acre venture partners Archives - Product Management Confabulation

May 26, 2022

Planet FWD secures $10M so consumer products industry can track carbon emissions

Planet FWD, a carbon-assessment startup founded by Zume Pizza co-founder Julia Collins, grabbed another cash infusion in the way of 10 million Series A dollars to continue developing technology so that the $1.5 trillion consumer products industry can more accurately measure and reduce their carbon footprint.

We profiled Collins’ journey from pizza to climate-friendly food beginning in March 2020 when she announced a $2.7 million seed round, led by BBG Ventures, for Planet FWD to look at regenerative agriculture. The company went on to launch its Moonshot Snacks brand later in that year.

It was while Planet FWD was creating its cracker product that Collins says she learned just how difficult it was to develop a product that is carbon neutral.

“We want to expand our carbon footprint at the product level for a box of crackers, and that was really hard,” she added. “We wanted to understand our corporate level footprint as a company and that was really hard. We wanted to understand how to reduce our emissions, and that was really hard. We wanted to understand how to purchase very high-quality, carbon offsets, to get to carbon neutral, and again, it’s really hard.”

What emerged from those learnings was a carbon-management technology platform for consumer brands to create a climate-friendly company and products more easily by being able to measure, reduce and neutralize emissions and report its carbon footprint.

With another $2.5 million in funding, Julia Collins’ Planet FWD launches climate-friendly snack brand

For example, if your company wanted to launch a line of granola bars that is as low in emissions as possible, you can use Planet FWD’s emissions-reduction engine during the product-development phase to understand how to change your supplier or your packaging supplier to a more efficient method.

“Imagine the next generation of products that can be produced with low emissions because we’ve made it really easy for customers to understand not just details on how to calculate calories, fat and protein, but actually how to calculate carbon and carbon equivalent during product development,” Collins added.

The company’s technology provides GHG Protocol Scope 3 emissions modeling capabilities to help brands address the emissions along their supply chain. Scope 3 emissions account for up to 89% of emissions for consumer products on average, Collins added.

Time is of the essence in reducing emissions, with Collin noting that there are less than 100 months left to reach the 2030 global goal of cutting at least 40% of greenhouse gas emissions from 1990 levels. Household consumption of things like food, which impacts land, energy and water, account for 60% of global emissions, she added.

JustSalad’s carbon label create from Planet FWD

“The emerging regulatory landscape is causing an acceleration of companies really needing better solutions for carbon management and that regulatory framework or those regulatory frameworks are being bolstered by the emerging consumer appetite, sustainable and climate friendly products,” she said. “Retailers paying more attention are prioritizing brands that are motivated, sustainable and willing to stand behind it. And then of course, new ESG is becoming an important part of the way that companies are able to access financial instruments.”

As a result, the past year has been one of growth. Though Collins declined to go into detail about growth metrics, she did say the company is now working with 25 customers, including Kashi, Pangaia, Just Salad, Numi Organic Tea, Healthy Hippo, Toodaloo and Sweet Loren’s.

Planet FWD, aided by an acquisition of climate tech startup CleanMetrics in 2021, also amassed what Collins touts as the “largest Life Cycle Analysis database for agricultural production systems in North America.” It also hired a climate science team to continue to expand that data.

Meanwhile, the Series A is co-led by Acre Venture Partners and Congruent Ventures and includes participation from existing investors BBG Ventures, Precursor, Concrete Rose, January Ventures, Elemental Excelerator, Cleo Capital and Rethink Food. To date, Planet FWD has raised $16.8 million.

The new funding will be deployed into the company’s ongoing development of its data, including building out its climate science team. It will also go into product development, like more predictive emissions reduction, and supporting existing and new customers.

“Supply chains are so complex, and frankly very difficult to manage, and that is why Planet FWD is very much a vertically-oriented solution,” Collin said. “We are obsessed with helping to decarbonize the consumer landscape and focused on continuing to heat up and fine tune our emissions reductions engine.”

