Tuesday, November 25, 2025
In today's digest, passing bills, riding bikes, and talking turkey about foodtech. 🦃📱
Programming note: We’re off the rest of the week for Thanksgiving. We’ll be back in your inbox on Monday. Happy Thanksgiving!
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The New York City Council is racing to pass its biggest remaining bills of 2025 — including major fights over construction wages, housing, and short-term rentals — before the legislative clock resets on January 1. Here are all the major bills still before the New York City Council. 🧑⚖️ (City & State)
Citi Bike ridership is booming, especially in “transit deserts,” with limited public transportation options. E-bike rides across the city have doubled since 2023, even as traditional pedal-bike use dropped. 🚲 (amNY)
45 million Citi Bike trips were taken in 2025. To put that into perspective, that’s nearly three times the number of passengers carried by the Staten Island Ferry over the same time span!
Rain and wind move in this week — but don’t worry, it looks like things will clear up by Thanksgiving Day! 🌧️🦃 (CBS New York)
Rain has arrived this evening, potentially disrupting holiday travel; Wednesday stays cloudy with mild temps near 60 degrees.
Thanksgiving: Dry but much colder — highs in the mid-40s and breezy. Just cold enough to have an excuse for why you lost that backyard football game. 🏈
Black Friday: Chilly, low 40s, with a chance of your wallet begging you for mercy after all that shopping.
In other reading:
A guide to takeout Thanksgiving (Grub Street)
New York’s transit system is on a comeback, but the feds loom large (City & State)
The cinematic drone tour showcasing New York Marriott Marquis (Hotel Dive)
Companies to Watch: NYC FoodTech Founders Feeding the Future
November feels like peak food season. 🗻
Home cooks are mapping out their Thanksgiving menus and it’s around the time when Michelin stars are doled out.
It’s a month where the entire country seems to turn its attention to what we eat, how we gather, and the traditions that bring people to the table.
It’s also a perfect moment to spotlight the technology transforming our food system. And New York is a key part of that story:
The city is constantly buzzing with foodies: Restaurateurs, diners, chefs, waitstaff, and more all meet in the Big Apple to decide just how a big apple will be sliced, served, eaten, and composted — and the tech involved in those processes. 🍎
The city is home to a fast-growing ecosystem of startups working on everything from alternative proteins to restaurant tools to smarter logistics. 🧠
With its density, diversity, and culinary culture, New York is a natural laboratory — or rather, a natural kitchen — for testing the future of food. 🍔
This month, as Thanksgiving brings food to the forefront, we spoke with four NYC-based foodtech founders who are reshaping how food is produced, delivered, and experienced.
🗽 Check out their reasons and advice for building in New York below!
Shamima Sultana, founder of Beautiful Harvest, a pre-ordering platform that connects New Yorkers with their favorite local farmers markets:
“This city holds space for every dream — no matter how strange, daring, or original.”
Maggie Tang, founder of Magic, building AI-powered personalization tools for the service industry, starting with Loyalist, a CRM for restaurants:
“The best NYC startup advice: Your customers are literally downstairs. You can test something at Carbone on Tuesday, iterate Wednesday, go live Thursday.”
Roman Kalista, founder of RxDiet, which uses AI and national grocery integrations to unlock the full potential of food as medicine:
“The city is a powerful current; learn to navigate it by focusing on the destination you set for yourself.”
Santiago Perez, founder of Santo Taco, building the next premium taqueria brand supported by tech-enabled consistency and efficient operations:
“New York has tremendous energy; it’s a melting pot, a city of contrasts, and a place with deep culture and real competitive pressure.”
In other reading:
AI investors want more making it and less faking it (Wall Street Journal)
What ‘sent from my…’ in your emails says about you (Fast Company)
Model ML, an NYC-based AI workflow automation platform for financial services, raised $75 million in Series A funding. FT Partners led the round and was joined by Y Combinator, QED, 13Books, and others.
December 1: NYC VC Early Stage Investors Dinner, an intimate dinner with fellow NYC VC investors — connect over good food and meaningful conversation. Register here.
December 2: NYC FinTech Breakfast: Innovation & Market Entry, bringing together founders, investors, and ecosystem partners at the intersection of fintech innovation and U.S. market entry. Register here.
December 2: The Future of DevRel with Abby Mitchell, an interactive roundtable with Meta’s Abby Mitchell exploring the evolving landscape of developer relations and technical community building. Register here.
December 2: The Element 46 Accelerator’s Fall Cohort Demo Day, where you can hear directly from the 10 startups selected for the fall 2025 cohort and engage with other members of the Westchester entrepreneurial community, including founders, advisors, mentors, and investors. Register here.
December 3: Why Every Startup is Now an AI Startup, and What that Really Means, an intimate in-person breakfast with a savvy group of founders, VCs, and AI engineers for a chat about what it really means to build in the age of AI. Register here.
December 3: Using AI to Go From Prototype to Production, for builders with working prototypes that are ready to become reliable, scalable products, using case studies, demos, and a framework for getting real traffic, real data, and real users. Register here.
December 3: Claude Code Anonymous NYC, a series of lightning talks from hackers using LLMs for daily coding. Register here.
December 4: NYC Tech Networking: Coffee & Career Transitions, for tech professionals actively on the hunt for their next opportunity. Register here.
December 4: The SEEN Summit, the ultimate gathering for NYC-based founders, investors, and advocates of diverse-led teams, designed to foster networking, collaboration, and growth. Register here.
December 8: NYC AI Demos, the largest recurring AI demo series in New York, hosted by Tech:NYC, Pensar, and The Refinery @ Domino. The series spotlights how AI is being built, applied, and adapted to serve both the NYC tech community and the city at large, and this month features demos from OpenRouter, Promptfoo, Slingshot AI, Waymo, Pensar, and others to be announced soon. Register here.
December 8: All Tech Is Human's Responsible Tech Mixer, where ATIH community members will come together to reflect on the year's achievements and celebrate what's ahead. Register here.
December 9: Tech Ladies NYC Meetup, a night of thoughtful connections and inspirational programming with other women in tech. Register here.
December 9-10: 2025 NYC Employment and Training Coalition Conference, bringing together the city’s premier policymakers, practitioners, and leaders, including Tech:NYC’s Julie Samuels, to focus on career pathways, emerging industries, and the vital link between workforce and economic development. Register here.
December 10: AI Security Fireside Dinner, designed specifically for executive-level peers who are leading technical, security, or AI strategy in their organizations. Register here.
December 10-11: The AI Summit New York, a platform for enterprise leaders and tech innovators to explore and apply commercial AI, featuring Flybidge’s Jesse Middleton, NYCEDC’s Jonathan Schulhof, and Tech:NYC’s Julie Samuels discussing NYC’s startup ecosystem. Register here.
December 10: The AI Summit NY Healthcare Happy Hour, a mixer for healthcare and pharma professionals after day one of the AI Summit in New York. Register here.
December 11: The Future of Applied AI in Finance and Banking, an annual one-day, invite-only conference blending elements of TEDx, Foo Camp, and Summit to bring senior managers, C-suite executives, and top AI/ML researchers together for curated sessions on applying the latest technology to problems in finance, banking, and insurance. Register here.
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