The Rise of Food Tech: A Critical Analysis of Media’s Representation of a Burgeoning Industry

The emerging sector of food technology, known as ‘food tech,’ incorporates technology in the production, manufacturing, distribution, and disposal of food. Food tech covers a wide range of products, including but not limited to agricultural innovations, alternative proteins, online ordering and delivery, meal kits, and food waste recovery (Vincent & Prouteau, 2019). In the past decade, investors and entrepreneurs have rushed into the market, seeing opportunities to disrupt longstanding processes and possibly garner huge returns on their investments. From 2011 to 2019, the dollar amount of venture capital funding provided to food tech companies increased by nearly 3000%, from $354M to $9.83B (Vertical: FoodTech 2020).

 New venture capital (VC) firms have formed, with the sole purpose of helping new food tech companies grow. One such company, Better Food Ventures, concluded their 2019 report, “At Better Food Ventures, we believe technology will prove to be the single biggest catalyst to solving critical problems across the global food ecosystem, and we are particularly encouraged by the continued growth of tech-driven innovations and frameworks across the food sector.” (Rosenheim, 2019). This quote illustrates a common, recurring theme: both entrepreneurs and VC firms posit working towards the greater good of solving overarching issues within the modern food system. But with innovation comes unintended consequences. The rise of food delivery services like UberEats and DoorDash has led to the development of a ‘gig economy’ class lacking stability and healthcare. The safety of the genetically modified ingredients found in popular alternative protein Impossible Burger is still being debated (Filloon, 2017).

As with any new product, but particularly those claiming to make a positive impact on largescale societal ills like food waste, sustainability, and human health, it is important to have critical analysis and varied perspectives to hold these businesses accountable for their assertions. Noticing a lack of critical perspectives and diverse voices about food tech companies in the media I regularly consumed, I questioned whether business-focused media, read by the entrepreneurs and VC firms driving the food tech revolution, were asking any critical questions of the new products and services they covered. My research sought to identify the types of food tech companies that were being written about most often, what was being said about them, and by whom. To meet this research goal, I evaluated articles about food tech from the past year based on these criteria.

Methods

To study business media’s coverage of food tech, I conducted a qualitative analysis of articles covering the food tech industry in three popular business publications: TechCrunch, Fast Company, and Bloomberg News. Using the search terms “food”, “technology”, “funding”, and “startup,” I captured articles specifically about young companies who were receiving influxes of cash and getting exposure to VC firms and entrepreneurs. I filtered these articles to only those published in 2019 to get the most current read on the business media landscape, and then selected 10 articles from each publication, totaling 30 articles. I then uploaded the 30 articles into qualitative analysis tool ATLAS.ti and created codes in three categories: content, sentiment, and demographic.

My work included examining the demographic characteristics of those writing the articles, as well as the business owners and venture capitalists being written about. By finding the LinkedIn pages and biographies (when available) for each person, I coded the gender and a simplified version of race (white or non-white) of the characters from each body of text.   The content analysis focused on what types of companies were being written about. Relevant data included the industry of product or service being sold, the target customer for the product, and general information about the products. Lastly, for the sentiment analysis attention was paid to how these companies were being written about by the authors, based on use of words expressing an opinion or emotions like excitement, skepticism, and sympathy.

 Results

After analyzing 30 articles, I created 273 codes which revealed a wealth of information about the current state of business-focused media’s coverage of food tech.

Demographic Analysis

Using each author’s biography and LinkedIn page for reference, I found that 85% of the articles were written by white authors, 7.5% by non-white authors, and another 7.5% were of an unknown ethnicity. This finding shows a clear lack of perspectives from people of color. For gender, the split between authors was much more even, with women writing 52% of the articles and men writing 48%. This data is consistent with Pew Research Center’s 2018 study on the demographics of newsrooms, which found 77% of newsroom employees are white when compared to 65% of all U.S. workers. However, a larger percentage of women were represented in my analysis, in comparison to Pew’s data which reports that 61% of newsroom employees were men (Grieco, 2018).

I further described the basic demographics of all of the executives that were quoted or spoken about in the media, which included those with the title CEO, COO (Chief Operations Officer), CTO (Chief Technological Officer), executive, founder, president, chairman, owner, researcher, and investor. The diversity gap continued in this category, with whites making up 79% of executives. When looking at gender, an overwhelming 72% of the executives were male. This lends strong support to a recent report from Silicon Valley Bank that found that just 28% of teams founding a startup included one or more women (Women in US Technology Leadership 2019).

