Food-based startups grapple with funding cuts, restructuring, and layoffs

After more than a decade of funding and fawning, the glitzy world of tech startups is increasingly reckoning with limitations. Companies once lauded as industry “disruptors”—including robot-making pizza business Zume and robot-operated coffee chain Café X—are laying off employees, scaling back their operations, or even closing up shop, The New York Times reports. This isn’t the first time that the startup bubble has burst in the food world, with disastrous consequences—see WeWork’s restaurant-based coworking arm Spacious, craft meat retailer Crowd Cow, food startup incubator Pilotworks. Those still standing are also restructuring to focus on profits—rather than growth—which begs the question of why they ever disregarded that key element of running a business in the first place. Really makes you wonder.