Episode 69: LGf+w NFTs Meet Food, Andy Nguyen’s BoredNHungry © by Paige Donner

Episode 69 of Local GOODfood+wine is all about Andy’s Long Beach, California restaurant called BoredNHungry, named after the Bored Ape he collected not too long before opening the restaurant.

Interview with BoredNHungry’s Andy Nguyen, by Paige Donner, host/producer Local GOODfood+wine podcast.

we’re official fam.
thanks for all the love and support ❤️ 🙏 pic.twitter.com/A3Nt9z0Dcx
— JustBoredAndHungry (@BoredNHngry) May 19, 2022

BoredNHungry & FoodFightersUniverse – NFTs Meet Food

So, it’s been about a year since I did my first deep dive into NFTs. It all began about a year before that when I started reading about NFTs, Web3 and ownership of digital assets. As a creator, my first response was it was ‘too good to be true’ and that it, like TulipMania, ‘wouldn’t last.’

But fast forward two years to today, and I am now the proud creator of the start of my own NFT collection called AstroAthletes. My collection has nothing to do with food, at least for now, so I decided to turn my focus for this podcast episode to a Super Human entrepreneur named Andy Nguyen. He’s doing a ton of stuff with NFTs in the food space.

So this Episode 69 of Local GOODfood+wine is all about Andy’s Long Beach, California restaurant called BoredNHungry, named after the Bored Ape he collected not too long before opening the restaurant. And he also shares with us a bit about his new Food Inspired NFT collection called Food Fighters Universe, launched with the mission to help support restaurateurs looking to set up their own shops.

Links to Andy’s Twitter and NFT collections are in the show notes at LocalFood.wine.

Before I roll tape on the interview with Andy Nguyen, however, I’d like to first highlight some food tech statistics from the Food Startup space. Just in case any of you listeners have an entrepreneurial bent –

This is from AngelList. It notes that 2021 saw a whopping $40B in FoodTech investment by VCs.

Restaurant tech

Online grocery and other digital-first food providers are attracting record fundraising. Chipotle recently launched a $50M venture fund for early-stage food tech startups that it hopes will revolutionize restaurants.

In New York City, Pepper raised a $16M Series A for its digital operating system built for restaurants, grocers, and other food distributors. Two of Pepper’s founders started UberEats.

San Francisco-based Cheetah helps grocers avoid getting “forked over” by distributors with next-day shipping of food and supplies. Arizona’s MenuLabs helps restaurants grow by offering commission-free delivery along with curbside, takeout, and tableside ordering with digital menus.

Now for robotic kitchens…

A national labor shortage is making kitchen robots welcome news to restaurants.

San Jose-based Hyphen raised a $24M Series A led by Tiger Global for its industrial food production line called “The Makeline” capable of making 350 meals in an hour. The makeline incorporates human and robot labor and uses AI-based vision to monitor for quality and accuracy “down to the gram.” Pittsburgh, Penn.-based Agot uses AI and computer vision to help restaurants confirm order accuracy.

Meanwhile, In Bengaluru, India Euphotic Labs wants to put an autonomous cooking robot in your home kitchen.

Now, for Alt proteins

The market for plant-based protein and cell-cultured meat (also called “cultivated” or “lab-grown” meat) is exploding, thanks to trends like the growth of vegan populations

Atlanta-based Tomorrow Farms raised $8.5M in seed funding to partner with deep tech food companies to build retail-ready, animal-free brands and products.

And for the pet lovers out there, … San Francisco-based Mypawco is bringing plant-based meat to the pet aisle.

OK…

Now lets talk with Andy Nguyen of Long Beach’s BoredNHungry & Food FightersUniverse NFT Collection.

https://foodfightersuniverse.com/universe

@BoredNHungry

ShowNotes: LocalFoodAndWine.wordpress.com & BordeauxFoodAndWine.wordpress.com ChérieduVin.wordpress.com

Paige Show INTRO/ OUTRO music ‘Work It’ by All Good Folks, courtesy Uppbeat.io

Contact Host-Producer, Paige Donner @http://PaigeDonner.info