Julia Collins and Sarah Kunst outline how to build a fundraising process

March 2, 2022

Source makes greenhouses smarter to secure the future of food supply

Agtech startup Source.ag today announced it harvested a $10 million investment to make greenhouses smarter. The founders have set their eyes on a horizon where, driven by climate change and a rapid increase in global food demand as population continues to increase, more crops are being forced indoors to secure greater crop yields. You wouldn’t believe the amount of restraint it takes to not make a pun about seed funding in a piece about greenhouses. I have no such restraint, so let’s report on this, ahem, growth industry.

The $10 million funding round was led by Acre Venture Partners, with participation from the E14 fund and food-focused venture firm Astanor ventures. The company also raised from industry insiders, including the international association of (mostly) salad growers Harvest House, tomato specialists Agrocare and bell pepper specialists Rainbow Growers.

The company is developing software to empower greenhouses to get smarter. The company argues that greenhouse agriculture is a safer, more reliable and more climate-resilient mode of food production, producing up to 15 times higher yields, using a twentieth as much water as traditional agriculture. What Source adds to the mix is the ability to use data and AI to help greenhouses operate at even higher levels of efficiency and repeatability of high-yield harvests.

“Climate change is driving substantial scarcity and strains in our global food supply. As this accelerates in the coming years, we must find ways to scale efficient growing solutions that lighten the footprint of agriculture,” said Lucas Mann, managing partner at Acre. “Greenhouse agriculture is a proven and viable solution, but without innovation, demand will be impossible to meet. We believe Source.ag can play a vital role in driving its global scalability.”

The funding will be used to accelerate product development and expand commercial collaborations.

“Greenhouses come in all shapes and forms — both more and less technically advanced. On the higher-tech side, want to have control over every dimension you can imagine, including humidity, irrigation and nutrition. Tomatoes, for example, don’t grow in soil. They go in substrate slabs. That means that these operations are arable land independent,” explains Rien Kamman, co-founder ad CEO at Source. “Because you have more control, you’ll have to make more decisions every day. Growers are making decisions on 60-70 parameters every day, which influences how this crop will grow for the rest of the season. You need to get the decision right every day. This might include what to feed the plant, plant-specific parameters, pruning, etc. It’s really a craft and this is why it’s still so hard. You need decades of experience to be doing well at it.”

The complexity of the farming operation itself isn’t in doubt, and Source’s pitch is to take all of these growth parameters, combine that with historical crop yield data and market pricing etc., to create a better experience for the growers.

“Our system is comprised of two aspects. One is a recommendation system that assesses the current state of the plant. It looks at forward-looking predictors like resource prices, weather, etc. And then gives very concrete recommendations to the grower. What should you do today and tomorrow, both on the plant (i.e. how should you trim it, prune it, etc.) and on the indoor climate around the plants to maximize sustainability and production. The second part is what happens when something doesn’t go to plan? This is where the algorithms come in,” Kamman says. “They collaborate with the different control systems to take that strategy and actually make sure to do so implemented in the most efficient way possible.”

Indoor farming still requires a fair chunk of manual labor, especially for big-vine crops such as tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, etc.; but Source suggests that it can be helpful there, too — by choosing how and where to prune or how many crops to leave to ripen on the vine, you can affect various aspects of the plants’ growth. The interesting thing is overlaying real-time pricing data here — by speeding up or slowing down ripening, I can imagine that could potentially time the harvest time around when your competitors have ripe products, potentially even trading lower yields for better prices, or working with temperatures and weather conditions to reduce production costs, for example.

The company is running on a SaaS model, charging growers on a sliding scale depending on the amount of space they are using for growing.

“Our belief is that agriculture is at an inflection point in history. [Farming] that brought us to where we are today won’t bring us to 10 billion people with a more changing extreme climate. This is a massive market — the need for climate-resilient food systems is going to increase. And then we haven’t even talked about what other traditional agriculture crops could be moved indoors in the next decades,” says Kamman. “I think that what unites our investors and our team is that we’re not so much looking at these advantages short term, but we can build knowledge that is scalable globally.”

