Previous image

Next Image

Food | 23/12/2022 10:00:00

What is foodtech and why will it change food service?

The term “foodtech” has become increasingly common in recent years. But what is it, and how is it affecting us? Firstly, foodtech refers to the use of technology and biotechnology to develop innovations that have a significant impact on the way food is produced, processed, cooked or distributed. Consequently, foodtech affects every link in the value chain of the food industry: from livestock farming and the primary sector through to supermarkets and, of course, food service.
Foodtech touches practically every aspect of today’s food industry: agriculture, food production using technology and biotechnology, nutrition, food safety, and the fight against food waste. It affects all areas.

In her book titled Foodtech. La gran revolución de la industria agroalimentaria (“Foodtech: The Great Food Industry Revolution”; LID, 2022), which is currently the best and most up-to-date Spanish-language reference in this field, Beatriz Romanos explains that foodtech affects every link in the food chain and that its meaning is often summarised by the term “farm to table”, although she argues that a more accurate term would be “farm to rubbish bin”. As mentioned above, reducing food waste is one of the key issues that the food industry is currently tackling.

Innovation in restaurants

Although much of the investment and media attention is focused on the use of highly sophisticated technological processes to create food products, many new developments are also taking place in restaurants. During the pandemic, the providers of technology solutions underwent a major reinvention in order to help the food service sector at a time when it was in critical condition. The momentum is still there and the drive towards digitalisation has accelerated, instead of slowing down.

With regard to the “front office”, i.e. the public-facing aspects of the restaurant’s management activities, one of the main challenges is attracting customers via marketplaces, networks, aggregators, etc. In this respect, there are a number of third-party platforms available and it is extremely easy to set up one’s own e-commerce and business platforms, or join dedicated marketplaces for niches such as haute cuisine, B2B and catering. As well as attracting customers, the front office has also witnessed the increasing popularity of payment via QR or NFC, and (more recently) robot waiters.

With regard to the “back office”, restaurants are already using technology to carry out smart purchasing, forecast demand, plan working hours and perform HR tasks, as well as using stock management tools to prevent shortages. The list of tools and software that can be used to address each of the restaurant’s management issues is growing increasingly longer. The main challenge, both today and in the years to come, is likely to be the integration of the different technological solutions into a single tool.

Delivery

Delivery has catalysed the foodtech categories related to optimisation of operations, planning, predictive analytics and robotisation, in both supermarkets and restaurants. According to Beatriz Romanos, delivery has been one of the main drivers of innovation in the food industry for the last 10 years, giving rise to technological developments designed to improve operations, the creation of new sales platforms/channels, the proliferation of dark kitchens, and more. “Foodtech is synonymous with delivery. Everything that happens in this category affects the food service sector: traditional delivery, dark kitchens, business models based on virtual brands, etc. These models are also embracing developments such as robotisation and automation, as they respond to a number of challenges including the shortage of labour”.

Delivery addresses the needs of a new, more high-paced lifestyle, especially in cities. So-called “ultra-convenience”, i.e. quick and easy ordering and consumption, has become one of the main focal points of investment. For this business model, technology and data management play a key role in improving the management of electronic sales and – perhaps the biggest challenge – the logistics of delivering a product in perfect condition in as short a time as possible. Delivery is therefore expected to remain the most dynamic and innovative segment throughout the coming years.

For its part, and in response to the pandemic, L’Hospitalet City Council launched a delivery scheme titled “Emporta’t la cuina de LH a casa” (“Take L’H’s cooking home with you”), which uses bags that the Council created and distributed among the city’s establishments.

Dark kitchens

Dark kitchens are at the forefront of the new business models in the restaurant industry. They are professional kitchens designed specifically to provide food for delivery or takeaway, and can be set up to serve a single brand or be shared by a number of different brands.

Numerous specialist companies have sprung up around the “dark kitchen” concept, although some of them are focused solely on the property aspect, in which a large holding company rents out its facilities to other companies. However, innovations have emerged in an attempt to offer an exclusive service to the restaurant brands that are the “tenants” of these kitchens, including the development of ultra-local platforms, the provision of logistical services, and the creation of dedicated brands. For some ghost kitchen companies, the only thing they don’t do is the cooking.
For food service entrepreneurs, the emergence of this business model has overcome a hurdle that previously served as a barrier to entry: namely, leasing and setting up a professional facility. Now, a restaurant can carry out a month-long trial of its products in a new city by simply renting one of these dark kitchens, at a cost significantly lower than setting up an entire kitchen on its own account.

Food safety

Traceability is one of the factors that consumers value the highest. Food safety is becoming increasingly more important, and the foodtech industry is targeting this area for investment. Of particular note in this respect is a new approach to product testing known as “lab-to-sample”, in which the laboratory is brought to the place where the sample to be analysed is located, such as a field, a loading dock, a factory, etc. This approach serves to reduce sampling costs, thereby resulting in a greater amount of testing and increased food safety.

Food waste

According to the FAO, a third of the food that the world produces is lost or wasted. This waste is utterly senseless. The technological solutions currently being developed by the foodtech industry include robotisation, techniques that draw upon artificial intelligence, and the use of sensors to predict demand. Restaurants in particular are developing systems to manage stock and tools to measure waste, and are investing heavily in solutions that enable them to predict demand. Additionally, there are platforms that enable products to be sold before they are thrown away, thereby helping to prevent tonnes of food from being wasted.