“By modifying the eating habits of consumers, we took a small step towards big and necessary changes and returned people back to nature,” emphasized Tino Prosenik, the founder and CEO of the startup Gruntek – the winner of the FoodTech StartUp Competition which was launched with the aim of finding new talent and creative ideas and supporting potential success stories in the food and hospitality industry. Maistra Hospitality Group, Infobip and Pepermint are behind this commendable project, and the key focus is on finding long-term solutions to contemporary challenges in the global gastronomic community. The awarding of prizes to the winners took place at the jubilee 15th Weekend Media Festival.
“Our startup has a great impact on people’s eating habits, and they play a key role in terms of preserving the environment and structuring the food system that surrounds us today. The combination of digitization and agriculture is the future of gastronomy. To be more precise, the gardens of the future will include healthy and desirable foods,” said Tino Prosenik from Gruntek, the project which developed the application for eco gardens.
As winners of this competition, Gruntek employees have a unique opportunity to develop their knowledge by participating in a ‘Mentoring Bootcamp’ with a team of relevant experts from the competition’s partners, online or by visiting the Infobip Pangea Campus in Vodnjan. With the opportunity to learn in a stimulating environment with some of the industry’s biggest professionals, the winner has the equivalent of 20,000 euros in Infobip’s globally award-winning cloud communication platform and other valuable prizes from the competition’s partners.
The exciting award ceremony was also attended by Michael Selden, CEO of the attractive American food tech company Finless Foods, who, in a 1-on-1 conversation with Nikola Pavešić from Infobip, revealed that the production of cell-grown seafood can put an end to overfishing and that humans have the greatest impact on the biodiversity, protection and conservation of the world’s oceans. This is precisely the backbone of growing seafood in the laboratory and the smart production of cultured meat, which certainly contributes to our fight against climate change and the burning questions of tomorrow, such as: What will we (not) eat in 2050?
“We don’t know how much food the world needs, and that’s why we have to speed up the production of laboratory-grown food products. The population understands the negative effects that the excessive consumption and use of animal meat has on the environment. The solution lies in affordable and high-quality products that have the same taste as wild species,” Selden points out.
The domestic FoodTech StartUp competition started at the Weekend Food Festival in May, the leading European gastronomy festival. The core of the competition consists of startups whose activity belongs to one of seven categories, namely: Agriculture Tech, Food Science, Food Product and Health Coaching, Food & Hospitality services, Food Supply Chain & Retail, Food Delivery and Food Waste. The FoodTech Startup Competition concept was developed based on global trends, with the aim of providing a unique digital platform to promising players on the culinary scene in order to break into the world market.
Taking into account the strong interest of the audience and the exceptional attendance of this year’s Weekend Food Festival, the organizers are already announcing a new edition of this gastronomic event that will make Rovinj again the center of culinary attractions and a source of sensational aromas and flavours in mid-April next year – more precisely, on April 15, 2023.