The company declined to share screenshots of its product, stating it was “competitively sensitive”.

December 1, 2021

A rind is a terrible thing to waste: Spoiler Alert leaps to the rescue

We spend such a tremendous amount of our resources growing, processing, transporting and selling food items. In a world where not everyone has enough to eat, it’s a disgrace that in the US, 30%-40% of food that is produced is never consumed. That’s the problem Spoiler Alert has set its crosshairs on. The company just raised $11 million to really start scaling its operations and save more food from meeting an end more bitter than a karela jilted at the altar.

“When we look at food waste, it’s not just a major drain on business profitability, but it’s also one of the largest contributors to the climate crisis at a global level. What our vision and hypothesis from the very beginning has been, is ‘how do we better provide major food manufacturers with the tools, intelligence insights and network connectivity to keep good product from going to waste?,'” explains Spoiler Alert co-founder and CEO Richard Ashenfelter. “We are getting that to as many consumers as possible, prior to resorting to dumping or organics recycling.”

The Spoiler Alert platform is in use by a growing list of global consumer packaged goods (CPG) leaders to digitize their B2B liquidation processes. Customers include Nestlé, Kraft Heinz, Campbell Soup Company and Danone North America — four of the largest food and beverage manufacturers in the world.

“One of our core beliefs is that waste is no longer a necessary or acceptable cost of doing business,” said Spoiler Alert co-founder and CPO Emily Malina. “Everything we do is geared toward moving perishable inventory faster to benefit brands, retailers, consumers and the planet.”

“Roughly 30% to 40% of the world’s food supply is never ultimately consumed. Project Drawdown has since identified food waste as the number one initiative and opportunity for addressing the global climate crisis,” says Ashenfelter and explains how that has become part of the company’s mission. “For us, the more food we can keep out of landfills, the less emissions and resource resources that go into growing, harvesting, distributing that product, the better. It ultimately has a financial benefit for businesses, too, because they’re selling more product, they’re writing off less product, they’re not spending money on disposal fees.”

Ricky Ashenfelter and Emily Malina, the Spoiler Alert founding team. Image Credits: Liz Linder Photography

Brands use Spoiler Alert’s flexible and private liquidation platform to seamlessly sell their excess, short-dated and obsolete inventory. This results in increased profitability for brands and a stronger supply of opportunistic inventory for retailers and other closeout channels. And not a minute too late, either. What’s particularly encouraging about Spoiler Alert is that the company is operating within the confines of capitalism to try to put a dent in this issue.

“My father was an environmental lawyer, and I’ve dedicated my entire academic pursuits to how the private sector can solve some of the world’s biggest energy and environmental challenges,” says Ashenfelter. “I’m sort of a tree hugger, born and raised, trying to wear more of a commercial hat. All of this is providing easy, tangible solutions for businesses and consumers to do the right thing for the environment. We feel strongly that the best approaches to sustainable climate focus investments have to be rooted in a true business case in order for them to scale.”

This investment is led by Collaborative Fund with participation from existing investors, including Acre Venture Partners, The Betsy & Jesse Fink Family Foundation, Maersk Growth, Spring Point Partners and Valley Oak Investments.

April 14, 2021

I can’t believe it’s not meat! Mycelium meat replacement company aims for summer launch of first products

Meati, a company turning mycelium (the structural fibers of fungi) into healthier meat replacements for consumers, is prepping for a big summer rollout.

Co-founder Tyler Huggins expects to have the first samples of its whole-cut steak and chicken products in select restaurants around the country — along with their first commercial product, a jerky strip.

For Huggins, the product launch is another step on a long road toward broad commercial adoption of functional fungi foods as a better-for-you alternative to traditional meats.

“Use this as a conversation starter. About 2 ounces of this gives you 50% of your protein; 50% of your fiber; and half of your daily zinc. There really is nothing that can compare to this product in terms of nutritionals,” Huggins said.

