🌌Food's Future, Blockchain Mail, Dog
spicy messaging, Q&A w/ Xandre Borghetti, future of work/school, apps.
Week 11! Enjoy 🤗
What kind of texter are you? 10 texts at once? An emoji fiend? Reactions spammer?
Muze is a messaging app to bring more life and intimacy to chat. It lets you say what you want to say, *how* you want to say it. Instead of boring sequences of message bubbles, you're given a freeform canvas where you can experiment and express anything with gifs, fonts, drawings, video and more.
The Muze team is adding a little creativity to the world by combining a social network, content creation tool, and hyper customizable messenger app. It’s absolute chaos in my experience, if that’s your jam.
Download the app and say hi! (username: glab)
Future of Food w/ Xandre Borghetti
Xandre is a Food & Beverage Entrepreneur and Co-Founder of Raduno, a Strategy Consultancy for CPG, Food, Hospitality companies and consumer brands.
How did you get into the restaurant/hospitality industry? What has your career path looked like until now?
I was born into it. My dad opened his first restaurant, Trattoria Farfalla, in 1988. My earliest memories are being in restaurants, trying to spin pizza dough (unsuccessfully), the hum and buzz of a busy place with food and drinks. It's definitely in my blood. As much as I've tried to fight it over the years, I've always come back to the business in some way or another. I love the energy of restaurants and people and food. There's nothing like it.
I worked most positions in the restaurant growing up, from doing food prep to being a dishwasher, a busboy, a runner, a server and a manager. At 21, I opened one of my dad's restaurants, Trattoria Farfalla in Westlake Village, and ran it for two years. From 2010-2013, I managed Nopa restaurant in San Francisco, before becoming the COO of Social Print Studio, a printing startup. That was my first real attempt to leave the business. Then in 2015, I moved to NY and became the GM of Blue Hill restaurant, which is where I met my current business partner, Michelle Biscieglia. We both left Blue Hill in 2017 and started our current company, Raduno, in January of 2018.
What trends have you noticed that will change Food/Supply Chains in the next 3-5 years?
Restaurants need to change their relationships with farms. Many people, including myself, thought restaurants having a direct relationship with small farms was a good thing. This crisis has shown that the reliance on direct relationships is actually not a resilient model and, in fact, we need more decentralized distribution centers to support small farms. I think one possible future for restaurants is that they become more like food hubs and processing centers - places that can buy more from small farms and feed more people.
Restaurants are an example of a broken business model that was able to "survive" for years without much innovation. COVID simply accelerated an inevitability - most of them were slowly dying already. Yes - there has been an explosion of new tech, but essentially they're all just making food to order and serving it to people. The focus on diversifying revenue streams has not been top of mind for most operators. And it needs to be. Processing centers, distribution centers, meal kits, grocery stores, fast-casual experiences, high-end experiences, memberships, etc. This is all part of a new model of what a restaurant can be. Diversification of revenue streams = resilience.
With restaurant tech, system integration & ownership of data are both essential. POS systems and reservation systems don't talk to each other. Delivery apps don't give you data on who is ordering from you. This will absolutely change. Seven Rooms is a great example of a company pushing data-driven customer loyalty. Delivery services might start looking more local to dethrone behemoths like UberEats, Doordash, etc.
What advice would you give to founders working in the space?
Figure out what makes you different and embrace it - That's your power, your fuel.
If you're a founder coming into the F&B world from the outside, talk to people who run these businesses. It's a different language. Now, perhaps more than ever, restaurant folks are resistant to outsiders. You're really seeing how much some of these companies that purport to help restaurants actually don't really care about your business (delivery apps are, again, a perfect example.) For anyone looking to get into the space: learn, find your way to the inside, be curious, open and empathetic. This is only the beginning of a very, very long and difficult period for restaurants.
Every failure is a learning opportunity. If you can - find a partner. I'm not sure what I would have done without my business partner!
How has your life/work changed since March? What have you been working on through COVID?
