Last month, I shared a story on my LinkedIn about Crypto Kitchen — the first restaurant in Rio de Janeiro that incorporates blockchain technology by accepting crypto payments, promoting educational information about crypto and allowing customers to purchase NFT art from Brazilian artists.
Blockchain is a promising technology with multi-dimensional benefits and a powerful catalyst for change in the food industry. From improving supply chain tracking and streamlining payments and contracts to creating engagement opportunities with customers and tracking operations.
In this article, I will provide an introduction to blockchain technology, share industry case studies and explore implications and considerations for food businesses looking to adopt this technology.
What is Blockchain?
Blockchain is a database system or digital ledger that records data and tracks assets in a way that allows multiple individuals to confidently share access to the same data in real time. An asset can be tangible (a house, car, cash, land) or intangible (intellectual property, patents, copyrights, branding).
Virtually anything of value can be tracked and traded on a blockchain network while mitigating concerns around security, privacy and control (adapted from Accenture and IBM). The technical design of blockchain makes it virtually impossible for anyone to alter the ledger without approval from the other parties.
Usually, this is how blockchain transactions happen:
1. Record the transaction as a ‘block’ of data: the block of data will record the movement of the asset with information, such as who, what, when, where, and how much.
2. Each block is connected to the ones before and after it: each block of data will form a chain as the asset moves from one place to another or the ownership changes. The blocks securely link the data, providing the exact time and sequence of transactions and preventing the blocks from being altered or changed in sequence.
3. Transactions are blocked together in an irreversible chain: each additional block strengthens the verification of the previous block, and therefore delivers the key strength of immutability and removes the possibility of tampering by a malicious actor.
Source: IBM
Use cases of blockchain technology in the food industry
In recent years, blockchain have been successfully applied in the food industry, across a range of interesting use cases:
- Traceability and food safety: create a transparent and secure supply chain that allows food producers and consumers to track the journey of food products from farm to table.
- Payment and remittances: facilitate fast, secure, and cost-effective payments and help to improve financial inclusion for small-scale farmers by reducing transaction fees.
- New monetization opportunities: increase sales and brand trust with product authenticity and validation of provenance.
- Reduce friction: reduce product recall, increase compliance, and streamline documentation sharing.
Inspired by my experiences and industry sources, here are examples of how three businesses are leveraging blockchain technology in their food business:
Walmart: using blockchain for food traceability and safety
Since 2016, IBM and Walmart have partnered to launch and maintain the retailer’s food track-and-trace program.
When an outbreak of a food-borne disease happens, it can take days or weeks to find its source. On average, it could take the food safety team 6 days, 18 hours, and 26 minutes to obtain a source. While all the data was right there in the system, arriving at the information took a long time.
Walmart thought that blockchain technology wanted to explore a decentralized food supply ecosystem to trace the lifespan of their products, from farm to table, to ensure safety.
To test this hypothesis, the company created a food traceability system based on Hyperledger Fabric. Together with its technology partner IBM, Walmart ran two proof-of-concept projects to test the system. One project was about tracing mangos sold in Walmart’s US stores and the other aimed to trace pork sold in its Chinese stores. The time needed to trace their provenance went from 6 days to…2.2 seconds!
Since the proof-of-concept projects, Walmart has embedded blockchain into the supply chain function and can now trace the origin of over 25 products from 5 different suppliers and plans to roll out the system to more products and categories in the near future.
Sources: IBM, Walmart and Supply Chain Digital
Crypto Kitchen: enabling crypto payments and promoting NFTs
Crypto Kitchen is an innovative restaurant in Rio de Janeiro that blends crypto, NFTs and superb food. Founded by the well-renowned and Michelin star rated chef, Rafa Costa e Silva, this food and tech space is the first restaurant in Rio de Janeiro to accept cryptocurrency as a payment method.
The restaurant is located inside Hashdex, the leader in crypto asset management in South America. One of Hashdex’s partners challenged Rafa to launch a food space that could promote crypto and technology to attract finance, VCs, art, etc.
The restaurant incorporates blockchain technology in its business by facilitating the following interactive experiences and capabilities:
- Raising awareness of crypto and promoting NFTs: inside the restaurant, digital panels display informative content about crypto and NFTs to help educate customers on such topics. Customers can also see several NFTs which are available for purchase via the TROPIX marketplace https://tropix.io/en.
- Introducing crypto as a payment method: The restaurant accepts crypto payments using the digital wallet Bifty, as well as traditional debit/credit cards. Customers access the restaurant menu via a QR code and place orders with a friendly waitress. I had the famous Wagyu burger — absolutely fantastic!
Looking into the future, in partnership with Hashdex, Crypto Kitchen will be launching an invite-only members club for 400 individuals to debate, network, and co-create projects and ideas about crypto, NFTs, DeFI, web3 and more.
Rafa admitted that using the name ‘Crypto’ in its restaurant’s name was a bold move — so, one of his ambitions is to launch a structured communications activity to demystify that Crypto Kitchen is open for all — food lovers, crypto-curious, enthusiasts, and those passionate about art/digital arts — essentially everyone!
Bee K’onscious: leveraging blockchain for product traceability and authenticity
Bee K’onscious sells premium single-origin raw, organic honey varietals, packed in glass jars mainly in the USA.
When Matt Kollmorgen, COO of Bee K’onscious, started exploring the science of honey, he was surprised to recognise that what most consumers see on shelves is highly adulterated with sugar and other products that aren’t honey.
To meet the company’s commitment to producing healthy honey, Bee K’onscious partnered with TagOne’s blockchain-enabled supply chain platform to track honey from “beekeeper to jar.”
TagOne provided an end-to-end blockchain system to:
- Capture key data points at the hive
- Store business data
- Store key testing documents
- Generate QR codes to add on labelling to engage the consumer with their traceability initiative
Source: TagOne
Final thoughts
Blockchain technology has the potential to revolutionise the food industry, offering a wide range of benefits to businesses, such as supporting traceability and food safety practices, facilitating payments to increasing brand trust with product authenticity and validation of provenance.
Yet, its adoption for the food business is not without challenges. Businesses considering exploring the technology usually experience challenges regarding technical implementation, costs, lack of standardisation and different protocols across different platforms.
As blockchain continues to evolve and mature, food businesses should consider a few industry-agnostic practices to determine the best approach and model to bring this technology into the businesses. Examples of practices include determining business challenges and opportunities across different business functions, partnering with a blockchain service provider to reduce risks and costs, developing hypotheses for the application of blockchain, running pilots to determine viability and continuously training and educating stakeholders on the technology and its trends.
Blockchain is an exciting technology and capability for businesses and the possibilities are endless.
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