The latest from TechCrunch
- Can I Get Some Sustainability With That Shake?
- Strike A Pose, 'Cause Online Point Of Sale Systems Are The New Vogue
- Onavo Is A Money-Saving, Must-Have App For EVERY iPhone Data User
- eBay's PayPal Buys Mobile Payments Startup Fig Card
| Can I Get Some Sustainability With That Shake? | Top |
| This week, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency issued Energy Star ratings for large vat commercial fryers . These appliances are used by high-volume dining establishments — like fast food chains, institutional cafeterias and full-service restaurants— to make french fries, hush puppies and anything else Paula Deen would promote, in bulk. Encouraging the industry to upgrade to more energy-efficient fryers could help reduce the overall environmental (if not health) impact of kitchens in the U.S. catering to the collective appetite for fried foods, an appetite that seems pervasive, and permanent here. One Texan cook, Mark Zable, has even invented a method to make deep-fried beer . According to a press statement and calculations by the EPA: ” If every large vat fryer in the [country] met the new Energy Star requirements, energy cost savings would increase approximately $81 million per year and reduce annual greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to the emissions from nearly 95,000 cars.” The lifetime costs and footprint of commercial frying goes beyond the electricity and gas that it takes to run kitchen equipment, of course. Certain vegetable oils are more sustainable than others. Spent grease, and even vegetable oil, can become a pollutant unless disposed of properly. Many food businesses are opting to give or sell their spent grease to biofuel producers, these days, thankfully. Bon Appétit Management Company — which provides sustainable food in cafes at SF Giants stadium, eBay, Oracle, Google and college campuses including U-Penn, Duke and MIT — has been doing this for years, in collaboration with local biofuel companies like Kelley Green Biofuel for example. This month (as Tilde Herrera reported for Greenbiz.com) U.S. Foodservice went so far as to acquire a “grease diesel” company, WVO Industries. The foodservice business will begin to power its truck fleets with their own spent cooking oil, allowing them to avoid the rising costs of gasoline here. Ultimately, foods that are sautéed, boiled, toasted, roasted or prepared raw will prove better for the body and planet than deep-fried with rare — no pun intended — exception. There is no official carbon footprint label for food here, but a sustainability blogger and small business owner in Germany, Peter Graf (not to be confused with Peter Graf, chief sustainability officer at SAP) has shared some rough calculations via his blog Ecofriendly-Company.com . He wrote: “The path from potato to french fry takes 9 steps.The potatoes are… 1. Steamed and peeled, 2. Cut 3. Blanched 4. Dried 5. Par-fried 6. Cooled 7. Frozen 8. Transported 9. Stored frozen Then, they’re fried in hot oil in the canteen and served. All this transforms a single kilo of potatoes (140g CO2) into a real climate-killer (5700g CO2).” Photo courtesy Brandi Jordan (CC-2.0) CrunchBase Information U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Kelley Green Biofuel Information provided by CrunchBase | |
| Strike A Pose, 'Cause Online Point Of Sale Systems Are The New Vogue | Top |
| If you’ve ever worked in retail or the food services industry, you’re probably familiar with the Point of Sale (POS) system. It’s the software/hardware combination that most people would probably call a cash register, though there’s more to it than that: inventory tracking, coupons, exchanges, and pretty much everything else is done using one of these POS systems. And they’re often a total pain, with myriad options and interfaces that sometimes harken back to the Windows 3.1 days. Pose is one company (among many) that’s trying to fix the POS. And instead of relying on a new hardware device, they’re turning to one you already have: your web-connected computer. Everything on Pose is web-based, so you can easily set up a new terminal if one computer starts malfunctioning, and setup is obviously cheap because you probably don’t have anything to buy. I spoke with CEO Guy Marcus earlier this week, who walked me through a demo of the product. As with other POS systems, you can enter products manually or using a USB barcode scanner. You can then flip into the cashier interface, where you can input what the customer is purchasing by tapping on photos or, again, using a USB scanner. Pose isn’t available to the public quite yet (they’re aiming for a June release), but from what I saw it looked solid — they’re putting a lot of work into making the interface usable and attractive. It’s also optimized for both desktop and tablet use. Businesses will pay for the web-based software as