Greetings, Pulse Subscribers!
Hope you’re not hungry, because we’ve got a heaping helping of food in this week’s issue, plus some AI, fashion rental, and more. Here’s the agenda:
Creating marketing videos from a URL
The next big thing in QSR?
“Famous Sports Guy’s” Steakhouse
Rent-your-style
The big grocery mashup
Snap. Search. Find. Buy.
Let’s go!
Startup Deals
Generative AI Video Creation | Imagine a tool that can create product videos but doesn’t need a camera, actors, or even a script. That’s the pitch for Oxolo, a generative AI video platform out of Hamburg, Germany. Unlike other text-to-video platforms that require well-designed prompts to create the right output, Oxolo lets users simply paste in a product link and get complete videos with the snap of a finger. In addition, Oxolo makes it easy to create and run real-time A/B testing on multiple versions of each video and adapt which is served based on audience engagement. Thanks to this compelling solution, Oxolo raised a €13M Series A led by DN Capital.
Modern QSR | Since the pandemic, ghost kitchens have dominated restaurant news, but Salted is turning the attention back to “real” restaurants. An LA-based restaurant group devoted to building quick-service brands across the US, Salted has already launched six health-conscious options, from Korean cuisine to cauliflower pizza. Salted differs from other QSR companies by operating the brands directly, utilizing proprietary software that enables continuity and quality across locations. What does that mean exactly? Well, for example, every batch of ingredients is photographed, tagged, and reviewed so that, say, all pickled onions are the same shade or all sweet potatoes are charred the same way across locations. With 25 locations in 9 states to date, Salted hopes to fuel its continued growth with $14M in Series B funding.
Influencer Food Brands | Pairing fame with food isn’t new. Any major city has at least one steakhouse from that one famous athlete who played there. What’s new here is that influencers are getting in on the action. How? Startups like Lanch team up with influencers and creators to launch restaurant brands. We know it’s a crowded space, but Lanch’s first effort, a pizza brand called Happy Slice alongside German YouTubers Knossi and Trymacs, sold more than 30K pizzas in its first weekend alone. Instead of using ghost kitchens, Lanch operates by providing the ingredients to existing restaurants and retail kitchens, termed “virtual kitchens,” as well as installing quality-control software that measures both qualitative and quantitative data. Lanch also shares this real-time data with the partner restaurants to help with kitchen efficiency, improve demand forecasting, and allow for immediate changes should mistakes occur. Lanch recently raised a $7M Series A led by Felix Capital and HV Capital.
Peer-to-Peer Fashion Rental | Got a closet full of great looks you never bring out? Time to turn them into moneymakers with Pickle, a New York-based startup that allows consumers to rent out items they already own. This is another crowded arena, but Pickle has found the white space. Unlike Poshmark and The RealReal, which focus on selling secondhand clothing, Pickle allows users to rent out their clothing. And unlike Rent the Runway, Nuuly, and Armoire, which also enable clothing rental, Pickle does not require a subscription. In terms of price point, Pickle’s sweet spot is items carrying an average retail price of $400—too expensive to purchase for one-time wear but expensive enough that users seek them out for certain occasions. With 2K unique brands and over 50K items for rent, Pickle recently raised an $8M seed round.
Essential Reads
Kroger has been working on purchasing Albertsons for a year now, and it looks like the deal is moving ahead. But that still doesn’t mean the merger is complete. These two short reads break it down for you. First, some of the rationale behind the merger (surprise, surprise … it’s tough competing with giants like Walmart and Amazon). And second, an overview of how both the FTC and the State of California may try to block the merger, citing its impact on small grocers and the danger of creating a monopoly.
Get the numbers here. Learn why it might be stopped here.
We’ve all been there: You see something cool and think, “Where can I get that?!” Now, Klarna has the answer. This essential read outlines the new suite of Klarna shopping tools, including Shopping Lens, its flagship feature. Shopping Lens allows consumers to take pictures of objects and styles in their surroundings and instantly find out where to buy them (and how to get the best deal in the Klarna app). With 13 tools in total, there’s much more to learn about, including some very cool sustainability features, but we won’t spoil them.
Learn about Klarna’s newest shopping tools here.