Learn How to Make Your Brand Stand Out
Last week, we announced our first course, Food Startup Branding 101, and now we're excited to announce that we'll be offering the course online, too. 

Guided by brand strategists who have worked with companies like Stacy’s Pita Chips, Seamless and Applegate, you’ll learn how to:

• Better understand your target market's needs
• Create your brand positioning statement
• Develop your brand voice guidelines and "About Us" copy
• Kick ass on social media

Learn more and sign up HERE.

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Going Public: GrubHub Files for $100M IPO
GrubHub plans to put the proceeds of the IPO towards working capital, general corporate purposes and potentially acquisitions.

2014 SXSWi Food + Health + Tech Panels
From 'Printing Chocolate: Food on Demand' to 'AgriTech’s Promise: Food For 10 Billion and Beyond,' we've culled together a list of the food focused panels you should check out this year at SXSW.   

MyFitnessPal Acquires Sessions; Tackles One-on-One Coaching
Last week, MyFitnessPal (MFP), the calorie and exercise tracking app with over 50 million users, announced it has acquired Rock Health-backed Sessions, an online fitness coaching service.

6 Reasons Why Startup Founders Should Write Everyday
From clearing your head to boosting your reputation and getting press, Feast founder David Spinks details why writing everyday is a good habit for startup founders. 

Last Week’s Top 6 Food Tech Startup & Innovation Stories
From our first food business course announcement to big funding news on the alternative protein and health tech fronts, these are our top 6 picks from last week in food tech.

The Rise And Future Of The New York Startup Ecosystem - TechCrunch
New York has been the fastest-growing technology startup ecosystem in the country over the past 10 years and now ranks second behind Silicon Valley in all key metrics.

Do Accelerators Help Startups? Here’s What We Found - VentureBeat
The success rates of accelerators are generally defined by the amount of capital their member companies raise when they graduate from the program. VentureBeat examine if this is really the right success metric for determining their relative success and whether accelerators are truly “entrepreneur friendly.”

Could Food Technology Be the New Darling of the Investing Class? - The Star
What do Bill Gates of Microsoft, Peter Thiel of PayPal, Jerry Yang of Yahoo and Li Ka-shing have in common? All of them are billionaires, visionaries and keen-eyed investors. Also, all of them eat eggs and firmly believe that the production of eggs is a great business to invest in.

A LinkedIn for the Food Start-Up Set - Next City
In December, Local Food Lab pivoted towards a portfolio-based website, hoping to build a picture of what the business model of a successful local food company looks like.

Square Tests Pickup App for Ordering Ahead from Local Restaurants - The Verge
Square began beta testing Square Pickup, a new service that lets you order food and other items from local Square merchants.

Ordr.In Intiates $400K Equity Crowdfunding on SeedInvest - Crowdfund Insider
The  invested funds will be utilized in globally promoting their API platform, executing pipeline deals, such as building their client enablement team. 

Chewse’s One-Click Catering Grows Recurring Revenue By 10X In Six Months - TechCrunch
The meal ordering platform lets office managers quickly pick and pay for meals for an entire company of people, whether they are paleo, vegan, lactose intolerant, or you know, allergic to lima beans.

Modern Meal combines aspects of Pinterest, grocery delivery - UpStart Business Journal
Modern Meal has a pretty simple goal: If you make it easier to cook at home, more people will do it. The site will let users create, import and curate their own recipe stockpile, as well as share and try recipes from other users with similar tastes.

WePopp Adds Restaurant Booking Via OpenTable - TechCrunch
The app enables you to plan events with friends in just a few taps with a simple way to poll the group to find a date, time and place that suits everybody. The new feature adds the ability to book a restaurant as an optional extra step within the app.

Walmart Acquires Recipe Tech Startup Yumprint - Mercury News
Walmart acquired the company to expand its online grocery services. Yumprint has a website and mobile app to search and discover new recipes from thousands of food blogs, plan meals and calculate nutritional information.

Meet the Vegas Startup Trying to Build a Tea Empire on Bitcoin - Gigaom
If the thought of tea gets you thinking of British women, fine china and doilies, Tealet might take some getting used to. The Las Vegas startup has built its business so far on the backs of Reddit and Bitcoin, and it hopes to take on Starbucks.

Why Farmers Can Prevent Global Warming Just As Well As Vegetarians - NPR
To reduce emissions from deforestation, the Brazilian government is experimenting with grazing on integrated forest and pasture lands.

A (Possibly Fake) Startup Is Proposing We Eat The Rich And Famous - Kotaku
BiteLabs has a modest proposal. Industrial farming is unsustainable, so why don't we grow meat in labs? And if we're growing meat in labs, why not make it the meat of celebrities?

Tech veteran helps Marin Sun Farms take back Petaluma slaughterhouse for the little guys - San Francisco Business Times
With the help of tech veteran and angel investor Ali Partovi — an early investor in Facebook, Zappos and DropBox — Marin Sun Farms managed to cobble together a group of anonymous backers to purchase the two-acre property.

Support Your Local Slaughterhouse -  New York Times
People love supporting local food and farms. But when was the last time you saw someone wearing a T-shirt that said “Support Local Slaughterhouses”? But if we want to eat eggs, dairy and meat, we must come to terms with the need for good slaughter facilities available to all farmers.

How Does it Grow? Premieres! - Food Tank
The agricultural project seeks to create more empathetic relationships between people and their plates.

New Food Label Aims To Make Healthy Decisions Easier - NPR
The FDA and the White House are expected to unveil a new food label this week. Changed just once since their adoption, these labels need to be less confusing, advocates say.

Food Tank’s Spring Reading List - Food Tank
These 16 books about sustainable agriculture, wild food, backyard gardening and soil health will educate, inspire and inform you.

IBM's Food Truck Dishes Up Computer-generated Snacks [VIDEO]  - PSFK
The company teamed up with the Institute of Culinary Education (ICE) to cook up dishes based on the recipes generated by the recipe-generating program that is part of the company’s research on “computational creativity.”

FCPS Reveals New Easy Way to Check Nutrition of School Lunch Menus, Starting Saturday - HernDon Patch
The website and mobile option provide quick access to menu options and nutritional information, making it easy for parents and students to learn more about the variety of healthy food choices available.

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