Last Week’s Top 6 Food Tech & Innovation Stories

Every week we curate and deliver the latest food tech news, trends and startup resources to our readers’ inboxes. We track the top technology and innovation happenings across agriculture, CPG, grocery, restaurants, cooking and health, so our newsletter is the absolute easiest way to stay on top of the emerging sector.

As a little weekend boost, we’ve decided to share our top 6 picks from last week in food tech. Like what you read? Feast your eyes on the full roundup here. Or better yet, sign up for our newsletter and get the latest and greatest in food tech delivered to your inbox weekly.

Food+Tech Meetup: How New Tech is Transforming Restaurants
Join us next Thursday, January 30th for “How New Tech is Transforming Restaurants” – an inside look at restaurant tech startup models. Each presenter will have 5 minutes to demo and 5 minutes for audience Q&A, followed by drinks, snacks and networking. Register HERE.

Confirmed Presenters:

• Cover – An OATV and Lerer Ventures backed payment processing app that lets customers seamlessly pay for their meals and saves restaurants money on credit card fees. @coverpay
• Culinary Agents – A RRE Ventures and Correlation Ventures backed professional network  that offers job matching and networking for culinary professionals in the food, beverage and hospitality industry. @CulinaryAgents
• Easy Pairings – An online marketplace for the hospitality industry that allows restaurants to lower recruitment costs and find great staff quickly and easily. @easypairings
• Objective Logistics – A Google Ventures and Atlas Venture backed retail/restaurant-focused software company that provides an artificially-intelligent, web-accessible labor performance management platform (MUSE).@OBJL
• Swipely – An Index Ventures and Shasta Ventures backed service that processes credit card payments for local merchants, then uses payment data to help businesses market and develop customer loyalty programs. @Swipely
• NoWait – A Birchmere Ventures backed iOS app that allows consumers to search restaurant wait times, add their names to waiting lists and get texts from restaurants when their tables are ready. @NoWaitApp

8 Smart Kitchen Innovations From CES 2014
From smart refrigerators and interoperability apps to futuristic cook tops and ranges, don’t miss our roundup of innovative kitchen concepts on display at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show.

Food Delivery Service Fluc Lets You Schedule All Your Meals for a Year in Advance (Exclusive) – Venture Beat
Fluc powers an online food delivery service currently active in Palo Alto, Calif. and neighboring towns. Last week the company unveiled its latest product –  a scheduling system that lets people or businesses place delivery orders 365 days in advance, from and to multiple locations.

The Daily Startup: Culinary Agents Launches Chefs’ Networking Site – Wall Street Journal
Culinary Agents Inc., a sort of LinkedIn for culinary professionals started by a former International Business Machines Corp. executive, has raised $500,000 in seed funding.

A VC’s 10 Startup Secrets He Wishes He Had Known As An Entrepreneur – PandoDaily
Michael Skok, partner at North Bridge Venture, offers his top 10 insights to help entrepreneurs avoid common pitfalls.

Big Data Can Save Fuel and Boost Profits for Home Delivery Food Retailers – E2B Pulse
New research indicate that retailers offering home deliveries for food could cut their fuel consumption, boost their profits by four per cent and improve customer service through offering incentives to customers to take delivery in the most profitable time slots.