The latest food and beverage industry news and trend analysis

Restaurant365 has strengthened its executive leadership team with the appointments of Steve Demchuk as Chief Product Officer and Mark Grilli as Chief Marketing Officer to accelerate the growth of its AI-powered back-office platform.

Divert, Inc. has opened a 66,000-square-foot Integrated Diversion and Energy Facility in Longview, Washington, capable of processing 100,000 tons of food waste annually into renewable natural gas and agricultural fertilisers to support the regional circular economy.

Appliance Innovation (AI) is accelerating the nationwide deployment of its Automated Fresh Brew SimpliciTea platform, reaching a milestone of 425 units at QuikTrip while delivering a reported 25,000 dollars in additional annual profit per installation through labour and waste reduction.

Bardstown Bourbon Company has unveiled Bourbon Gifting Reimagined, a first-at-scale innovation in the spirits sector that utilises premium NFC stickers to allow consumers to embed personal video, photo, and text content directly onto any bottle of American whiskey.

Nutribullet has officially entered the frozen dessert category with the launch of the nutribullet Chill™, a compact countertop appliance featuring proprietary 360DoubleCream™ technology designed to deliver faster and creamier results than existing market competitors.

Papa Johns has unveiled Lou AI, a next-generation ordering assistant built on Google Cloud’s Food Ordering agent, designed to eliminate the complexity of group orders and provide a personalised digital concierge experience within its mobile app.

Brooklyn Steel Co. has transitioned into the home coffee category with the launch of the Talos 20 espresso machine, a professional-grade solution designed to bridge the gap between entry-level appliances and high-end café equipment.

Delivery Hero has unveiled Herogen, an in-house autonomous AI coding agent that currently delivers the output equivalent of 130 senior engineers and handles nearly 10% of the company’s code change requests.