And moving from meat to mushrooms is a better option for the planet.

Meati expects to turn on its pilot plant this summer and is joining a movement among mushroom fans that includes milk replacements, from Perfect Day, more meat replacements from Atlast, and leather substitutes from Ecovative and MycoWorks.

Ecovative sees a fungal future for fashion, food and foam packaging and has a fresh $60M to make it

“We’re definitely all in this together,” said Huggins of the other mob of mycelium-based tech companies bringing products to market.

However, not all mycelium is created equally, Huggins said. Meati has what Huggins said was a unique way of growing its funguses (not a real word) that “keep it in its most happy state.” That means peak nutritional content and peak growth efficiency, according to the company.

For Huggins, whose parents own a bison ranch and who grew up in cattle country, the goal is not to replace a t-bone or a ribeye, but the cuts of meat and chicken that find their ways into a burrito supreme or other quick serve meat cuts.

Rendering of Meati mushroom meats in a Banh Mi. Image Credit: Meati

“Head to head with that kind of cut, we win,” Huggins said. “I’d rather pick a fight there now and buy ourselves some time. I don’t think we’re going to go super high-end to start.”

That said, the company’s cap table of investors already includes some pretty heady culinary company. Acre Venture Partners (which counts Sam Kass — President Barack Obama’s Senior Policy Advisor for Nutrition Policy, Executive Director for First Lady Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move! campaign, and an Assistant Chef in the White House — among its partnership) is an investor. So is Chicago’s fine dining temple, Alinea.

But Huggins wants Meati to be an everyday type of meat replacement product. “I want to make sure that people think this is an every day protein,” Huggins said.

Meati thinks its future meat replacements will be cost competitive with conventional beef and chicken, but to whet consumers’ appetites, the company is starting with jerky.

“Meati’s delicious jerky,” said Huggins. “It provides this blank canvas. We’ll start with these beef jerky like flavors. But I want to come out of the gate and say that we’re mycelium jerky.”

The company currently has 30 people on staff led by Huggins and fo-founder Justin Whiteley. The two men initially started working on Meati as a battery replacement. Based on their research (Huggins with mycelium and Whiteley with advanced batteries) the two men received a grant for a mycelium-based electrode for lithium ion batteries.

“We were trying to tweak the chemical composition of the mycelium to make a better battery. What we found was that we were making something nutritious and edible,” said Huggins.

Also… the battery companies didn’t want it.

Now, backed by $28 million from Acre, Prelude Ventures, Congruent Ventures and Tao Capital, Meati is ready to go to market. The company also has access to debt capital to build out its vast network of mycelium growing facilities. It’s just raised a $18 million debt round from Trinity and Silicon Valley Bank.

“Two years ago … most companies in this space … there wasn’t this ability to take on debt to put steel in the ground,” said Huggins. “It’s an exciting time to be in food tech given that you can raise VC funding and there’s this ready available market for debt financing. You’ll start seeing faster and more rapid development because of it.”

Meati co-founders Tyler Huggins and Justin Whiteley. Image Credit: Meati

April 20, 2019

From lab-grown meat to fermented fungus, here’s what corporate food VCs are serving up

Joanna Glasner Contributor

The new, new protein

Mass-market foods may get better but also weirder. This is particularly true for one of the more consistently hot areas of food-tech investment: alternative protein.

Demand for protein-rich foods, combined with ethical concerns about consuming animal products, has, for a number of years, led investors to startups offering meaty tasting tidbits sourced from the plant world.

But lately, corporate food giants have been looking farther beyond soy and peas. Lab-grown meat, once an oddball endeavor good for headlines about $1,000 meatballs, has been attracting serious cash. Since last year, at least two companies in the space have closed rounds backed by Tyson Ventures, the VC arm of the largest U.S. meat producer. They include pricey meatball maker Memphis Meats (actually based in California), which raised $20 million, and Israel-based Future Meat Technologies, a biotech startup working on animal-free meat, which secured $2 million.

