Category Archives: Startups

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March 29, 2014

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Startups

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Kilkenny – Health board approved commercial kitchen to let on a daily basis.

This will be a godsend for any small early stage food businesses in Kilkenny and surrounds – a daily let on a commercial HSE approved kitchen just outside the ring road in Kilkenny.

So crucial in the early stages to have somewhere to experiment with recipes and formulations and even use this facility to cook up and package batches to sell. Further details:

  • 6 ring industrial gas hob / oven
  • Industrial fridge
  • industrial glass washer
  • Upright stainless steel deepfreeze
  • Double drainer sink and separate hand washing sink
  • PVC clad walls throughout
  • Industrial wall sockets and tiled floor with stainless steel gullies
  • Electricity and gas supply metered

For more information contact Kevin Mahon on +353 (86) 828 6863

Keith

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January 5, 2014

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Ethical Food, Funding, Startups

Snippets – US online speciality food and an Irish Organic sector challenge

These have been kicking around my inbox for a month or so now.

Mouth.com

They don’t aggregate products and pass fulfilment back to producers. And they have a lovely definition of their core focus:
“Included in the “indie food” category are artisan, small batch, handmade, organic, gluten-free and other packaged specialty foods that are “made by people not corporations, and typically involve a recipe,”

Screenshot 2014-01-05 12.32.38

I am liking that a lot. Funding in place, great design and strong core. Picked up via a piece in the Wall Street Journal.

Hope they succeed 🙂

An Open Letter to the Organic Movement in Ireland

Ollie Moore is someone I like a lot. A journalist and musician he juggles a lot of pies. And hats. At his core is organics and the importance of a healthy sector in Ireland. His post is about stagnancy and what can be done to overcome that.

Much more debate needed around this tbh.

Keith

 

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December 17, 2012

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Funding, Startups

Scaling Food Businesses – Funding activity Nov Dec 2012 to date #digitalfoodfunding

Who: Burpple

What do they do: a mobile photo sharing service for food lovers

Where: Asia

How Much and When: Dec 2012, $500,000

Thanks to TheNextWeb for that – full story here.

Screen Shot 2012-12-17 at 14.11.14

Who: NatureBox

What do they do: the company distributes its own brand of nutritionist-approved health foods

Where: USA

How Much and When: Dec 2012, $2 million

Thanks to Techcrunch for that – full story here.

Screen Shot 2012-12-17 at 14.16.36

Who: HelloFresh (www.hellofresh.com)

What do they do: subscription service that sends users a recipe and the needed fresh ingredients

Where: USA & Europe

How Much and When: Dec 2012, $10 million

Thanks to Techcrunch for that – full story here.

Screen Shot 2012-12-17 at 14.20.47

Who: OrderAhead (www.orderaheadapp.com)

What do they do: OrderAhead gives you the ability to quickly order pickup from great local merchants.

Where: USA

How Much and When: Dec 2012, $200k

Thanks to Techcrunch for that – full story here.

Screen Shot 2012-12-17 at 14.32.45

Who: Foody (www.foody.vn)

What do they do: OpenTable-like service

Where: Asia

How Much and When: Nov 2012, undisclosed

Thanks to TheNextWeb for that – full story here.

Screen Shot 2012-12-17 at 14.44.04

Who: Farmigo (www.farmigo.com)

What do they do: Farmigo is dedicated to creating a healthy alternative food system

Where: USA

How Much and When: Nov 2012, $8 million

Thanks to TheNextWeb for that – full story here.

Screen Shot 2012-12-17 at 14.48.43

Who: Snapdish (snapdi.sh)

What do they do: Take quick photos of your dishes.
Enjoy sharing them with your friends.

Where: Asia

How Much and When: Nov 2012, undisclosed

Thanks to TheNextWeb for that – full story here.

Screen Shot 2012-12-17 at 14.52.06

Who: Urban Remedy (snapdi.sh)

What do they do: this service focuses on bringing complete packages of juices, meals, and snacks into people’s homes.

Where: USA

How Much and When: Nov 2012, $1 million

Thanks to TheNextWeb for that – full story here.

Screen Shot 2012-12-17 at 14.53.10

If you know of any more funding rounds announced by digital/online/mobile food businesses in Nov/Dec 2012 leave a comment and I will update this.

thanks, Keith

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August 26, 2012

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Ethical Food, Startups

Vegtoons @cartoonsaloon

This one is a small bit personal. It steps outside of the world of food producers and distribution and revisits the vegetarian ethos and how that is communicated into a wider audience.

A good friend of mine in Kilkenny – Tomm Moore of Cartoon Saloon (known best for his Oscar nominated Story of Kells) is working with Paul Young and Greg Singer (Dreamworks) to KickStart a new animated series promoting plant based diets – Vegtoons.

You can see more underneath and join in here.

UPDATE 31/8/12 – Initial $16k target reached with 1 day to go 🙂

/ Keith

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August 25, 2012

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Ethical Food, Startups

@BeyondMeat

What they do

Set up to develop plant based proteins and directly substitute them for meat proteins. The photo below shows their “chicken” strip in a product from Whole Foods.

Where they do it

US based (currently opening new manufacturing facility in Columbia) and currently US focused in their distribution and business development. As they are a relatively new business even that focus is limited to the West Coast with a small present on the East – see their map here.

Who are they

The business was started by Ethan Brown in 2009 (he has a background in clean energy and avoids social media as far as I can make out) and in June 2012 hit the headlines with a investment round which included Biz Stone and Kleiner Perkins Caufield Byers. Biz is better known for Twitter but a has been a vegan the past 10 years.

On the Kleiner side this one is in their Greentech portfolio – I find that very interesting indeed.

The ethical bit?

Combines a move away from slaughtered protein with a very strong pro-environment message.

My thoughts

Like this one a lot. The last 10 years have seen enormous strides in vegetarian/vegan foodstuffs and this startup could accelerate the sector nicely.

Captured nicely in this quote from Biz Stone “These guys are coming at the meat analogue industry not as a novelty kind of thing or hippy dippy. They were coming at it from this big science, super practical, scalable angle. They were saying, ‘We want to get into the multi-billion-dollar meat industry with a plant-based meat,” says Stone.

This is where significant change happens – where a business can scale and create impact without sacrificing core principles. Would love to work with these guys and girls 🙂

Links to more

http://beyondmeat.com/

twitter.com/BeyondMeat

https://www.facebook.com/beyondmeat

http://www.dailyherald.com/article/20120805/entlife/708059945/

http://www.fastcoexist.com/1680007/biz-stone-explains-why-twitters-co-founders-are-betting-big-on-a-vegan-meat-startup

/ Keith

 

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August 18, 2012

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Ethical Food, Media Watch, Startups

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Ethical Food Businesses – some information sources I will be keeping an eye on

I already subscribe to a couple of these blogs and follow their founders on twitter and I will be adding to the list as I find more.

Worth saying here that a food startup in itself is of no interest to me personally – it must have a ethical core to it. The perpetuation of cheap food for the mainstream is irrelevant here as are reviews of normal restaurant chains and mass produced dishes. So while these sources cover a lot of great businesses not many of those will be mentioned in posts here. Just so we are clear 😉

2/9/12 – http://www.springwise.com/?s=food

31/8/12 – http://www.good.is/tag/food/

31/8/12 – http://ethicalfoods.com/

Food and Technology Connect – Danielle Gould

Forbes Food Startups

Quora Food Tech Startups

Edible Startups – Michelle Paratore

Guardian UK Organics Coverage

Meetup Food Startups Group

If you have ones to add to the above please let me know in the comments
Keith