One main weakness of my demographic data is the assumptions made about gender and race using biographies and published photos. These authors and executives may self-identify differently from the rigid binary categories I assigned them.

 Content Analysis

I split and coded my content analysis into three groups including industries, target customers, and article content. The analysis of industry codes reveals what types of food tech businesses are being discussed most often in the selected articles. The most popular industry was the alternative meat space, which includes plant-based chicken, fish, steaks, as well as cellular agriculture or “lab grown meat”. Other popular and recurring topics included artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics being used for human-free experiences in restaurants and grocery stores, tech-enabled food delivery services, and ghost kitchens producing food for online delivery without designated dine-in locations.

The target customer codes were used to see who all of these products and services were made for. This was more difficult to apply codes uniformly because the language about potential customers was not clearly defined in most articles. However, there was a clear trend that the majority of consumer products were geared towards upper/middle class Americans, and the products and services for existing food businesses were meant for already large and successful corporations. Only one of the articles mentioned the “developing world” as part of their target market, and this was for a packet of chemicals used to slow the ripening of produce and reduce food waste (Peters, 2019).

My last set of codes in this section, which referred to article content, were used more liberally to keep track of trending words or phrases in the articles. With a total of 111 codes ranging from “accessible” to “zeitgeist”, the most popular code was “environmental”, which included words or phrases pertaining to innovations that help improve or protect the planet. This is internally consistent considering that alternative protein was the most popular industry, and alternative protein companies often cite reducing environmental impact as one of their biggest drivers.

 Sentiment Analysis

The sentiment analysis relied on my interpretation of intention and meaning behind the authors’ words, and thus is the most subjective part of my research. In contrast to my prior expectation that the media would skew towards positive sentiments for the author’s subjects, there was a neutral tone throughout the articles, showing objectivity on the part of the authors. The majority of journalists stated the facts of the products and provided quotes directly from the company leaders rather than editorializing and injecting their own feelings about the products into their work.  That said, few journalists asked critical questions of the products they covered with regard to their affordability and what systemic problems the companies were working to solve.

 Conclusion

This body of work provides a baseline of insight into how both food tech companies and business facing media interact. Future research might compare how the coverage of food tech innovation thus far, which has largely been white, male, and focused on alternative protein, reflects the reality of the food tech industry at large. By not writing about other types of innovation, business publications are robbing other food tech businesses of valuable exposure that leads to more funding and development. Lastly, a longitudinal study of how the voices and content of these publications changes over time now that I have established a baseline. My hope is that the voices become more diverse and the types of innovations highlighted are those that are working towards Better Food Ventures goal of “solving critical problems across the global food ecosystem”, providing benefits to all. regardless of race, gender, or socioeconomic status.

References

Filloon, W. (2017, August 08). Is the Meatless Impossible Burger Safe to Eat? Retrieved from https://www.eater.com/2017/8/8/16112326/impossible-burger-fda-approval

Grieco, E. (2018, November 02). Newsroom employees are less diverse than U.S. workers overall. Retrieved from https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/11/02/newsroom-employees-are-less-diverse-than-u-s-workers-overall/

Peters, A. (2019, August 12). This startup created compostable plastic wrap that’s made from shellfish shells. Retrieved from https://www.fastcompany.com/90388590/this-startup-created-compostable-plastic-wrap-out-of-shellfish-shells?partner=rss&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=rss%2Bfastcompany&utm_content=rss

Rosenheim, B. (2019, October 01). 2019 Food Tech State-of-the-Industry Report. Retrieved from http://betterfoodventures.com/2019/10/01/2019-food-tech-state-of-the-industry-report/

Vertical: FoodTech. (2020). Retrieved from https://my-pitchbook-com.proxy.library.nyu.edu/?pcc=323035-30.

Vincent, M., & Prouteau, J. (2019). What is FoodTech? Retrieved from https://www.digitalfoodlab.com/foodtech/

Women in US Technology Leadership. (2019). Retrieved from https://www.svb.com/women-in-technology/?utm_campaign=2019-startup-outlook&utm_source=prnewswire&utm_medium=referral