Much of the early enthusiasm for new products stems from disillusionment with the existing ingredients we overeat.

If you cringe at the notion of lab-grown cell meat, then there’s always the option of getting your protein through microbes in volcanic springs. That’s the general aim of Sustainable Bioproducts, a startup that raised $33 million in Series A funding from backers including ADM and Danone Manifesto Ventures. The Chicago company’s technology for making edible protein emerged out of research into extremophile organisms in Yellowstone National Park’s volcanic springs.

Meanwhile, if you hanker for real dairy milk but don’t want to trouble cows, another startup, Perfect Day, is working on a solution. Per the company website: “Instead of having cows do all the work, we use microflora and age-old fermentation techniques to make the very same dairy protein that cows make.” Toward that end, the Berkeley company closed a $35 million Series B in February, with backing from ADM.

Fermentation

Perfect Day isn’t the only fermentation play raising major funding.

Corporate food-tech investors have long been interested in the processing technologies that turn an obscure microbe or under-appreciated crop into a high-demand ingredient. And lately, LeClerc said, they’ve been particularly keen on startups finding new ways to apply the age-old technology known as fermentation.

Most of us know fermentation as the process that turns a yucky mix of grain, yeast and water into the popular beverage known as beer. More broadly, however, fermentation is a metabolic process that produces chemical changes in organic substrates through the action of enzymes. That is, take a substance, add something it reacts with and voilà, you have a new substance.

Several of the most heavily funded, buzz-generating companies in the food space are applying fermentation, LeClerc said. Besides Perfect Day, examples he points to include the unicorn Ginkgo Bioworks, Geltor (another alt-protein startup) and mushroom-focused MycoTechnology.

Colorado-based MycoTechnology has been a particularly attractive investor target of late. The company has raised $83 million from a mix of corporate and traditional VCs, including a $30 million Series C in January that included Tyson and Kellogg’s venture arm, Eighteen94 Capital . Founded six years ago, the company is pursuing a range of applications for its fermented fungi, including flavor enhancers, protein supplements and preservatives.

Supply chain

Besides adding strange new ingredients to our grocery shelves, corporate food-tech investors are also putting money into technologies and platforms aimed at boosting the security and efficiency of existing supply chains.

Just like new foods, much of the food safety tech sounds odd, too. Silicon Valley-based ImpactVision, a seed-funded startup backed by Campbell Soup VC arm Acre Venture Partners, wants to employ hyper-spectral imaging to perceive information about contamination, food quality and ripeness.

Boston-based Spoiler Alert, another Acre portfolio company, develops software and analytics for food companies to manage unsold inventory. And Pensa Systems, which uses AI-powered autonomous drones to track in-store inventory, raised a Series A round this year with backing from the venture arm of Anheuser-Busch InBev.

Is weirder better?

We highlighted a few trends in corporate food-tech investment, but there are others that merit attention, as well. Probiotics plays, including the maker of the GoodBelly drink line, are generating investor interest. New ingredients other than proteins are also attracting capital, such as UCAN, a startup developing energy snacks based on a novel, slow-digesting carbohydrate. And the list goes on.

Much of the early enthusiasm for new products stems from disillusionment with the existing ingredients we overeat. But LeClerc noted that new products aren’t always better in the long run — they just might seem so at first.

“The question in the back of our head is: Are we ever creating margarine 2.0,” he said. “Just because it’s a plant product doesn’t mean it’s actually better for you.”

October 7, 2018

The next big restaurant chain may not own any kitchens

If investors at some of the biggest technology companies are right, the next big restaurant chain could have no kitchens of its own.

These venture capitalists think the same forces that have transformed transportation, media, retail and logistics will also work their way through prepared food businesses.

The Battle Is For The Customer Interface

Investors are pouring millions into the creation of a network of shared kitchens, storage facilities, and pickup counters that established chains and new food entrepreneurs can access to cut down on overhead and quickly spin up new concepts in fast food and casual dining.

