Postmates expands to 1000 more cities as IPO looms
Postmates announced on Tuesday that it has added 1000 more cities to its service, meaning over 3500 cities across 50 states offer residents the ability to order from the food delivery service. Postmates is popular among millennials, who make up roughly 75% of its customers, and the service’s Unlimited users spend an average of $3000 per year—double the amount spent by Amazon Prime users on Amazon in 2018. Read more at Fortune …
High CO2 levels will wreck plants’ nutritional value, so don’t plan on surviving on vegetables
Kristie Ebi is the lead author from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) widely read report regarding the need “to limit global warming to below 1.5 degrees Celsius.” Now, she’s making the case that global warming will soon destroy the nutritional quality of our food and is calling for more investment from governments and food companies in “interventions that could support the nutritional quality of crops." Read more at Fast Company …
Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff invests in $25M round for Naveen Jain’s microbiome startup Viome
Wellness startup Viome has raised $25 million in funding from investors including Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff. Viome analyzes customers’ microbiomes through stool samples and subsequently makes food recommendations for health or weight loss. Microbes make up more than half the cells in the human body, and founder Naveen Jain says that the company is in the midst of several clinical studies with 15 or so separate diseases. Read more at GeekWire …
The man who’s going to save your neighborhood grocery store
The traditional American supermarket appears to be dying—food nationwide is being increasingly channeled through a handful of companies such as Amazon, Walmart, FreshDirect and Blue Apron. But one man is hoping to turn things around: supermarket architect Kevin Kelley, who has spent decades “honing his vision for what the grocery store should do and be.” Kelley’s team, which includes a cultural anthropologist with a PhD, has redesigned hundreds of stores to be “the anti-Amazon” by establishing a “brand realm” that shifts consumer behavior. Read more at New Food Economy …
Here’s Soylent’s new product. It’s food.
Soylent’s new product, Soylent Squared, represents a seemingly insignificant jump for the company from a protein drink to a protein bar. However, it is the second in a line of several new product launches in 2019, the first being Bridge, a carton of low-calorie, protein-rich Soylent aimed at women. And it represents a shift from Soylent’s status as “a lifestyle choice for a small group of technology overlords” to “a lifestyle necessity to the tech underclass for whom every moment spent on things like eating instead of working means less money." Read more at The New York Times …
