Tracking food safety
MeWe’s app does digital inspections
Editor’s note: Here are five Bay Area startups worth watching this week.
When a string of food-borne illnesses devastated Chipotle’s reputation in 2015, the phone at San Francisco startup MeWe began ringing off the hook.
It was restaurant owners and brands calling about MeWe’s CoInspect app, which helps government agencies and companies digitize public health and safety inspections. MeWe said its app could help companies avoid a disaster like Chipotle’s.
MeWe CEO and co-founder Manik Suri called the Chipotle outbreak an “aha moment” that inspired the company to refocus the general-purpose inspection app it released in 2014 on the food industry: “Everyone eats, everyone eats out, so food and food safety is critical,” he said.
A few years later, almost 100,000 inspections have been completed using CoInspect. The app allows inspectors to create checklists that include photos and voice memos. Users can also assign inspections, generate reports and analyze trends.
Restaurant chains TGI Fridays and P.F. Chang’s are among those using MeWe’s software for safety and compliance checks. It’s also used by government agencies such as the New York State Department of Health and nonprofits including the Sacramento Food Bank & Family Services.
After starting in Cambridge, Mass., in
2014, the 18-person company moved to San Francisco a year later. It has raised $3.09 million in funding — most from a seed round announced in February. Suri said MeWe is not yet profitable.
According to Suri, his motivation to improve the “broken workflow” of inspections comes from his experience working in a housing clinic as a Harvard Law School student. He accompanied inspectors as they tagged tenant violations, lugging around clipboards, binders and digital cameras to do so. Creating a single inspection report took about four hours.
With CoInspect, reporting is two to three times faster, Suri said.
CoInspect costs $25 per month for a solo account and $50 per person per month for a professional group of up to 25 people. Prices vary for plans used by large organizations, government agencies and auditing firms, though MeWe did not provide details or a range for the cost.
The company is working on integrating its software with food temperature probes and sensors for equipment monitoring. There’s a test unit in the office refrigerator. The goal, Suri said, is to reduce human error and add a layer of verification that is hard to achieve with paper inspections.
He said the work of conducting safety checks on paper “isn’t being done with thoroughness.”
“Everyone eats, everyone eats out, so food and food safety is critical.” Manik Suri, co-founder and CEO of MeWe, which helps companies in the food industry conduct inspections
Also trending: Trim
What it does: A personal finance bot that will find and cancel subscriptions you no longer use or want. It can negotiate a Comcast bill and automatically apply savings on Visa purchases. Users interact with Trim through texts, Facebook Messenger or a Web dashboard.
What happened: CEO Thomas Smyth said the company is growing rapidly. It recently introduced its Visa savings program and is working on a feature to monitor Amazon purchases for potential savings. It was included in a recent roundup of artificial intelligence personal finance products by Nanalyze, a technology research website.
Why it matters: Many finance apps require people to take action. Smyth said this financial assistant app is different because it actually does some of the work on behalf of the user.
Headquarters: San Francisco.
Funding: $2.2 million, according to Smyth. Employees: 6.
Localize
What it does: Creates a tool that companies can use to translate their websites into multiple languages, making it easier to reach international markets.
What happened: Squarespace, a website-building tool, created a support page that explains how users can translate their websites using Localize.
Why it matters: The Internet makes it easier for companies to reach global markets, and tools like this one help them overcome barriers such as
language.
Headquarters: San Francisco.
Funding: $1.3 million, according to Crunchbase.
Employees: 11 to 50.
RoOomy
What it does: A virtual staging service that lets prospective buyers visualize furnishings in their future home using a Web browser, iPad or Google’s Tango augmented-reality app.
What happened: The company announced a partnership with Surterre Properties, a Southern California luxury real estate brokerage, this month.
Why it matters: “A growing number of home shoppers decide (to buy) a new home without even visiting the property,” said Pieter Aarts, RoOomy’s CEO and co-founder. Virtual staging helps these buyers figure out what their rooms will look like and how to furnish them.
Headquarters: San Jose.
Funding: $15 million, according to Aarts.
Employees: 190.
Atheer
What it does: Creates augmented-reality glasses for enterprise companies. Users can interact with the images through hand gestures and see information ranging from work flow charts to video calls in their field of view.
What happened: It recently acquired SpaceView, an augmentedreality company that allows users to place a virtual object into a physical space.
Why it matters: For years, experts have said that augmented reality will become an important workplace tool. While the technology is still in its nascent stage, analysts said organizations can use it to complement and enhance work flow and employee training.
Headquarters: Mountain View.
Funding: $23.06 million, according to Crunchbase.
Employees: 11 to 50.