Powering all of this is a food delivery market that could grow from $35 billion to a $365 billion industry by 2030, according to a report from UBS’s research group, the “Evidence Lab”.

“We’ve had conversations with the biggest and fastest growing restaurant brands in the country and even some of the casual brands,” said Jim Collins, a serial entrepreneur, restauranteur, and the chief executive of the food-service startup, Kitchen United. “In every board room for every major restaurant brand in the country… the number one conversation surrounds the topic of how are we going to address [off-premise diners].”

Collins’ company just raised $10 million in a funding round led by GV, the investment arm of Google parent company, Alphabet. But Alphabet’s investment team is far from the only group investing in the restaurant infrastructure as a service business.

Perhaps the best capitalized company focusing on distributed kitchens is CloudKitchens, one of two subsidiaries owned by the holding company City Storage Solutions.

Cloud Kitchens and its sister company Cloud Retail are the two arms of the new venture from Uber co-founder and former chief executive, Travis Kalanick, which was formed with a $150 million investment.

Travis Kalanick is already back running a company with a $150M investment

As we reported at the time, Travis announced that he would be starting a new fund with the riches he made from Uber shares sold in its most recent major secondary round. Kalanick said his 10100, or “ten one hundred”, fund would be geared toward “large-scale job creation,” with investments in real estate, e-commerce, and “emerging innovation in India and China.”

If anyone is aware of the massive market potential for leveraging on-demand services, it’s Kalanick. Especially since he was one of the architects of the infrastructure that has made it possible.

Other deep pocketed companies have also stepped into the fray. Late last year Acre Venture Partners, the investment arm formed by The Campbell Soup Co., participated in a $13 million investment for Pilotworks, another distributed kitchen operator based in Brooklyn.

Meanwhile, Kitchen United has been busy putting together a deep bench of executive talent culled from some of the largest and most successful American fast food restaurant chains.

Former Taco Bell Chief Development Officer, Meredith Sandland, joined the company earlier this year as its chief operating officer, while former McDonald’s executive Atul Sood, who oversaw the burger giant’s relationship with online delivery services, has come aboard as Kitchen United’s Chief Business Officer.

The millions of dollars spicing up this new business model investors are serving up could be considered the second iteration of a food startup wave.

Food startup Maple shuts down operations in New York to join Deliveroo

An earlier generation of prepared food startups crashed and burned while trying to spin up just this type of vision with investments in their own infrastructure. New York celebrity chef David Chang, the owner and creator of the city’s famous Momofuku restaurants (and Milk Bar, and Ma Peche), was an investor in Maple, a new delivery-only food startup that raised $25 million before it was shut down and its technology was absorbed into the European, delivery service, Deliveroo.

Ando, which Chang founded, was another attempt at creating a business with a single storefront for takeout and a massive reliance on delivery services to do the heavy lifting of entering new neighborhoods and markets. That company wound up getting acquired by UberEats after raising $7 million in venture funding.

Uber Eats acquires Ando, the food delivery startup from David Chang that makes its own food

Those losses are slight compared to the woes of investors in companies like Munchery, ($125.4 million) Sprig, ($56.7 million) and SpoonRocket ($13 million). Sprig and Spoonrocket are now defunct, and Munchery had to pull back from markets in Los Angeles, New York, and Seattle as it fights for survival. The company also reportedly was looking at recapitalizing earlier in the year at a greatly reduced valuation.

On-demand food startup Sprig is shutting down today

What gives companies like Kitchen United, Pilotworks and Cloud Kitchens hope is that they’re not required to actually create the next big successful concept in fast food or casual dining. They just have to enable it.

Kitchen United just opened a 12,000 square foot facility in Pasadena for just that purpose — and has plans to open more locations in West Los Angeles; Jersey City, N.J.; Atlanta; Columbus, Ohio; Phoenix; Seattle and Denver. Its competitor, Pilotworks, already has operations in Brooklyn, Chicago, Dallas, and Providence, R.I.

