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Uber Eats makes it easier to expense business lunch
If you're pulling an all-nighter at the office, it's easy enough to reach for your phone and grab something from Uber Eats. It's a popular thing to do, too, with corporate expense platforms seeing Eats requests skyrocket over the last year. It's why Uber for Business is now integrating Eats for Business, a new way for companies to keep an eye on, and control, what you're ordering.
Pizza Hut's hydrogen delivery truck hauls a robotic kitchen
Pizza Hut will not be outdone in the pursuit of over-the-top delivery vehicles. The restaurant chain has teamed up with Toyota to unveil the Tundra Pie Pro, a concept hydrogen fuel cell truck that not only cooks pizzas, but uses a pair of robot arms to move them along the line. The mechanical limbs fetch pre-assembled pizzas, bake them, slice them and slide them into boxes all on their own -- they'll even ring a bell to let you know your meal is ready.
Jet.com is the first online retailer selling Blue Apron meal kits
If you're Blue Apron and you see Amazon encroaching on your turf with its own meal kits and key online partnerships, what do you do? Make your kits more widely available, that's what. In a reflection of its retail promises from earlier in the year, Blue Apron kits are now on sale through Jet.com's City Grocery service -- the first time they've been available through an online retailer. Should you live in the New York City area (including Hoboken and Jersey City), you can order from a selection of quick-to-prepare two-serving kits that will reach your door either the same day or the next.
The future of indoor agriculture is vertical farms run by robots
Back in the good old days, farming was easy. Throw some seeds in the ground, keep it watered, pray to your preferred deity to spare your crops from pestilence and wait for harvest season. But with the global population closing in on 7 billion mouths to feed, humanity is going to have to figure out how to grow more food using less land and fewer resources, and soon. So while some researchers and equipment manufacturers are devising intelligent agricultural implements that will toil in tomorrow's fields on our behalf, others are aiming to bring futuristic farms to urban city centers.
CRISPR editing may help turn a wild berry into a farmable crop
It can take many years to make a wild plant easy to farm, but gene editing could make that happen for one fruit in record time. Scientists have used genomics and CRISPR gene editing to develop a technique that could domesticate the groundcherry, a wild fruit that's tasty and drought-resistant but difficult to grow in significant volumes. After sequencing the groundcherry's genome, the team both tweaked CRISPR to work with the plant and pinpointed the genes that led to its less-than-pleasant traits, such as its small size and not-so-plentiful flowering. From there, they just had to 'fix' the fruit with gene edits that promoted the qualities they wanted.
Robots are learning to carefully peel lettuce leaves
Technology is designed to improve and streamline every facet of life, and that inevitably includes areas most people would never even think about. Such a lettuce peeling. A random issue for many, perhaps, but for the agriculture industry, a new development in this field is a big deal. Researchers from Cambridge University have developed the first robotic lettuce leaf peeling system, which not only demonstrates advances in automation, but addresses increasing food and labor demands.
Walmart will use blockchain to ensure the safety of leafy greens
Walmart is anxious about the safety of its food following bacterial outbreaks for lettuce and other food, and it's hoping technology will set shoppers' minds at ease. It's telling its leafy green suppliers to use a blockchain system (designed with IBM's help) to track the shipments of their produce. The secure, distributed ledger will help trace the vegetables' path from the farm to the store, revealing the source of any potential outbreak in seconds instead of days. This isn't just for Walmart's internal benefit, either. Eventually, you could scan a bag and use the blockchain to find out where your spinach came from.
Soylent's meal replacement drinks are coming to the UK
Soylent and its hugely divisive food replacement drinks will launch in the UK on Thursday. As BBC News reports, the Silicon Valley startup has swapped seven ingredients and tweaked some of the vitamin and mineral content to appease British regulators. We doubt it will taste hugely different to the version sold in the US, however. In the UK, Soylent will be sold in 12-bottle packs for £39.99 (roughly £3.33 per drink) through Amazon. By comparison, Huel -- an already established rival in the British Isles -- sells enough powdered food to whip up 28 meals for £45 online.
FDA and USDA will meet to debate the future of lab-grown meat
It's inevitable that lab-grown meat will play some kind of role in the future of food supply, but at this stage, it's unclear how much of a role, or what its regulatory frameworks will look like. This is why the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and US Department of Agriculture (USDA) are hosting a joint public meeting on the issue, to address public concerns about cell-cultured meat products and to examine how they will fit into existing food systems.
Finally, an app for people who don’t know how to Google ‘salmon recipes’
Imagine: You're trying to make do with whatever's left in your fridge or you've just found a choice (or cheap) cut of meat at the grocery store. You could just Google the ingredient(s) and see what recipes pop up, but that's low-tech thinking for simpler minds. Why not harness the power of machine learning, AI and other buzzwordy tech to do it for you? The new app PixFood promises to do just that: It recognizes a photo of a single ingredient and suggests recipes with step-by-step instructions for your culinary adventures!
