Specialty Food Magazine is the leading publication for retailers, manufacturers and foodservice professionals in the specialty food trade. It provides news, trends and business-building insights that help readers keep their businesses competitive.
Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/838473
trends & happenings the share online grocery shopping will own by 2025, according to Nielsen, as grocery consumers migrate online $100 billion BRAINY SCANNERS OFFER RECOGNITION SOFTWARE Scanning items at checkout without human intervention is complicated. Items of differ- ent shapes, sizes, and colors can be hard for a computer to recognize and differenti- ate. Even so, a Japanese bakery has started using bread recognition software called Bakery Scan to ring up items at the register more quickly, without human interaction. The software can identify and total up to 10 items in one second. And while this con- cept has been tested by Toshiba at supermarkets, it failed as the technology couldn't eliminate background color or handle the large inventory. But it was a jumping point for Tokyo-based company Brain, which offers this bread recognition system for different types of baked goods. Its success relies on a bakery's limited selection and the fact that it doesn't need to use bar codes, and scan each item individually. The camera can identify products easily on a solid colored tray and tally up the total in one shot. It's a Dog's Life at New Canine-Friendly Restaurant Atlanta's historic Old Fourth Ward district will become home to a new restaurant that not only feeds human patrons Texas-style food, it caters to their canine pals too. This summer, former Atlanta Falcon Garrett Reynolds and business partner, Stephen Ochs, plan to open Fetch Park & Ice House, a full-service eatery and bar with an on-site dog park. The open-air design is dog-enhanced by the Shipping Yard, a large, on- leash dog-friendly patio and shipping container bar that augments the off-leash dog park. The shipping container bar also has a rooftop area to watch the dog park. But it's the restored 1976 Airstream turned full- service bar parked in the center of the dog park that will make canine owners swoon. As will the dog wash station, WiFi, and on-site parking. Other dog-friendly restaurants, like Michael's Genuine Food & Drink in Miami, and Lazy Dog, a chain of 22 locations in California, Nevada, and Texas, welcome dogs, but Fetch creates a home-away-from-home for both hungry two- and four-legged patrons. Creative App Beats Hunger BovControl, a data collection and analysis app that can improve per- formance on meat, milk, and genet- ics production, is changing the face of farming—and hunger—around the world. It's a big job but also why this Brazilian startup recently received the Golden Blender Award at The Forbes Mixing Bowl Conference, whose mission is "connecting peo- ple who are feeding the world with people who are changing the world through tech innovation." Not just the creator of savvy technology, the company wants to combat hunger globally. Marcelo Murachovsky, head of design, BovControl says, "We want to empower small ranchers with a pow- erful tool that helps them increase their production of milk and meat and provide them with insights and recommendations based on data collection and analysis." The goal is to feed one billion people by 2020 through farms using the analytics to improve their production. Currently, more than 25,000 active farms are signed up, "and it's growing at the fast pace of 5 percent per week," he adds. Just some of its capabilities include collecting detailed data on cows—from milk production to pregnancy outcomes—through ear rings, chips, and smart scales. Meat exporting is expedited as certifiers may approve orders more quickly with precise data and less paper- work. The app also facilitates effi- cient livestock inventory, source, and destiny tracking, and fully inte- grates with other livestock systems. 20 ❘ SPECIALTY FOOD MAGAZINE specialtyfood.com