No doubt, LA is a foodie’s paradise. We’ve got great local produce, a literal melting pot of ethnic influences, bad boy chef Roy Choi and an avid crowd of restaurant-goers who want to eat, enjoy and — this being LA — live vlog it.
But beneath the city’s thriving restaurant scene is a second market, one that’s helping prop up the food industry, and in some cases, fundamentally changing the way it operates.
Foodtech is taking a bite out of LA — a big one
We’re talking about foodtech, an emerging industry at the nexus of food and technology — one that’s expected to grow by around $250 billion globally by 2022, according to reports.
And once you start looking, you’ll see the industry’s fingerprints everywhere in this city.
Last month, Mayor Eric Garcetti brought up LA’s foodtech scene to explain why the country will continue to outcompete China in the global market (and how he’d make a good president if he considered running). There’s no shortage of local foodtech discussions and meetups online, and General Assembly held a panel about it, billed “The Future of Food Tech, Los Angeles.”
But that’s just talk.
On the ground, there are ice cream shops powered by bicycles. Full meals in small bottles. Even a dedicated foodtech innovation lab, offering 30,000 square feet of prime downtown office space to companies dedicated to “changing the way the world consumes food.” (Not to mention a totally different lab for 3D food printing. You read that right.)
The future of food is in foodtech, and foodtech is in Culver City
This foodtech trend is very real, and — as we set to work tracing it out — we realized, very geographically concentrated. The bulk of LA’s foodtech companies are setting up shop in Culver City, a small westside city made famous by its ties to Hollywood and the music industry. Today, Culver is a bustling food hub and home to more foodtech companies than most of its LA neighbors combined.
How did it happen? Here are our best guesses.
One: A lot of what is now Culver City was once owned by either the major studio systems or the aviator himself, Howard Hughes. Between them, the city was transformed into a checkered map of industrial hangars, sound stages and WWII manufacturing plants. Those holdings informed how the city was planned, leaving a decent amount of non-residential space in the city’s blueprints for larger offices — and growing businesses.
Two: There’s a lot of really good, relatively affordable food to eat in Culver’s hip downtown district. We assume that matters to foodtechies.
Three: The city boasts easy access to transit lines heading north, east, west and south, making it an attractive place for companies who want to draw talent from all corners of the city.
For more on Culver City’s foodtech scene, here are five companies we’re watching.
Founders: Andy Mackensen and Sean Patrick Kelly
Founding year: 2014
Serving up: Snacks. All kinds of ‘em. SnackNation provides a healthy snack membership service to companies that want to treat their employees to nosh that won’t rot their teeth or make their blood sugar spike.
High on the hog: The company is carving a niche for itself in foodtech for providing a traditional foodservice function on a SaaS platform. Not to mention Forbes named them as one of the coolest offices in America last year.
Founders: Jonathan Neman, Nathaniel Ru and Nicolas Jammet
Founding year: 2007
Serving up: Health. No, really. Eater LA, the local culinary magazine, went so far as to call the company “a clean-eating temple.” SweetGreen serves healthy salads and bowls that are also healthy for the environment and local economy. So yeah, this stuff is good for you.
Healthy offerings, healthy earnings: The company, which was founded in the D.C. area, recently moved its HQ to Culver City, where its test kitchen/restaurant is spinning out fresh salad fare on a weekly basis. Wondering why a salad company just opened shop in one of LA’s hottest tech scenes — or why they’re collecting VC at an alarming rate? For starters, they’re a tech company. They have a team of engineers, an app and a plan to disrupt the fast-casual food industry.
Founders: Alex Canter, Jay Fuhr, Michael Jacobs and Paul Allen
Founding year: 2017
Serving up: A way to get organized. Running a restaurant isn’t easy — which is why so many tech companies are scrambling to build products that can help them out. Enter Ordermark, an online ordering management system for restaurants. The idea is to streamline how customers order food, so existing systems can be seamlessly adapted when restaurants begin taking orders online.
This story begins at a deli — a very famous deli: Alex Canter, OrderMark’s CEO and co-founder, hails from Los Angeles culinary royalty. He is the fourth generation owner of Canter’s Deli — one of, if not the most, famous Jewish deli in a city that prides itself on the food — and served as the restaurant’s director of business development from 2009 to 2017. Now he’s bringing that expertise to Ordermark. Order’s up.
Founder: Guillaume Manca
Founding year: 2014
Serving up: Pre-made meals for customers who want to get healthy or lose weight. The meals are always 100 percent free of artificial flavors, colors and refined sugars, take less than five minutes to prepare, and are delivered weekly, according to their website.
French connection: My Cuistot was founded in France (thus the name), and has since opened offices in NYC, LA, SF, Washington, D.C. and London. Some of their current offerings include: chicken yassa, lasagna with sausage from Toulouse, bitock of beef and roasted sweet potatoes, and fillet of hake and carrot mousseline with orange. Fancy.
Founder: Josiah Gordon, Louis Amoroso and Zac Brandenberg
Founding year: 2013
Serving up: Wine — with a side of big data. DRINKS operates the leading consumer marketplace and platform for high quality, affordable premium wine. They work with online retailers and brick-and-mortar players to provide a boozy end-to-end solution for companies who need help with marketing, compliance or delivery. To do that, they leverage big data to optimize wine recommendations for customers in need of...well, wine.
Cheers to that: Though DRINKS isn’t exactly in Culver City (it’s right on the cusp, we swear) it epitomizes so much of what’s going on in the city’s bustling food scene. Fresh takes. Prestigious culinary partners (DRINKS recently partnered with Martha Stewart on a wine collection). Efficient processes. Clever names. With two acquisitions and $28.3 million in funding under the company’s belt, DRINKS is a fizzy reminder of what foodtech is getting right.
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