Foodtech 101

5 min readApr 25, 2022

😟 Problem

For decades global demand for food had increased steadily, along with growth in the world’s population and the diversification of diets, changing what we eat and how we eat it.

Additionally, if we look at our current food system and the way we eat, we can see that it is one of the main drivers of biodiversity loss on our planet and that it represents a third of global greenhouse gas emissions, besides many other problems…

However, although the “mantra” in recent years has been the struggle to eat more and more local/proximity/km 0 food, it has been shown that if we want to reduce the carbon footprint, we must concentrate our efforts on what we eat, not whether the food is local.

Incremental improvements in the current food production and consumption system will not be enough to address the problem, for this we need a fundamental transformation of the entire agri-food industry. Instead of “crushing” nature to produce food, our food must be designed so that nature thrives.

But don’t worry, although this dystopian future is more scary than covid … all is not lost!

🤩 Solution

Recently Bill Gates affirmed that “climate tech startups will produce 8 to 10 Teslas, a Google, an Amazon and a Microsoft” and that future returns from investing in companies fighting climate change will be comparable to those produced by the largest technology companies to date.

The emergence of new technologies, including mobile app-based services and new alternative proteins, is transforming the way that the food industry operates, and giving rise to a new industry… known as foodtech!

Within the Foodtech startup vertical, we can find some of the following categories or subverticals:

“Gastronomy is the key to the incoming food revolution, and this key is a combination of science with perception and feelings, both at a personal or group level. A fascinating incoming revolution where a Gastronomy Sciences based university such Basque Culinary Center will have a lot to offer for the future Gastronomy revolutionaries”

Asier Alea, Director of Global Development at Basque Culinary Center

⏳ How we got here

If we look at the evolution of startups and unicorns in the foodtech sector, the first generation focused mainly on restaurant delivery and plant based. Recently, a growing second generation has been seen in the grocery and quick delivery sub-sector.

But what will the future of the sector hold for us? There are still many fields to explore (cultivated meat, alternative protein, personalization of food), although some unicorns are already beginning to be seen in this third generation…

And if you don’t believe me a huge technological disruption “wave” is coming, another clear indicator that footech is booming sector is the startup investment done by the Venture Capitalists in recent years:

“”According to estimations, by 2050 there will be 9 billion people living on earth. This will bring enormous challenges and a critical thought on how to change today’s model (artificial fertilizers, pesticides, hormones in meat production, deforestation for farms, methane emissions, water consumption) … but on the other hand a great opportunity for investments through sustainable solutions. Time for a change has already started!”

Carlos Guerra, Business Angel and partner at Cupido Capital

🚀 Today’s Market Map

Framework

If we look closely at the entire food value chain and the path that food takes from planting to when we consume it, we can observe that almost all foodtech unicorns are consumer-facing or in digital distribution.

But what about the rest of the food value chain? The race for the first primary production unicorn is on!

Source: Five Seasons Ventures & Dealroom

Market Map

A very visual example of the current state of the foodtech ecosystem in Spain is the one created by the newspaper “El Referente”.

You can see not only the agents that compose it, but also the different subverticals that I mentioned before in a very graphic way and coinciding with the gastro-food value chain:

I also leave you some examples of the current state of other ecosystems around the world:

👌 Hacks

To understand this new foodtech revolution and be able to surf the wave correctly, I recommend the following tips:

This technological revolution has nothing to do with the previous ones, which focused on the purely digital and not so much on the physical product
Food is a human experience and goes beyond a simple app or physical product, as we have to “put it inside our body”
The key to the success of foodtech startups will come not only from creating a good product, but from being “validated by society”
In addition, they must have profiles and teams much more diverse than startups from other verticals (chefs, researchers, CTOs, marketing, influencers…)
The foodtech vertical is much broader than the rest of the verticals that have emerged in “Startupland” to date, and there will appear many hybrid startups that will be in more than one vertical in addition to foodtech
Investors will have to be bolder if they want to find the future foodtech unicorns, since the metrics and paradigms used to date will not serve 100%

“FoodTech must pay special attention to Gastronomy. The New FoodTech Revolution should integrate leading technology with all the knowledge that Gastronomy naturally includes in a common space: sociology, anthropology, history, science and cooking. This interaction could lead to better solutions for the current food challenges”

Juan Carlos Arboleya, Associate Professor and Researcher at Basque Culinary Center

🐇 Follow the White Rabbit 🕳️

Webs & Newsletters: Gastronomía 360º, TechFood Magazine, Digital FoodLab, The Spoon, FoodHack, La Food Tech, AgFunder
Books: How to avoid a climate disaster (Bill Gates), Speed & Scale (John Doerr), Science and cooking, Culinary Action! (Basque Culinary Center)