Metaverse Meals Are Pricey but Not Filling GA S REGULAR Menu Lifewire Tech for Humans Newsletter! Search Close GO News > Smart & Connected Life
Metaverse Meals Are Pricey but Not Filling
Virtual snacking gets real
By Sascha Brodsky Sascha Brodsky Senior Tech Reporter Macalester College Columbia University Sascha Brodsky is a freelance journalist based in New York City. His writing has appeared in The Atlantic, the Guardian, the Los Angeles Times and many other publications. lifewire's editorial guidelines Published on February 24, 2022 01:00PM EST Fact checked by Jerri Ledford Fact checked by Jerri Ledford Western Kentucky University Gulf Coast Community College Jerri L. Ledford has been writing, editing, and fact-checking tech stories since 1994. Her work has appeared in Computerworld, PC Magazine, Information Today, and many others. lifewire's fact checking process Tweet Share Email Tweet Share Email Smart & Connected Life Mobile Phones Internet & Security Computers & Tablets Smart Life Home Theater & Entertainment Software & Apps Social Media Streaming Gaming Key Takeaways
Restaurants are opening virtual locations in the metaverse. The restaurant iChina will soon open a dining room with sensory immersion and a tasting menu. An NFT of a black truffle recently sold for $10,000. Donald Iain Smith / Getty Images Food is the latest item to go virtual. A high-end Chinese restaurant in California will launch a virtual reality room. The experience includes a tasting menu that costs a minimum of $4,500 for ten people. It's part of a growing effort to make dining a part of the virtual realm. "High-end chefs are tokenizing their signature dishes as NFTs, and these are sold as special and unique," Bob Bilbruck, the CEO of Captjur, a tech consulting firm that works on the metaverse, told Lifewire in an email interview. Mixing Reality While Dining
Silicon Valleys’ Chinese restaurant, iChina, will soon open a dining room with sensory immersion and a tasting menu. The room has video projectors to give diners the impression that they are somewhere other than just a four-walled room. The diners are meant to feel transported to tranquil settings, including a bamboo forest, a pond, a cherry blossom garden, a mosaic wall, and a water lantern festival. Eddie Lam, iChina’s executive chef, told Eater San Francisco, that as an example, if diners were taking part in an aquatic scene, the food—a seafood course in that case—would contribute to the experience. Montreal restaurant The Famous Cosmos has also entered the metaverse via a 3D virtual world platform called Decentraland. Customers will be able to view restaurant workers in the metaverse and chat with them. But ordering food will mean going to a physical restaurant location. One hot metaverse concept that restaurants and other food purveyors are embracing is non-fungible tokens (NFTs), a digital ledger that can be sold and traded. An NFT of a black truffle recently sold for $10,000. Bilbruck recently attended a virtual conference on food in the metaverse. “Right now, the form that most metaverse food plays is NFT's,” he said. Having a virtual restaurant in the metaverse for Mcdonald's is like having a VR DoorDash experience. VlRTUAL FOOD GETS REAL
Some food ordered in the metaverse might end up in your real stomach. McDonald's is reportedly bringing its menu into the metaverse. You'll be able to visit McDonald's in virtual reality and order things like a Big Mac or a Happy Meal and have them delivered to your home in the real world. "Having a virtual restaurant in the metaverse for Mcdonald's is like having a VR DoorDash experience," Evan Gappelberg, the CEO of VR and augmented reality (AR) firm NexTech said in an email interview. "You go into a virtual McDonald's and order some food only to have your doorbell ring and the food show up as delivery." Entrepreneurs are getting set to help restaurants sling burgers and milkshakes in the metaverse. The restaurant tech company Lunchbox is selling what it claims is the first restaurant in the metaverse via an NFT. A company can buy the virtual restaurant, put their brand on it and start taking orders from virtual kiosks within the store. The food would then be made by the real-life operation and delivered to the customer's real home. Bareburger, a hamburger chain that bought the NFT from Lunchbox, will be able to fully retrofit the virtual restaurant into its own brand. Digital kiosks are also in place, where food orders will be delivered directly to guests. Westend61 / Getty Images "We've never shied away from technology, but the metaverse allows us to reach our guests in a way no other technology has in the past," Euripides Pelekanos, the CEO of Bareburger, said in a news release. "Lunchbox's virtual restaurant allows us to showcase our offerings in the ever-evolving digital neighborhoods and communities of the metaverse, which we're excited to be a part of. We're working on completely retrofitting the virtual restaurant into something that is both familiar and quite literally out of this world." More restaurants are soon likely to embrace the metaverse, observers say. In the near term, food will be sold as NFTs, and dining establishments will open virtual locations, Bilbruck predicted. But eventually, "I think all food can be shown as a hologram in the metaverse to preview your meal before selecting your entree," Gappelberg said. "So essentially all food can be displayed and ordered in the metaverse while the actual food is eaten outside the metaverse." Was this page helpful? Thanks for letting us know! Get the Latest Tech News Delivered Every Day Subscribe Tell us why! Other Not enough details Hard to understand Submit More from Lifewire How the New Meta Quest Pro VR Headset Shows the Future of the Metaverse SXSW 2023: Dates, News, Announcements, Rumors, and Everything Else to Know Metaverse vs. Virtual Reality: How They Differ and What That Means for You Meta Quest Pro: Price, Release Date, Specs, and News Meta/Facebook's Bet on Virtual Reality The 10 Best Cooking Shows on Netflix (July 2022) What Is the Metaverse? Food Delivery App Wars: Grubhub vs. Uber Eats 6 Popular Food Delivery Service Apps How to Use Google Delivery to Order in From Local Restaurants How Does Grubhub Work? How to Cook in Zelda: Breath of the Wild What Is Uber Eats And How Does It Work? Restaurant Delivery Service War: Uber Eats vs DoorDash What Is Web3? Online Food Delivery War: Postmates vs DoorDash Newsletter Sign Up Newsletter Sign Up Newsletter Sign Up Newsletter Sign Up Newsletter Sign Up By clicking “Accept All Cookies”, you agree to the storing of cookies on your device to enhance site navigation, analyze site usage, and assist in our marketing efforts. Cookies Settings Accept All Cookies