Remembering Anthony Bourdain, Sea to Table Accused of Mislabeling Fish + More

Image source: NBC News

Every week we track the business, tech and investment trends in CPG, retail, restaurants, agriculture, cooking and health, so you don’t have to. Here are some of this week’s top headlines.

Last week, Anthony Bourdain took his life. Anthony, thank you. For your insatiable curiosity. For taking us around the world with you to learn about culture, food, and humanity. For showing us how beautiful and delicious diversity is. For challenging us to buck norms and to think bigger. For shining a light on the untold stories of those who grow and cook our food. We will miss you. RIP.

An extensive investigation by the Associated Press found that New York-based seafood distributor, Sea to Table has been marketing seafood as “local“ and “wild caught“ when some of its seafood was actually farmed or illegally caught out-of-season.

In other news, specialty foods sales surged to $140.3 billion in 2017. The category is growing faster than all food sold at retail.

Retailers continue to pair up with tech giants. This week, Google announced its foray into grocery e-commerce through its partnership with Carrefour in France. Microsoft is now working on cashier-less checkout technology in an aim against Amazon Go.

Check out our weekly round-up of last week’s top food startup, tech and innovation news below or peruse the full newsletter here.

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1. Anthony Bourdain, Renegade Chef Who Reported From the World’s Tables, Is Dead at 61 – New York Times

Mr. Bourdain, who began his career as a chef, redefined the staid genres of food writing and food-tourism shows.

2. Fish Billed As Local Isn’t Always Local – AP News

Sea to Table’s yellowfin tuna has been linked to migrant fishermen in foreign waters who describe labor abuses, poaching and the slaughter of sharks, whales and dolphins. The distributor has been offering species in other parts of the country that were illegal to catch, out of season and farmed.

3. Letter From Our Founder On Recent Press Story – Sea to Table

The idea that we could be associated with an organization that engages in poor labor practices is outright horrifying to us. We would never knowingly purchase fish that doesn’t conform to our exacting standards, and are addressing these claims quickly and with a strong commitment to integrity and transparency.

4. Specialty Foods Sales Surge to Record $140.3B in 2017 – Food Dive

Specialty food sales rose 11% between 2015 and 2017. The category is growing faster than all food sold at retail, jumping 12.9% compared to 1.4%.

5. Self-Driving Robot Delivery Startup Starship Technologies Raises $25M – TechCrunch

Funding included Matrix Partners, Morpheus Ventures, Airbnb co-founder Nathan Blecharczyk, Skype founding engineer Jaan Tallinn and others. Starship plans on deploying robots in neighborhoods, corporate and university campuses in both the US and Europe.

6. Microsoft Takes Aim at Amazon with Push for Checkout-Free Retail – Reuters

Microsoft is developing systems that track what shoppers add to their carts. It has shown sample technology to retailers from around the world and has had talks with Walmart about a potential collaboration.

7. Chef’d Is Bringing Its Meal Kits to Walgreens, Duane Read – CNBC

Chef’d will bring its meal kits to 30 Walgreens and Duane Reade stores in the New York area as part of a partnership with Smithfield Foods. This is one of the first instances of a meal kit company partnering with a drugstore chain.

8. Google Enters Deal With Carrefour to Sell Food Online in France – Bloomberg

Alphabet Inc’s Google entered a deal with Carrefour to sell groceries online in France through its platforms including Home, Assistant and the Google shopping destination in France.

9. Ford’s ‘Self-Driving’ Vans Are Now Delivering Food in Miami – The Verge

Ford has retrofitted a fleet of its Transit vans with touchpad-accessible lockers, from which Postmates customers with the right access code can retrieve their food. The pilot is underway with over 70 businesses participating.

10. Deliveroo Fattens Its Market Presence by Opening to Restaurants That Do Deliveries – TechCrunch

Next month, the company will launch a new service called Marketplace+ in seven of its markets, onboarding restaurants that do their own food deliveries to its platform and offering them the ability to tap into Deliveroo’s network of riders.

11. Sfoglini Completes $2.5M Financing Round Led by Almanac Insights to Fuel Its Organic Pasta Empire – Food Navigator

The partnership with David Barber’s investment fund will enable the company to scale from a small Brooklyn startup to a large-scale production facility.

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