Part of the experience of going to a good restaurant is being presented with lots of tempting choices. When faced with page upon page of delicious and intriguing descriptions, some of us fall back on trusty favourites (my husband will order a steak nine times out of ten) while others enjoy trying new things. If you’re anything like me, however, you’ll constantly drive your dining companions crazy by freezing with indecision like a deer in the headlights.

We can all relate to craning our necks over to peek at someone else’s plate in a restaurant, or kicking ourselves when our order arrives and you realize the person next to you got what you really wanted
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“Picture yourself eating it,” which one would be tastier? my husband would urge, impatient to order his steak already. But when gripped by indecision, it’s often hard to visualize things in any meaningful way, specially in restaurants that get all fancy and creative with their dish descriptions and presentation. We can probably all relate to craning our necks over to peek at someone else’s plate as it arrives, or kicking ourselves when the food arrives and you realize the person next to you got what you had really wanted all along. Upon such experiences many evenings are ruined.

Companies like Kabaq fill a gap in this emerging market by providing true-to-life presentation and dynamic storytelling
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This is why I got quite excited when I heard about a start-up called Kabaq, which is using AR to help you make your mind up, based on what a dish actually looks like, and their 3D renditions are so realistic that you can practically smell or taste them.

The Augmented Reality retail showcasing market is expected to show a 133% Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) over the next five years, reaching $24.4B, according to the IDC
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Kabaq Co-Founder Alper Guler explains that for the past two years his team has been perfecting a proprietary process for creating hyper-realistic culinary models – one of the most difficult products to capture in 3D. They optimize the content for Augmented Reality, then manage and distributes it agnostically to all AR-supported platforms for their clients, which now include Dominos, Grubhub, Subway and Dunkin. You can even preview what your wedding cake would look like at Magnolia bakery.

CEO Mike Cadoux says 2018 has been a great year for AR, with Snapchat and Facebook enabling developers like them to push content on their platforms. “Our view numbers went from 20K to 1MM in a week. Looking into 2019, with Apple and Google starting to support Web based AR experiences, I believe we will see more useful AR experiences from brands soon. Augmented Reality continues to grow along a traditional path for new technologies – from initial uses like playful entertainment, to large scale integrations into everyday businesses, specifically advertising and retail showcasing,” he adds.

You can now preview your @magnoliabakery wedding cake in AR
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The Augmented Reality retail showcasing market is expected to show a 133% Compound Annual Growth Rate  (CAGR) over the next five years, reaching $24.4B, according to the IDC.  Companies like Google, Apple, Microsoft, Snapchat and Facebook are investing billions into the technology, and companies like Kabaq fill a gap in this emerging market by providing true-to-life presentation and dynamic storytelling. They are now also looking to scale their business into other verticals like fashion, luxury and consumer packaged goods.

This article was originally published on VRScout

Kabaq Helps You Settles On A Meal With Ultra-Realistic AR Menus via @alicebonasio https://t.co/pixiigLl9E pic.twitter.com/bNKgzeM6xf

— VRScout (@VRScout) February 16, 2019

For companies looking to get into Immersive technologies our VR Consultancy service offers comprehensive support in strategic deployment of Virtual, Augmented and Mixed Reality

Alice Bonasio is a VR Consultant and Tech Trends’ Editor in Chief. She also regularly writes for Fast Company, Ars Technica, Quartz, Wired and others. Connect with her on LinkedIn and follow @alicebonasio on Twitter.

The post Can You See Yourself Eating It? appeared first on Tech Trends.

A London bar is using AR technology to infuse its new cocktail menu with a shot of artistic imagery.

MIRAGE is billed as the world’s first drinkable tech menu. It was 18 months in the making and involved the development of a purpose-built Augmented Reality app created by Mustard Designs which was unveiled at Jason Atherton’s City Social Michelin-starred restaurant and bar this month.

#miragecocktails is billed as the world's first drinkable tech menu
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“Once the app is pointed in the direction of the drink, the augmented reality technology comes into play, transforming the guest’s perception of the cocktail and bringing their surroundings to vivid life,” explains Atherton

Inspired by an eclectic range of artists from Banksy to Van Gogh, the idea is to turn each of the 12 serves on offer into an interactive art experience. The menu was put together by Jamie Jones and Tim Laferla, well-known names in the trendy bar scene. The carefully designed recipes deploy a varied selection of techniques and flavour profiles and use premium spirits from companies like Pernod Ricard, Diageo, William Chase and G’Vine.

Cocktail recipes are inspired by different artists, from Banksy to Van Gogh
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Dogstone Brew takes its inspiration from the Victorian era, blending Hendrick’s Gin, port, bergamot, black tea split milk and orchid root to create a clarified milk punch cocktail with floral notes and a long finish. The accompanying AR imagery then complement that theme with some floating Victoriana-style balloons that look rather Monty Python-esque.

Sashay is a nod to the iconic Art Nouveau posters of the late 1800 and early 1900s, featuring a woman reclining in a chaise longue to go with the heady blend of Perrier Jouët Belle Époque Champagne, Japanese plum wine, jasmine and liquorice.

Sashay is a nod to the iconic Art Nouveau posters of the late 1800s
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Impressionism fans might want to sample the Van Gogh-themed Wheatfields with Fizz: a mix of Ketel One Vodka, elderflower, bee pollen, lager and egg white to be experienced alongside the master’s paintings ‘Starry Night’, ‘Wheatfields with Crows’ and ‘View of Arles’.

