to take advantage of this technology as it becomes more prevalent in consumer markets.”

Restaurant menu dashboard and local business data provider Locu partners with TripAdvisor and CitySearch. Following a partnership with OpenTable in November, Locu scored a big distribution win by powering menus, deals, and more to the mobile and web users of TripAdvisor, which has been recently focusing more on its restaurant content, and CitySearch – although it doesn’t appear that sister property UrbanSpoon is part of the partnership.

PayPal takes another step outside of the ecommerce world to partner with NCR Corp’s POS technology for restaurants and gas stations. Ahead of PayPal’s announcement that it was a strategic investor in OLO’s latest round of funding, it made a splash by announcing it will be further expanding into the physical restaurant category through a deep implementation into NCR’s Mobile Pay app and NCR Online Ordering, and perhaps more interestingly, vise versa, as PayPal will integrate NCR’s Mobile Pay merchants into its own branded app. VentureSource observes that this partnership “could end up being of the most significant developments for PayPal in its quest to become the One True Payment Service” (NCR’s customer base includes 38% of the top 100 U.S. restaurant chains). While this may be true, neither are monogamous, and NCR has stated that it is open to similar deals with other mobile payments providers down the line.

ADDITIONAL NEWS

Gourmet meal delivery startup Pop-Up Pantry shuts down operations. While accomplishing a lot of momentum in just six months – including 1,300 monthly paying customers and securing an innovative partnership with TV show “MasterChef” – the economies of scale were not achieved quickly enough, and the cost of shipping the meals was a hurdle they couldn’t surpass.

Stage: Seed Participating Investors: GRP Partners (lead), Crosscut Ventures Investment Amount: $1.7m Product Launch: June 2012, Graduated from Launchpad LA

Ethnic cooking and monthly commerce startup Culture Kitchen closes shop. As part of the second class of 500 Startups, Culture Kitchen started as an online site that featured classes on how to cook ethnic dishes and evolved into a monthly commerce venture that sold DIY Ethnic Cooking Kits. Despite an enthusiastic community, the team decided it was time to move on, and in their farewell post  the co-founders candidly discussed the difficulties that confronted them, including “challenges with sales, bumps in the road with funding and the sometimes dwindling team energy from working very long hours.”

Stage: Seed Participating Investors: 500 Startups, from the incubator’s Design Fund Investment Amount: NA Product Launch: August 2011

INDUSTRY LANDSCAPE

As The Food Tech & Media ecosystem continues to see rapid change, we created The Food Tech & Media Industry Map  to help entrepreneurs, participants and investors understand this quickly evolving landscape.

Let us know about your recent or upcoming funding, partnerships or acquisitions here.

Would you be interested in a round-up of agriculture-related funding, partnerships and acquisitions? Let us know in the comments below.

The post Food Tech & Media Funding, M&A and Partnership Deals: January 2013 appeared first on Food+Tech Connect.

Tracking more than 100,000 unique menus with 22 millions items from independent and chain restaurants across the country, companies can use the dashboard to test ideas for products, ingredient combinations, geographic variations, preparations and descriptive sensory terms in near real-time; the tool can be used for both product development and marketing strategy. “Our goal is to turn menu research into something that happens daily or hourly. We want to make easier for companies to quickly sort signal from noise and track the menu concepts that matter to their bottom line,” said Co-founder Justin Massa in a phone interview.

How Food Genius Reports Work

Say you're a big CPG company looking to capitalize on the unique grain trend by developing a new chicken and grain-based frozen entree. You have a number of rice-based dishes, but after Consumer Report's report on high levels of arsenic found in rice came out you're looking to diversify your grain offerings. You've been hearing a lot about quinoa recently, but will it have mass market appeal?

Using Food Genius Reports you can tap into GrubHub and CHD Expert data to see that quinoa is currently only mentioned on 1 percent of both chain and restaurant menus, it most commonly appears in salad, and there is no statistically significant data for the pairing of it with chicken, however, beans and fish are frequently paired proteins. Quinoa most commonly appears in the West and Pacific Northwest areas of the country, with an average price of $12.52 per dish.

You can also use the dashboard to determine the most commonly used descriptive and sensory words, in this c

ase: wrap, wrapped, organic and grilled. Yes, you should forget about that deep fried quinoa dish undergoing R&D. Finally, Food Genius Reports also allows you to search for popular quinoa recipes on the web. This functionality is currently powered by Punchfork's API, which will likely be changing in the near future, given that the company was recently acquired by Pinterest  (click for lessons learned on Recipe API business model) and will be shuttering its API.

For now, the company is not offering analysis of historical data, but data is updated quarterly, and users can compare reports created over time to track the trajectory of a trend. In the future, I would imagine companies will also want to use social data, from, say, Food Genius' data partner Grubhub, to gain a deeper understanding of consumer insights, demographics and sentiment.

The Challenges of Selling to Big Companies

While the offering is pricey, 5 companies – manufacturers, a consultant and a grocery brand – committed to buying the product even before it was ready, reports Massa. Until now, it's been a 6 week sales cycle on average, but at $2,000/month for an individual plan, $3,500 /month for the premium plan and $10,000/month for the enterprise plan, the longer sales cycle seems worth it. Large food manufacturers that are doing around $100 million in sales have proved to be surprisingly nimble and easy for Food Genius to work with, says Massa, as many lack formal procurement processes and can therefore make decisions relatively quickly. Working with gigantic customers, however, is another story. Food Genius finds that you may get a yes almost immediately, but the procurement process can often take up to 6 months or more.

