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3 days ago | 
thespoon.tech | Michael Wolf
Brian Canlis didn’t expect to be in the restaurant business his whole life. But as with so many family businesses – especially hugely successful ones like Canlis, which single-handedly put Pacific Northwest cuisine on the map – life and careers happen before we know it.
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6 days ago | 
thespoon.tech | Michael Wolf
It’s a mystery (kinda). While traditional venture and strategic capital haven’t shown much enthusiasm for backing food waste-fighting technology, the category is thriving on crowdfunding site Kickstarter. Two current campaigns, in particular, are crushing it, blowing past their initial funding targets with weeks still to go. First up is the Shelfy Lite, the second fridge gadget from Italian startup Vitesy.
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1 week ago | 
thespoon.tech | Michael Wolf
After a multi-year boom fueled by the rise of delivery apps and the broader digital transformation of the restaurant industry, venture capital flowing into restaurant tech has sharply slowed, according to a new report from PitchBook. The report, titled Q2 2025 Tech Landscape: Restaurant Technology, shows that total VC funding in the space dropped to just $1.3 billion in 2024, down from a peak of $14.5 billion in 2018.
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2 weeks ago | 
thespoon.tech | Michael Wolf
If you’ve eaten out much over the past couple of years, chances are you’ve experienced a growing number of dining experiences that use AI and automation. Restaurants across the U.S. and worldwide are adopting artificial intelligence and automation at the drive-thru, in the kitchen, at the register, and other parts of the business. But how do diners feel about this shift?
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3 weeks ago | 
thespoon.tech | Michael Wolf
Last week, I was in Rome for a workshop on the ethical and social implications of artificial intelligence and automation in our food system. The workshop was part of an ongoing three-year NIH-funded project focused on the ethics of AI in food.
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4 weeks ago | 
thespoon.tech | Michael Wolf
“Biology is so complex, it’s like the most complex piece of technology in the entire world,” said Carl-Emil Grøn. “There’s nothing that’s remotely close. You start from one cell and then you grow into a Michael Wolf who’s now hosting a podcast together with me. That is crazy when you think about it.”When this former single-cell turned human podcaster caught up with the CEO of ReShape Biotech this past week on The Spoon Podcast, Grøn’s excitement over the miracle of biology and biotech was palpable.
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1 month ago | 
thespoon.tech | Michael Wolf
Eva Goulbourne didn’t study food systems in college – she studied the Cold War, intercontinental ballistic missiles, and art history – but her lifelong obsession with food would eventually shape a career that’s taken her across the globe and put her at the center of the global food systems transformation conversation. I recently caught up with Eva for an episode of The Spoon Podcast to talk about her journey and hear more about her vision for her new podcast, Everything But the Carbon Sink.
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1 month ago | 
thespoon.tech | Michael Wolf
Combustion, the smart thermometer startup founded by ChefSteps cofounder Chris Young, has acquired popular recipe app Crouton. Crouton, developed by New Zealand-based software engineer Devin Davies, is a highly rated app that lets users organize all their recipes in one place. After launch, Crouton soon began gaining traction and critical attention (Apple awarded the app its 2024 Design Award for Interaction).
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1 month ago | 
thespoon.tech | Michael Wolf
Fridge startup Tomorrow will not live to see another day. Last week, founder Andrew Kinzer cited the difficult funding environment for hardware startups and the headwinds around the uncertainty in tariffs in a post on LinkedIn. I knew this would be a massive challenge. Consumer hardware is notoriously difficult, and solving shelf-life extension would require a scientific leap. I understood then that I could swing and miss, but I always felt that if I did, I could still be proud I gave it a shot.
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1 month ago | 
thespoon.tech | Michael Wolf
Back in the early days of the cloud computing revolution, my former employer, GigaOM, hosted perhaps the biggest and most influential conference on the topic called STRUCTURE. One of the phrases that has stuck with me from those days is “data is the new oil,” which I heard declared from the STRUCTURE stage more than a handful of times.
