Opinion: How can Metaverse help the food industry?

Cryptocurrencies and the food industry don’t seem like a good match intuitively — one is based in the digital realm and the other is firmly rooted in the physical realm. But dating back to the early days of the crypto industry, Bitcoin’s first real-world use case was food-related. On May 22, 2010, Laszlo Hanyecz purchased two Papa John's pizzas for 10,000 BTC, the first recorded commercial bitcoin transaction.

This day is now written into the crypto calendar as Bitcoin Pizza Day. For its part, the event ended up being an annual celebration for restaurant chains and crypto companies, all of which are capitalizing on the marketing opportunity. However, Bitcoin Pizza Day not only marked the debut of Bitcoin as a medium of exchange, it also kicked off the cryptocurrency’s relationship with the food industry—a relationship that began to flourish and will further solidify with the development of Web3 and the Metaverse.

The Crypto Industry's Insatiable Interest in Food

Despite Bitcoin Pizza Day, the crypto world seems to have been embracing the food-related craze. Browse the list of “dead coins” and you will find a lot of tokens that sound like food, including Baconbitscoin, Onioncoin and Barbequecoin. Pizzacoin is even featured on Coinmarketcap.

As with most projects flocking to the ICO craze, these tend to be tokens without any underlying technical support. However, the advent of the DeFi era brought with it a new crop of food-related protocols, many of which are still thriving today — SushiSwap and PancakeSwap being the most obvious examples.

Names aside, in the intervening years between the ICO boom and the 2021 bull run, there have been many other developments in the confluence of blockchain, cryptocurrency and the food industry. Food traceability is an area that has proven disruptive. Solutions such as IBM's Food Trust are often associated with grocers such as Nestle and Carrefour, but the company is also working with a seafood restaurant chain in California to bring greater security to the sourcing and handling of ingredients before they are served on the menu. Much transparency.

However, for the restaurant industry, it is in the customer relationship that blockchain and cryptocurrencies come into play. In recent years, and especially since the pandemic, restaurants have found themselves increasingly distant from their customers due to the rising dominance of platforms like Uber Eats. This isn’t surprising — the platform model has upended industries from private transportation (Uber) to hotels (Airbnb) to music (Spotify).

Applied to the restaurant space, the platform model means that tech companies take over the customer relationship, including the payment process, data processing and loyalty programs. Food operators are pushed into the background so that their product is the only part of it that consumers end up seeing. Perhaps most damaging, reliance on platforms can drive up food prices by an incredible 90%.

restore balance

Blockchain and cryptocurrencies are now increasingly capable of restoring balance by facilitating a direct connection between restaurants and customers. A blockchain-based marketplace provides a similar, user-friendly one-stop shop for food operators to find a variety of menu options, but allows customers and restaurateurs to interact freely, with merchants controlling their menus, prices and terms. have full autonomy. This means consumers can pay merchants directly without falling into the hands of a third party who holds control. Instead, third parties act as infrastructure providers for restaurateurs and food stores, providing them with the tools to run their online stores in their own right.

However, the current ecosystem is still only a fraction of its full potential and will flourish as the transition to the Metaverse picks up pace.

Food in the Metaverse? Surely an activity as firmly rooted in the real world as eating cannot exist in the metaverse? Digital consumption has its limits. However, as our lives experience more and more in the digital realm, the food industry will inevitably evolve with the times.

So how will foodservice operators survive in the metaverse?

A richer dining experience

The answer is: at least in some cases, they have. American restaurant chain Chipotle has opened a virtual restaurant for Roblox players on Halloween. Users who enter the restaurant have a spooky Halloween-themed experience, then receive a promo code that nets them free burritos in the real world.

For the most part, food service’s entry into the metaverse will be a continuation of the digital journey already under way. As the platform model replaces food delivery and takeout, it will also become more common to start the online restaurant experience through Google or TripAdvisor search options. You might go to a restaurant's website, look at the menu, or look at pictures or even videos of the dishes and the restaurant itself. Imagine watching your team play a virtual big game and seeing ads around the stadium introducing all the visits you can eat afterwards, just like in real stadiums now.

When the game is over and you want some takeout, you can take your avatar to a virtual street food market, where you can check out different operators and their menus, which are virtual dishes. When you're ready to order your meal, you can pay in real time with cryptocurrency. Your food is delivered to your real-life doorstep within half an hour.

Or, you want to impress someone special in your life with a fancy meal at a fine dining restaurant. You can choose where you dine, and even your table, based on a virtual tour. You can even ask a virtual chef about the preparation and ingredients of a dish, or browse the wine menu and have a virtual sommelier suggest pairing options for you.

mishmash of opportunities

All of these scenarios are only envisioned from the customer's point of view - from the restaurant's point of view, the opportunities are enormous. For example, if someone reserves a table after a virtual visit, the restaurant could require a deposit payment in crypto using a smart contract-based escrow system. This will avoid one of the biggest problems in the restaurant industry - no-show bookings. If the person does not come, the smart contract transfers the escrowed funds to the restaurant.

So far, the catering industry has not necessarily benefited from the process of digital transformation. However, blockchain and cryptocurrencies offer an opportunity to restore the relationship between food merchants and customers. Beyond that, Metaverse is poised to create unparalleled new value for the entire industry.

Cointelegraph Chinese is a blockchain news information platform, and the information provided only represents the author's personal opinion, has nothing to do with the position of the Cointelegraph Chinese platform, and does not constitute any investment and financial advice. Readers are requested to establish correct currency concepts and investment concepts, and earnestly raise risk awareness.