If there’s one thing we can all agree on, it’s that food is a darn good thing.
So it comes as welcome news that recent weeks have seen a smorgasbord of food developments…
… Including some delicious new tech:
- Bear Robotics announced a partnership with the NBA’s Houston Rockets to serve drinks and snacks to fans with the Servi bot (how creative)
- Amazon plans to introduce pay-with-your-palm service at a Whole Foods in Seattle
- Domino’s recently announced driverless pizza deliveries in Houston through a partnership with Nuro
- Hazel Technologies raised $70m to keep harvested produce fresh for 3x longer with tiny, antifungal vapor-releasing packets for commercial food boxes
Startups around the world are kneading dough, too
The pandemic has offered the perfect recipe for scaling food platforms to raise money and expand operations:
- Belgium’s Deliverect raised $65m for its ordering platform that serviced 30m orders in 2020, up ~750% YoY
- India’s Swiggy raised $800m at a $5B valuation for its delivery platform
- Spain’s Glovo grabbed $528m to help offer its 10m customers deliveries in 10-15 minutes
- Norway’s Kolonial bagged $265m and now controls ~70% of the country’s online grocery delivery market
But sometimes ‘food’ doesn’t really mean food
- Reese’s just announced a partnership with HipDot Cosmetics for a peanut butter cup-inspired makeup line.
- Busch Beer is offering $20k to fetch a new “chief tasting officer” for its Dog Brew bone broth “beer” (for dogs, to be clear) that quickly sold out last year.
- Pepsi is bringing Pepsi Blue back to shelves this summer.
Like it or not, we’re into weird drinks at The Hustle, so we’ll be giving this last one a try.