Food Genius' other major challenge is in selling a new dramatically new way of conducting product research. Reports requires a company to do a lot more work than they've done in the past (i.e. hiring a market research firm do the research and produce a report). But Food Genius is not worried. “This tool is made for the folks that do want to do that work- they are ones who truly want to differentiate themselves,” says Massa.

What do you think? Are you optimistic about Food Genius' ability to translate big restaurant menu data into actionable insights for the food industry? Why or why not?  

The post Food Genius Reports Launches to Revolutionize Food Trends Research appeared first on Food+Tech Connect.

 Contributions to Hacking Meat do not necessarily represent the opinions of Food+Tech Connect. The conversation is designed to create a forum for discussion and debate, so we encourage you to share your feedback in the comments section below, on Twitter using #hackmeat, or on Facebook. If you would like to submit an official response to this post or any others in the series, please email info [at] foodtechconnect.com .

 By Dawn Undurraga and Kari Hamerschlag of Environmental Working Group

Quality over quantity—this is the future of meat.

Harnessing the power of technology and social media to popularize this idea is essential.  We need to develop a compelling digital tool that will empower eaters with information to build demand for sustainably raised meat.  At the same time, we must find a way to satisfy eaters while they dine on less meat overall.

Americans’ appetite for meat—92 billions of pounds a year from 9 billion animals—is more than three times the global average.  An adult American male eats almost twice his recommended protein needs.  Keeping up with this demand for quantity has created a cheap, industrial meat system that takes a steep toll on air, water, land, climate and health.  Producing industrial meat requires large amounts of pesticides, chemical fertilizer, fuel, feed and water.  It also generates greenhouse gases and large amounts of toxic manure and wastewater that pollute groundwater, rivers, streams and, ultimately, the ocean.

But it doesn’t have to be that way.  Meat raised on pasture helps conserve soil, reduce erosion and water pollution, increase carbon sequestration and preserve biodiversity and wildlife.  Organic meat may be safer. A study funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture found that organic poultry was less likely to harbor the food poisoning bacteria salmonella than industrial poultry.

There is a growing appreciation for quality meat.  And now meat-loving Americans are starting to embrace a dietary paradigm that improves health and decreases the impact on the environment by transitioning to a diet that includes more plants and sustainably raised meat.  It’s an empowering and tasty choice.

Many “innovators” and “early adopters” of this way of life were in New York City to reimagine a better future for meat.

As we embark on this mission, we would do well to remember what the theory of Diffusion of Innovations tells us about how new ideas and technologies propagate.  They are adopted best when simple, yet remarkable ideas spread through a social system: we need to build a framework to help sustainable meat reach critical mass.  Consumers need to be empowered to help convince large purchasers of meat products to expand significantly their offerings of sustainably raised options.

The Environmental Working Group has been hard at work supporting these innovators.  In 2011, we released our Meat Eater’s Guide to Climate Change + Health—a comprehensive consumer-friendly guide that documents the lifecycle carbon footprin

t, environmental and health impacts of common protein foods.

EWG found that promoting “greener” meat choices was a good way to meet consumers where they were.  To address the higher costs of sustainable meat, EWG promoted the idea that if people would eat less, then they could afford to eat healthier, more sustainably raised meat.  EWG’s guide urged people to take the Meatless Monday challenge by cutting meat out of their diet one day a week.

The Meat Eater’s Guide has reached millions of mainstream consumers through widespread media coverage and has logged well over half a million visitors.  EWG wants to build on that success and the success of the thriving Meatless Monday campaign.

To take the next step, we need digital tools that encourage consumers to try one or more greener meat options over the course of the week.  Consumers need a way to document, track and share the value and impact of 1) increasing consumption of sustainably raised meat and 2) reducing their overall meat consumption by different quantities.

This tool should make it easy for consumers to tell local supermarkets, restaurants and other vendors that the demand is growing for more healthful, sustainably raised meat.  And we need to highlight resources such as the Eat Well Guide/Sustainable Table so that consumers can quickly find out where to purchase “greener” meats.

Cheap industrial meat affects all segments of society, both directly and indirectly.  If people buy more sustainably- raised meat and eat less meat, they can have a positive impact on the environment and everyone involved from farm to fork—producers, workers, shoppers and eaters.  

What do you think? Can digital tools encourage consumers to spend more of their dollars on sustainably raised meat?  Let us know in the comments section below, on Twitter using #hackmeat, or on Facebook

Dawn Undurraga is a Registered Dietitian and the staff nutritionist at the Environmental Working Group, a research and advocacy organization in Washington, DC. Dawn became fascinated with the intersection of nutrition research and policy while interning at the USDA's Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion during the formulation of the 2010 Dietary Guidelines for Americans. Prior to joining EWG, Dawn worked at a community health center in Boston, where she proudly served as an Albert Schweitzer fellow, and in both clinical and surveillance cancer research in the San Francisco Bay Area. She completed her Master's in Nutrition Communication at Tufts University and her undergraduate degree in Nutritional Sciences and Toxicology from UC Berkeley.

Kari Hamerschlag  is a senior Food and Agriculture Analyst with the Environmental Working Group focusing on healthy, local, organic and sustainable food and agriculture policy. She started her career twenty years ago as an organizer, researcher and advocate for socially and environmentally sound development policy, mostly focused in Latin America. Prior to joining EWG, she worked for nearly a decade with a number of non-profits on fair trade, sustainable food and ag policy issues. Kari has a Masters from UC Berkeley in Latin American studies and City and Regional Planning. She is an avid telemark skier and loves hiking with her dog Shoki in the East Bay Hills.

The post Hacking Meat: Hacking Meat to Empower Eaters appeared first on Food+Tech Connect.