Food and Big Data
Today, data analytics is used by any digital business. Daily Companies
To keep track of deliveries, overseas The Cheesecake Factory uses special programs fromIBM.Business continuously collects data from 200 restaurants in the U.S. and monitorsIf something is wrong, the company will finderror in logistics at any stage of the chain and will quickly eliminateProblem.
There are also more non-trivial developments, such as the Brazilian e-nose technology.The creators equipped the system with gas sensors and taught the algorithm to determine the ripeness of peaches in the orchard.Even an experienced farmer cannot always cope with such a task.
There are similar examples in Russia too: Recently, Local Roots, a greens supplier for Vkusville, announced the automation of basil cultivation using technology from the startup Fermata. Greenhouse sensors collect data on plant growth, and AI analyzes it and warns of possible diseases. Moscow "Kitchen on the District" every day analyzes the demand for food in all regions of its presence. She changes the menu for a specific point, workload and time of day. We at justfood are going in the same direction: we collect data, automatically take into account feedback and adjust nutrition programs for customers. Our goal is to become Netflix in the food industry: analyze the consumer, compare their profile with others, and create a personalized nutrition program for them that they are likely to enjoy.
Thanks to big data, in a couple of years wewe will no longer need a large selection of dishes. The market is moving from a wide assortment to meeting individual needs. Soon, services with smart systems trained on Big Data will know which foods you are allergic to, which dishes you like more, and that on Saturdays you prefer to delight yourself with dessert - although on other days you stick to a diet.
Ready-to-eat meals and"TV dinners"
Russians are accustomed to frozen food from supermarkets -dumplings, cutlets, semi-finished products. But they decide to order ready-made food, and especially subscription menus, only “under the knife.” However, a completely different approach to the “readiness” of dishes is relevant abroad: in the USA and developed countries, the culture of consumption of frozen foods dominates. 30% of them are ready-made meals, so-called “TV dinners”, which can be heated in the microwave without interrupting the series. Such food is inexpensive, can be stored for a long time and can be very varied: from frozen bread or lemonade concentrate to a gourmet seafood dish. Almost all American services that make boxes of prepared food deliver it frozen. The client receives the box when it is convenient for him - once a week or a month. One chain, Trader Joe's, sells frozen cuisine from around the world.
In Russia, the culture of high-quality freezing is activelypromotes "Vkusville". Production and storage technologies allow such food to retain its benefits and taste despite months in the refrigerator. There is a chance that gradually domestic and global food technology will come to entire vending networks with similar food - you can buy dinner by simply going down to the vending refrigerator on the ground floor of your own home. However, I believe more in the fast delivery format from Yandex.Lavka or Samokat - Russians are unlikely to give up homemade recipes made from fresh store-bought products.
Smart refrigerators and robot chefs
If a “dark kitchen” is a restaurant thatworks only for delivery - it will surprise no one now that smart kitchens are still a dream of startups and manufacturers of household appliances. In the future, in such a kitchen, the refrigerator itself will offer a menu, order products, calculate calorie content for personal purposes and monitor freshness. Experts predict the appearance of such equipment in Russian apartments in the next five years. However, it seems to us at jusfood that this will happen no sooner than in 10 years.
So far, smart kitchens are more of a part of the HoReCa and robotics market. They are already available in some restaurants and are designed to simplify cooking processes for a large number of guests.
HoReCa- an acronym derived from the first two letters inin the words Hotel, Restaurant, Cafe/Catering (hotel - restaurant - cafe/catering). A concept used in the lexicon of marketers and sales specialists, operators and market participants, denoting an area of the hospitality industry service sector and a special sales channel for goods with direct consumption of products at the point of sale “from hand”, different from “take-away” sales.
British company Monk Conveyors producesrobots-sushi AUTEC - for several years they have been preparing rolls that are not inferior to the creativity of Japanese masters to their taste. And the robot chef from Moley Robotics, which was created by Mark Oleinik, a native of Russia, knows how to cook dishes according to recipes from the Internet. In the future, the entrepreneur intends to combine Moley with a smart oven and dishwasher. In the first round, the project attracted RUB 78 million in investments.
Despite the development of such technologies, robot chefs are unlikely to ever replace a real chef. Restaurants will not disappear, but they will remain as a familiar form of entertainment.
There is another interesting trend:Some experts believe that in the next 30–50 years, kitchens will completely disappear from the apartments of city residents. Meal subscriptions, ready-to-eat meal delivery in 15 to 20 minutes, and shelf-stable technologies can reduce kitchen appliances to just two basic elements: the refrigerator and microwave.
Artificial protein and 3D printers
One of the most promising areasinvestors call the market analogue food - artificial dairy products and meat. The volume of the world plant-based meat market will increase to $ 27.9 billion by 2025 and will bite off about 10% of the meat-eaters market. Nestle recently announced another new product, artificial vegan tuna. At jusfood, we are seeing an increase in demand from vegetarian customers.
The most notable player in recent years is the companyBeyond Meat. In Russia, their “meat” can be tasted in some restaurants and supermarkets - for example, in “Teremka” or “Azbuka Vkusa”. Domestic manufacturers have also begun experiments with protein: the owner of Sloboda mayonnaise invested 100 million rubles in an artificial product and promises to make it much cheaper than its American competitor. The development of the analogue food industry is not only a fashionable trend dictated by the culture of vegetarianism, but also a necessity. The world's population is growing by 75 million annually. In the future, the economies of developing countries will need alternative ways to provide food to their citizens.
President of the Association of Accelerators andbusiness incubators in Russia Arseny Uralov believes that protein mixtures will become one of the food tech trends of the future and a way to fight hunger. It is assumed that the synthesized protein can be placed in equipped basements of residential buildings, and each apartment can be equipped with a 3D printer. It will print food by adding flavor through special cartridges. Cheap, cheerful and fantastic - but only for now. Big data, smart development, new technologies in logistics and storage - this is real food tech. This is not just "digitalization of food", but everything that makes the user experience better, consumption - more affordable, and production and logistics - easier.
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