At Raduno, we focus completely on helping restaurants and working for brands we believe are defining the future of food and hospitality. We've begun to work for companies in exchange for equity - we want to be truly invested in our work. Even though things are uncertain, we know that the future is being defined as we speak and it's essential that we push it in the right direction.
This means: more resilience, more diversity, more equity, more opportunity for people without privilege. It means finding alternatives to factory farming which, in addition to making us all unhealthy, is destroying the planet. It means bringing people together and building community.
Before COVID, we launched a Slack Community for Food and Hospitality leaders across the world. It's grown considerably in the past few months and we'll continue to invite new, passionate, inspiring people to drive the community and conversation forward. Our goal is to formalize a fragmented network.
Launch coming soon!
*Crazy enough, I met Xandre on Lunchclub a few months ago. When I think F&B he’s top of mind for me. Awesome dude and exciting project upcoming. Keep your eyes peeled :)
Learning, Working and Adjusting to COVID-19
57 million (!) people work in the gig economy. Uber and Lyft’s battle with legislators in California nearly put tens of thousands of drivers out of work, but fortunately, they received a temporary reprieve. California votes on Prop 22 in November — a bill that could guarantee:
at least 120% of min wage while on the job
30 cents per mile for expenses
a healthcare stipend
occupational accident insurance for on-the-job injuries
protection against discrimination and sexual harassment
automobile accident and liability insurance
But wait, that's 57 million people who currently don't have any of those things. Gig workers, freelancers and people working in the "passion economy" are making their $$$ in new ways.
If you’re interested in learning more, click here!
Tech Trends & Startups We’re Watching
The race to build the world’s first quantum computer is tightening as IBM doubles its prototype’s performance within a year using qubit superposition
With phishing and fraud at all-time highs during the lockdown, data security and authorization are slated to grow at 22% annually over the next 5 years
Repeat ($2.83M, Seed) 🔁 - SaaS platform that enables CPG brands to turn one-time buyers into repeat customers.
Alchemy ($18.9M, Series A) 🔗 - Blockchain-based developer tools, dashboard and Ethereum API, helping companies build scalable, decentralized platforms.
Odeko ($25.73M, Series A) ☕ - Ordering and supply chain management software intended to help cafes and small businesses reduce waste and increase sales.
Dutchie ($53M, Series B) 🍁 - Online marketplace connecting consumers to local cannabis dispensaries.
NoCode Tools of The Week
Dashdash - Build sales and marketing tools and a web app, from a spreadsheet
Reflective - Guide and automate workflows to automate repetitive processes
Glide - Create a responsive, easy-to-use mobile app from a google sheet
Our Light Bulbs 💡
-Apple doubled its Market Cap in 2 years, and stands tall as the first $2T company
-Albion College in Michigan sparks privacy concerns after requiring students to use Aura, a COVID-tracking app that has constant access to the student’s location
-California faces massive blackouts as the summer heat continues, forcing the state to reconsider its rapid adoption of renewable energy
-Internal concerns at the DOJ as Attorney General Barr pressures staffers to file an antitrust lawsuit against Alphabet as soon as this fall
-The USPS turns to blockchain in a last-ditch attempt to secure in-mail voting this fall, officially filing a patent last week
-Professors are employing drastic measures to protect Chinese students threatened with legal action from the CCP over the politically-sensitive content of certain courses
Thing of the week
Ridiculous Law - Mandatory Dog Walks
A proposed animal welfare law from Germany’s Agriculture Minister, Julia Klöckner, requires dog owners to treat their pooches almost like an actual child.
Under the planned rules, dog owners:
will have to take their dogs for walks twice a day for a minimum of one hour in total
will not be allowed to keep their dogs chained for long periods of time
will not be allowed to leave dogs alone the whole day
The craziest part about this is that only 20% of German households have dogs, compared to 67% of U.S. households. Agriculture must be really boring that they’re proposing dog laws 😂
That’s it for this week :)
If you missed the last newsletter, find it here!
Hi! 👋 Thanks for reading The Void. We’re Zach and Jack, Partners @ Practicum and Students @ WashU + Georgetown. Leave some feedback, find us on LinkedIn/Twitter or contact us!