Golf course drone deliveries help you grab a bite on the green
You won't have to wait for a human courier (or drive back to the clubhouse) just to satisfy your hunger in the middle of a golf game. Flytrex and EASE drones have teamed up with King's Walk Golf Course in North Dakota to offer the first drone-based food delivery service on an American golf course. If your stomach is growling several holes in, you just have to pick a pre-approved drop-off point through a mobile app, order your meal and watch as a human-piloted drone carries your grub directly to that point. That's potentially much faster than having a worker drive a circuitous route.
Sound-based liquid printing could lead to new designer drugs
Liquid printing is virtually ubiquitous thanks to inkjets, but the materials can only be so sluggish before it stops working. What if you wanted to print a biological material, or even liquid metal? That might happen soon. Harvard researchers have developed a technique that uses acoustic levitation to print droplets of materials that wouldn't normally be so accommodating, including metal and honey. The approach uses a subwavelength acoustic resonator to create a sound field that pulls substances from the printer nozzle at over 100G -- even some of the most viscous materials can't resist that tug. You can control the size of the droplets using the amplitude of the soundwaves, and place them anywhere you like.
Instacart gets grocery delivery help from Postmates at busy times
What do you do if your internet-based grocery delivery service is straining to keep up with demand at its busiest periods? Why, ask another delivery service for help, of course. Instacart is launching a pilot program in San Francisco that will have Postmates deliver some groceries at peak hours (late morning and early afternoon) to keep up with demand. If you ask Instacart's Michelle McRae, it's a perfect match -- Postmates is normally quieter at those times, so it gets additional business while helping Instacart cope with a heavy workload.
Amazon brings Whole Foods delivery to Chicago and four more cities
Amazon's Whole Foods delivery service still covers a relatively small area, but it's seemingly growing by the moment. The internet giant has expanded the Prime-based grocery deliveries to Chicago, Houston, Indianapolis, Minneapolis and San Antonio, theoretically giving millions extra-quick access to produce, meat, everyday food and "select" alcohol. As before, delivery is available between 8AM and 10PM and shouldn't cost extra if you're ordering at least $35. You can spend $8 if you need your food within an hour.
Netflix will keep streaming Anthony Bourdain's 'Parts Unknown'
Netflix's deal to carry Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown in the US was due to expire on June 16th, and that was understandably distressing if you wanted to pay tribute to the late chef by streaming his last series. You won't have to rush through them after today, however. The service has extended its arrangement to keep Bourdain's food and travel show available in the US "for months to come." The firm hasn't named a new expiry date, but you now have the freedom to watch at a more relaxed pace.
Target expands curbside pickup and same-day delivery services
Target is determined to win over shoppers in a hurry -- the retail giant is expanding its Drive Up curbside pickup and Shipt same-day delivery services across the US Midwest and Southeast. As of this week, you can use Shipt to receive groceries, electronics and other items in Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Michigan, Missouri and Wisconsin. Drive Up, meanwhile, is coming to Des Monies, Kansas City, Madison, Omaha, Raleigh, Nashville and Columbia.
Food delivery drones take flight in China
You don't have to wait for food delivery drones... if you live in the right part of China. Alibaba's online meal giant Ele.me has been cleared to use drones for delivering orders in Shanghai's Jinshan Industrial Park. The initiative won't deliver directly to your abode, but it will save you a lot of travel time: there are 17 routes, each of with two fixed drop-off points. Your food should arrive within 20 minutes, which isn't always possible with conventional cars slogging through traffic.
Gene-edited rice plants could boost the world's food supply
Rice may be one of the most plentiful crops on Earth, but there are only so many grains you can naturally obtain from a given plant. Scientists may have a straightforward answer to that problem: edit the plants to make them produce more. They've used CRISPR/Cas9 gene editing to create a rice plant variety that produces 25 to 31 percent more grain per plant in real world tests, or far more than you'd get through natural breeding. The technique "silenced" genes that improve tolerances for threats like drought and salt, but stifle growth. That sounds bad on the surface, but plants frequently have genetic redundancies -- this approach exploited this duplication just enough to provide all of the benefits and none of the drawbacks.
Traeger Timberline 850 review: BBQ goes high tech
Between chopping or hauling wood, shoveling coals and moving around large cuts of meat, it can be exhausting. But a little technology can help ease the relentless grind.
Panera Bread expands delivery service nationwide
Panera Bread has been delivering lunch and dinner on demand to customers in some areas since 2016. Now, the delivery program is expanding to 897 cities across 43 states, so it might be easier for you to get that sandwich hookup.