While the two companies have similar visions, they’re currently pursuing different initial customers. Pilotworks has pitched itself as a recipe for success for new food entrepreneurs. Kitchen United, by comparison is giving successful local, regional, and national brands a way to expand their footprint without investing in real estate.

“One of the directions that the company was thinking of going was toward the restaurant industry and the second was in the food service entrepreneurial sector,” said Collins. “Would it be a company that served restaurants with their expansions? Now, we’re in deep discussions with all kinds of restaurants.”

Smaller national fast food chains like Chick-Fil-A or Shake Shack, or fast casual chains like Dennys and Shoney’s could be customers, said Collins. So could local companies that are trying to expand their regional footprint. Los Angeles’ famous Canter’s Deli is a Kitchen United customer (and an early adopter of a number of new restaurant innovations) and so is The Lost Cuban Kitchen, an Iowa-based Cuban restaurant that’s expanding to Los Angeles.

Canters restaurant royalty raises $9.5 million for Ordermark, a takeout order management service

Kitchen United is looking to create kitchen centers that can house between 10-20 restaurants in converted warehouses, big box retail and light industrial locations.

Using demographic data and “demand mapping” for specific cuisines, Kitchen United said that it can provide optimal locations and site the right restaurant to meet consumer demand. The company is also pitching labor management, menu management and delivery tools to help streamline the process of getting a new location up and running.

“In all of the facilities, all of the restaurants have their own four-walled space,” says Collins. “There’s shared infrastructure outside of that.”

Some of that infrastructure is taking food deliveries and an ability to serve as a central hub for local supplier, according to Collins. “One of the things that we’re going to be launching relatively soon here in Pasadena, is actually in-service days where local supplier and purveyors can come in and meet with seven restaurants at once.”

It’s also possible that restaurants in the Kitchen United spaces could take advantage of restaurant technologies being developed by one of the startup’s sister companies through Cali Group, a holding company for a number of different e-sports, retail, and food technology startups.

The Pasadena-based kitchen company was founded by Harry Tsao, an investor in food technology (and a part owner of the Golden State Warriors and the Los Angeles Football Club) through his fund Avista Investments; and John Miller, a serial entrepreneur who founded the Cali Group.

In fact, Kitchen United operates as a Cali Group portfolio company alongside Miso Robotics, the developer of the burger flipping robot, Flippy; Caliburger, an In-n-Out clone first developed by Miller in Shanghai and brought back to the U.S.; and FunWall, a display technology for online gaming in retail settings.

Flippy, the robot hamburger chef, goes to work

“Kitchen United’s data-driven approach to flexible kitchen spaces unlocks critical value for national, regional, and local restaurant chains looking to expand into new markets,” said Adam Ghobarah, general partner at GV, and a new director on the Kitchen United board. “The founding team’s experience in scaling — in addition to diverse exposure to national chains, regional brands, regional franchises, and small upstart eateries — puts Kitchen United in a strong position to accelerate food innovation.”

GV’s Ghobarah actually sees the investment of a piece with other bets that Alphabet’s venture capital arm has made around the food industry.

The firm is a backer of the fully automated hamburger preparation company, Creator, which has raised roughly $28 million to develop its hamburger making robot (if Securities and Exchange Commission filings can be believed). And it has backed the containerized farming startup, Bowery Farming, with a $20 million investment.

Taste test: Burger robot startup Creator opens first restaurant

Ghobarah sees an entirely new food distribution ecosystem built up around facilities where Bowery’s farms are colocated with Kitchen United’s restaurants to reduce logistical hurdles and create new hubs.

“As urban farming like Bowery scales up… that becomes more and more realistic,” Ghobarah said. “The other thing that really stands out when you have flexible locations … all of the thousands of people who want to own a restaurant now have access. It’s not really all regional chains and national chains… With a satellite location like this… [a restaurant]… can break even at one third of the order volume.”