Automation for the salad obsessed.

What I talk about when I talk about salad tech, the California drought, and our not new obsession with protein.

In 2018, I attended the New Harvest conference in Cambridge, Massachusetts. (New Harvest is a non-profit supporting cultured meat.) On my way home after the event, I stopped at a fast casual restaurant called Spyce to grab dinner for the train ride. 

I read about Spyce before the conference. Maybe in the Washington Post, which wrote that Spyce was “founded on the idea that a fulfilling meal can be more science than spontaneity.” By the end of the interview, Michael Farid, one of the MIT co-founders, reversed himself. “At the end of the day, our product is not a technology product — it’s an experience and a delicious meal,” he said.

The early days of Spyce. The “robots” are the bowls in the background.

When I showed up at the little salad spot, I took in the menu, the online ordering system, and I couldn’t help but notice the employees behind the counter. I ordered one of the handful of set salads that were designed in collaboration with chef Daniel Boulud. (He might have been the reason I was intrigued.) I modified the salad, because I am at heart one of those people. The bill came to over $18. (Yes, this felt like a lot.)

Then I waited. My name popped up on a monitor. Ingredients in the back were put in a bowl and the bowl, now facing the interior of the restaurant, spun around like a pinwheel. This was the innovation—that ingredients were scooped into a bowl, and the bowl was turned mechanically. When the spinning stopped, it dropped into a bowl, and a human employee added toppings.

As I nibbled on my pricey salad on the train back to New York, I wondered how investors and chefs were swayed by such a nascent idea. At the time, Spyce raised $21 million in a series-A round from Khosla Ventures, Maveron, and chefs Boulud and Thomas Keller. Even in 2018, I was unimpressed.

Flash forward three years and the news dropped that Sweetgreen acquired Spyce. Terms of the deal aren’t public, but we can safely assume it’s for a significant amount. Spyce has two locations in Boston now. The salads move slowly on a conveyor belt hitting a set of stations that include cooking, steaming, and tossing. Since its beginning, Sweetgreen has been tinkering with its salad functions. The last time I spoke with the founders, the experience was about personal connection. The team switched from moving salads station to station with different employees handling each stop, to each order being managed by a single employee—guests stayed with one person, and employees felt like they owned something.

The new and improved Spyce?

Sweetgreen, which had to lay off 20% of its workforce last year, and do some major mea culpa because one of its founders posted insensitive comments on Linkedin, is now looking to ditch more of its workforce with technology. Of course this acquisition is merely the first step in a lengthy project. Personally, I hope they try it first in a commissary kitchen, before rolling it out to 121 locations.

In the same way that 9/11 brought us dramatic changes to air travel, I wonder about the hands-free, touchless, curbside pickup, robot situation that we’ll face in 2022.

Other tidbits:

1. This NYTimes opinion piece presents that California should grow less of the produce that our country needs, and by doing so we would free up water reserves for other jobs the state has. The California Farm Bureau Federation says that all we need to do is manage our water better. However, the writer presents: “It seems likely that California and other Western states will surrender some of their agricultural production to wetter parts of the country, where it used to be.” Read more. 

2. Our obsession with protein, this Guardian piece presents, is new. This writer has it so wrong. We’ve been wondering where we would get our protein fix since the 70s. I included some of this past anxiety in my book. Anna Moore Lappé, even included it in her book from 1971. A new edition of Lappé’s book, “Diet for a Small Planet,” will be out on the 21st.

Where you can find me?

1. Florence Fabricant called out my MOFAD event in her Front Burner section in the NYTimes. It was also in print last Wednesday. #IDIE

2. That now famous-ish MOFAD event is on 9/21 at 7pm EST. Get your tickets here. $10 or $35 w/ book. (Hint: with book!)

3. I’m interviewing Uma Valeti of Upside Foods in a fireside chat (anyone know why it’s called this?) at SOSV’s Climate Tech Summit, Oct 21-22 . Have a question you want me to ask? Send it my way. Bonus, it’s free. (Rumor has it Bill Gates will be there.)

4. I’ll be leading a conversation about transparency in cultured meat at the Cultured Meat Symposium on Oct 23-24th in San Francisco.

5. I’m taping some new podcasts. Stay tuned for links.

6. Buy my book? Leave me a review.