“Hyper-personalisation” is already becoming a buzzword, particularly amongst big brands such as Amazon and Starbucks who use this method to target specific user groups. However, Open Meals wants to expand this concept beyond marketing, and into their actual products. They have named their project the “Restaurant Sushi Singularity”, providing 3D printed sushi based on the customer’s biometric and genomic data.
According to the studio, over the period of our existence, humanity has had four food revolutions. We discovered fire, shifted to agriculture and invented methods of preservation. This enabled a technological and cultural shift to mass production that 100 years ago, would have been considered impossible.
In their vision for the near future, a user is sent a “health test kit” as soon as a reservation at their restaurant is made. A “health ID” would then be issued based on “finely tuned constitution and undernourishment” that the restaurant would then cater for.
This concept incorporates another of the studios innovations, a 3D “food printer”. This device relies on nine element-based algorithms to provide an abundance of different textural and flavour qualities. Although this currently requires a large machine, Open Meals believes that, like all other computers, technological advancement will eventually allow this device to shrink down until it can fit in an individual’s kitchen, becoming as common as a microwave.
All previous revolutions have brought increased prosperity and better living. With the “digitisation of food”, will 2020 be the year remembered as the “Food Singularity”?