Caught My Attention 018 (170913) 1


Not only food/grocery topics this time, but some tech stuff too, like bitcoin and machine vision. But Doritos too.
  
  
I need to better understand the whole cryptocurrency thing. I’ve heard of people mining for bitcoin and I don’t really know what that entails, but it seems that at scale it is actually a big business.
(link to Quartz: Inside one of the world’s largest bitcoin mines)
  
  
I am kind of surprised that this hasn’t happened earlier, but I guess the big corps needed to see the volume growth before they jumped in full-fledged. Now that organic and non-GMO is promoted in more and more mainstream retailers (like Walmart and Target even) it is looking like the big players will be moving into that market. What will that mean to the smaller brands that are built on the specialty/natural market???
(link to AdvertisingAge: Organic Doritos Give Frito-Lay a Pathway Into Whole Foods)
(link to Bloomberg: Organic Doritos Give Snack Giant a Way Into the New Whole Foods)
  
  
Looking for a natural compound that is sweet has long been a goal, maybe posting a large prize might help the search. It will be very interesting if anyone actually collects on this prize.
(link to NPR the Salt: Coca-Cola Offers A Sweet Quest: A Million Bucks To Replace Sugar)
  
  
Aquaponics, basically a closed loop system of raising fish and using their water (and waste) to feed plants, which filter the water and returns it back into the fish tank.
(link to KQED Food: Aquaponics Farmers Band Together to Set Their Industry Apart)
  
  
What is the future of food? Are we evolving back to more natural foods, plant based foods, less meats, more nutritionally dense ingredients. I do see more products in the market now that are minimally processed and nutritionally beneficial (or is it just the communities that I interact with).
(link to NPR Cosmos and Culture: Ants, Seaweed, Chocolate Beer And (Maybe) Less Meat: The Future Of Food
  
  
Grocery prices have been going down, but what does that really mean? Probably means less margins for the producers and retailers… like the margins aren’t tight enough already.
(link to NPR the Salt: Grocery Prices Have Been Falling. Did You Notice?)
  
  
lolz – the power of marketing I guess? Gluten-free water! Nut milk from Range-free trees! Reminds me of the asparagus water that WFM was marketing.
(link to Quartz: Food labels now say "free-range trees," which might be even more insane than "gluten-free water")
  
  
Cameras and machine learning is the tech around this demo of a retail store of the future. The video shows items being picked off the shelf, passed around between two people, put in a basket or back on the shelf and it shows realtime what it sees and identifies. The video is a very interesting look at what will be possible in the future of retail.
(link to MIT Technology Review: I Tried Shoplifting in a Store without Cashiers and Here’s What Happened)
  
  
What a rollercoaster for Juicero, from fancy wifi enabled juicer that got them $134M in investments, the $700 juicer (that an insider says costs them $750 to manufacture) that requires a proprietary pouch of prepared fits and veg – after a media report that a full glass of juice could be squeezed out by hand without any high pressure that the juicer had, they dropped the price to $400. And now they report that they are shutting down operations, giving refunds, and looking to sell what is left of the business.
(link to Bloomberg Technology: Inside Juicero’s Demise, From Prized Startup to Fire Sale)
  
  


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One thought on “Caught My Attention 018 (170913)

  • David chilewich

    Hey John…i had a little extra time in Red Hook to peruse this edition…

    Still not sure what bitcoins are…on our next lunch agenda.

    “free range trees…gluten free water”…organic dorritos…foodies gone wild!

    couldn’t open the link to “grocery prices falling” but ‘falling margins’ is the story. To get into chains DU is offering lower & lower prices.

    Aquaponics pretty complex