Impressionism fans might want to sample the Van Gogh-themed Wheatfields with Fizz:
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Located on the 24^th floor of Tower 42 – one of the iconic City of London skyscrapers –City Social was opened in 2014, and the restaurant headed by chef Paul Walsh was awarded a Michelin star in 2015.

“Jamie and I want our drinks to be amongst the world’s best and we hope this will really put us on the map,” says Atherton. “We are treating our approach to drinks across the group as seriously as we do our food to ensure quality and creativity shine through.”

#miragecocktails is another example of how brands are exploring Augmented Reality to create immersive, multi-sensory experiences for their users. For those looking for guidance on how to do this, Tech Trends also offers Virtual Reality consultancy services.

#miragecocktails is another example of how brands are exploring Augmented Reality to create immersive, multi-sensory experiences
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For companies looking to gain a competitive edge through technology, Tech Trends offers strategic Virtual Reality and Digital Transformation Consultancy services tailored to your brand.

Alice Bonasio is a VR and Digital Transformation Consultant and Tech Trends’ Editor in Chief. She also regularly writes for Fast Company, Ars Technica, Quartz, Wired and others. Connect with her on LinkedIn and follow @alicebonasio on Twitter.

The post Drinking Up Augmented Reality appeared first on Tech Trends.

We all love going to restaurants or grabbing a take-away, specially at the end of a busy day when inspiration about what to have for dinner is hard to come by. Yet recent evidence suggests this convenience is actually costing us the Earth, with food waste in the restaurant trade at an all-time high. In fact, over a quarter of people in England admit to regularly leaving food uneaten when eating out. Research by the sustainability charityWRAP uncovered that 27% of diners did not finish their meals at restaurants, take-aways, hotels and pubs, contributing to the 600,000 tonnes of food waste generated every year in the UK alone.

27% of people surveyed said they did not finish their restaurant meals
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The desperately sad thing — specially in a time of austerity where food banks are cropping up all over the place — is that most of this waste is made up of perfectly usable food, and a third of it comes directly from us either ordering too much or finding that portion sizes are just too big when we get them.

Asking for a doggy bag is not always culturally acceptable outside the US
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Looking at these rather depressing stats, I started wondering if British people were particularly wasteful when it came to eating out. One thing I noticed when I first moved here were the huge differences in attitude towards getting a ‘doggy bag’, for example. In America it’s perfectly normal to do that, even in fancy restaurants, and I never found it embarrassing to ask for my leftovers ‘to go’ in Brazil. In England, however, that type of request can often get you stared at like some creature from outer space (unless you have a strong American accent, in which case waiters tend to roll their eyes in a pitying way and reluctantly go searching for a plastic container to accommodate your mad request). This means that, should our eyes turn out to be bigger than our stomachs, our choices boil down to “force it down or bin it”.

Restaurants waste 3.3 pounds of food for every $1000 of revenue
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But dig a little deeper, and you find this to be a truly global problem, and not the fault of a group of unaccommodating waiters. In spite of their ‘bag-it-and-go’ culture, U.S. restaurants still manage to waste about 3.3 pounds of food per $1000 of company revenue, 84% of which ends up in landfill according to a study by the Business for Social Responsibility (BSR) for the Food Waste Reduction Alliance.

The issue has recently gained some extra prominence with celebrity River Cottage Chef Hugh Fearnley-Wittingstall shining a spotlight on the £720m that avoidable out of home food waste is costing the UK economy every year. That’s the equivalent of six meals every week for the average household, and also considerably adds to the amount of greenhouse gases produced by landfills.

Our hunger for convenience is actually costing us the Earth, with food waste in the restaurant trade at an all-time high
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So if all this waste is bad for the economy, terrible for the environment, and morally unjustifiable in a world where people still go hungry every day, what can we do about it?

There are some amazing community initiatives cropping up, such as the Real Junk Food Project in Brighton which crowdfunded £16,000 to launch a community café that legally intercepts food waste from restaurants, supermarkets and other suppliers. All this perfectly good produce that would have otherwise gone to landfill is then turned into tasty and healthy meals, which aren’t officially priced. People just pay as much as they can or feel they want to. But even if you’re not lucky enough to have such a café in your area, it is still possible to make a difference.

There are projects that turn all the perfectly good produce that would have otherwise gone to landfill into healthy, tasty meals
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For a start, you could fight that natural embarrassment and proudly ask for a doggy bag next time you go to a restaurant. Or perhaps you could just stop eating out altogether… But where’s the fun in that?

An app called Trybe believes they can make a positive impact on reducing food waste without being such a killjoy. They’re combining the convenience of eating out or getting a take-away with the less wasteful approach of home cooking by allowing people to order home-made meals from cooks in their area and have them delivered to their door. That is inherently less wasteful as if portion sizes turn out to be too big, all you need to do is stick the rest in the fridge for a tasty snack later, and that is a joy in itself as well as good for the planet. My husband’s favourite indulgence is having leftover curry for breakfast (hey, don’t judge till you’ve tried it).

Solving this huge problem will take effort and commitment from everybody. But perhaps technology, community spirit and passionate cooks are the right ingredients to make it happen.

Alice Bonasio is a VR and Digital Transformation Consultant and Tech Trends’ Editor in Chief. She also regularly writes for Fast Company, Ars Technica, Quartz, Wired and others. Connect with her on LinkedIn and follow @alicebonasio on Twitter.

The post Can Home-Cooking Save the Planet? appeared first on Tech Trends.