a monthly subscription. Pose isn’t the first company to have this idea — competitors include Erply , VendHQ , Cashier Live , and MerchantOS . But Marcus says that his company differs from the others because it also integrates marketing functionality — customers can opt to provide their email addresses to receive receipts and future correspondence from the business. Pose will also allow merchants to generate an online storefront (it uses the same inventory as your retail database) in a matter of minutes. Merchants are still responsible for actually shipping these goods, though. I also asked if Marcus saw Square —which has an iPad app that can be used to tally up a customer’s purchases — as a competitor. He says that he doesn’t think Square will be offering a deep inventory management system any time soon, and that he sees the payments company as more of a potential partner. Pose’s four-person team is based in Israel. The company has raised $300K. Disclosure: Roi Carthy, who sometimes submits articles from Israel, has invested in Pose through his VC fund. Roi isn’t a TechCrunch employee. | |
| Onavo Is A Money-Saving, Must-Have App For EVERY iPhone Data User | Top |
| There’s really no better way to describe Onavo other than a must-have app for any and every iPhone user on a data plan. I’ll go a step further: I think it’s the very first app one should install. Why? Because Onavo shrinks your data usage (and thus, your bills). All you need to do is install the free app and you’re done. The app will then run in the background and do its thing and all you have to do is continue consuming data as you do today … surfing the web, emailing, tweeting, using maps, etc. The techies among you are asking yourself whether there’s any slow-down in data speed. I’ve been using the app for a few weeks and I have perceived no noticeable slow-down. What happens behind the scenes is that compression technology resides on Onavo’s cloud servers. Once the data is routed through them, the compression takes place before the data reaches the device (or the carrier). Onavo is targeting travelers who have a very obvious pain-point of being forced to purchase ridiculously expensive data plans when on business or personal trips. Mind you, saving 5MB-15MB in data usage can equal direct savings that can go as high as $50 and up. However, with all-you-can-eat data plans a thing of the past, I contend that Onavo provides significant value for domestic data usage as well. I, for example, keep it running all the time. I’m currently away on business in San Francisco (I’m based out of Israel) and in the past two days alone I’ve saved 11.32MB, and I still have four nights to go. Most of my savings were with Maps on iPhone, where Onavo saved me 75%, or 8.87MB of 11.80MB. Onavo also saved me 64% surfing the Web, and 12% on email. To the best of my assessment, this is an upside-only app. And being free, there’s really nothing that should hold you back from downloading it. CrunchBase Information Onavo Information provided by CrunchBase | |
| eBay's PayPal Buys Mobile Payments Startup Fig Card | Top |
| In its second acquisition in two weeks, eBay’s PayPal unit has bought mobile payments startup FigCard. Terms of the acquisition, which was announced on the PayPal blog, were not disclosed. Boston-based Fig Card allows merchants to accept mobile payments in stores by using a simple USB device that plugs into the cash register or point-of-sale terminal. All the consumer needs is the Fig app on his or her smart phone. The connection with PayPal is that when consumers setup their payment information, they could add PayPal as a payments option. You can see the video below for a demo of Fig Card’s technology This is also as much of a talent acquisition as it is a technology buy. The founders, Max Metral and Hasty Granbery (who will both join the PayPal Mobile team) are both seasoned technology execs. Prior to founding Fig, Metral was co-founder and CTO of Firefly, which was sold to Microsoft. He also went on to architect sign-on system Microsoft Passport. Metral and Granbery met at PeoplePC, which was sold to Earthlink. And so and so forth. Clearly mobile and online to offline is a big part of eBay’s strategy both for its marketplace and PayPal business. The company just bought location and advertising company Where, which will be housed within PayPal. In fact, PayPal will be integrated into Where's mobile app as a payments mechanism for its local deals. It should be interesting to see how (and if) PayPal integrates Fig Card into its products. We know that the payments service is looking to connect with local merchants and bringing them a PayPal-focused point of sale system could help them compete with emerging technologies like NFC, Square and others. CrunchBase Information eBay Information provided by CrunchBase | |
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