BLOG: Are culinary NFTs the future of the food industry?

Source: Brennan Carney

It’s hard to do much reading of business news without hearing the term “NFT,” or non-fungible token. According to Forbes, an NFT is “a digital asset that represents real-world objects like art, music, in-game items and videos.” Recently, this list has seemed ever expanding, now including things like Nyan Cat, Jack Dorsey’s first tweet, Taco Bell GIFS and more.

NFTs popularity is undoubtedly growing, regardless of whether people like or understand them. In fact, several restaurants and chefs have been throwing their hats in the NFT ring. What started out as things like Martha Stewart’s portrait or Pizza Hut selling digital images of pizza has now reached a new section of the culinary industry: recipes.

In July 2021, celebrity chef Marcus Samuelsson auctioned off his Fried Yardbird recipe as an NFT and donated the profits to the James Beard Foundation’s Restaurant Relief Efforts. Still, this recipe was already circulating about on the internet prior to the auction.

Rocco Dispirito also released an NFT recipe through Metaversal in 2021, along with a statement saying “purchasing the NFT gave the owner (Metaversal) the rights to a unique, never-before-seen recipe created based on their preferences. Therefore, Rocco Dispirito created the recipe after the NFT was purchased." The idea of recipe NFTs brings up the slippery topic of copyrighting recipes. Despite a recipe being a purchasable NFT, it does not protect the recipe writer or NFT owner from people who will copy it. To that point, NFT recipes don't do much to help save recipe writers from plagiarism.

In late February 2022, another form of NFTs related to the culinary industry appeared. Cordia Corporation, owned by former restaurant owner Peter Klamka, created new NFT "food halls" and chefs. It is important to note that Klamka is a longtime supporter of cryptocurrency and has several related ventures, including a series of celebrity virtual restaurants. The company originally sold 1,000 NFTs in the form of a digital representations of chefs who embody different cuisines, cooking styles and personalities. From there, buyers will have various opportunities to get involved, like virtual restaurants, cooking events and access to even more NFT sales.

Source: https://www.nrn.com/technology/meet-newest-addition-metaverse-nft-food-halls

The way that crypto and NFTs are being embraced by the food industry is generally reflective of the population as a whole. There are some who are firm believers in the importance of these new technologies, while others remain uninterested and even suspicious.

In an article in Nation’s Restaurant News, the publication talked with Michael Kondoudis, a Washington, D.C.-based attorney specializing in federal trademarks and patents. In response to the question of why restaurants should care about NFTs, he said:

“Even famous brands have come to realize that their brands are not 100% protected, and they are exposed to trademark infringement that they can't stop [within the metaverse]. They're trying to remedy this weakness in their brand protection because the technology got a little bit ahead of the law.”

Kondoudis talks about many of the potential reasons to invest, but concludes that people are mostly trying to get involved so that they have a foothold—and potentially the upper-hand—in the ever-growing metaverse.