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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Ashley Daigneault

Investor Look: 10 Trends to Watch in Ag + Food Tech in 2022

Food, ocean and agtech venture fund S2G Ventures released a report citing ten catalysts that will shape intersecting industries including agriculture, food manufacturing, nutrition and food retail in 2022. The report examines the trends that are driving the transition to a climate-smart, healthy food system.

S2G — investor in several food and agtech startups — looks at technology disruption in three major categories including agricultural innovation, supply chain disruption and personalized food and nutrition.

“The food transition is still in its infancy but is being propelled by seismic tailwinds: massive demographic change spurring new consumer demand, significant advancements in the biology, chemistry and physics of food production to create new choices and now capital markets anchored by ESG that want to fund high growth, disruptive companies,” commented Sanjeev Krishnan, S2G Ventures Managing Director and Chief Investment Officer.

Farmers in the US are facing new challenges every day from nutrient-challenged soil to lack of access to capital. The S2G report describes the ways that innovation in fintech, robotics and biotech along with an increase in socially and environmentally conscious investing (ESG) will lead to the “fourth industrial revolution” in farms across the country.

The drivers of innovation in farming include:

  • Robots will increase efficiency while reducing labor needs across the food system.
  • The rise of ESG will help to digitize the farm.
  • Fintech will transform opportunities in agriculture, just as it did for the student loan and mortgage markets.
  • RNA technology that saved lives during Covid-19 will be applied to farms to save soils.

Supply chain disruptions experienced over the past two years have catalyzed both governmental institutions NGOs and the private sectors to fund and drive innovation in biotech, cellular agriculture and food waste solutions. The result according to S2G Ventures will be supply chains that are more nimble, sustainable, localized and less wasteful.

Innovations that will revolutionize supply chains include:

  • Fermentation will power the next generation of alternative protein products.
  • Cellular protein will provide consumers around the world with safe, sustainable food.
  • Adoption of food waste solutions will be recognized as both a good business practice and an essential tool for feeding the world.

Even prior to the pandemic, consumers were demonstrating a desire for better food choices and a renewed focus on ways to personalize their nutrition and healthcare. To answer this demand, food and nutrition startups are using cutting-edge bio and food science as well as AI and machine learning to develop nutrient-dense, functional and personalized food products.

Personalized food & nutrition catalysts include:

  • AI and machine learning platforms will unlock greater understanding of and use cases for plants and fungi.
  • Food will become central to the effort to prevent chronic disease and improve health outcomes.
  • Food brands and grocers will have to “personalize or perish.”

To dig into more details on areas to watch in food and agtech this year, download the full report from S2G Ventures.

The Minnow Pickup Pod

CES 2022: Minnow Shows Off Pickup Pod, an Unattended Cubby System Designed for Food Delivery

Food tech startup Minnow showed off their contactless, asynchronous smart lockers for food delivery at CES 2022 — and The Spoon got a demo and sat down to talk to CEO Steven Sperry.

Minnow began shipping the pods in the last four weeks through Hatco, a manufacturing partner who creates Minnow pods on demand. On one end of the spectrum, Hatco is serving customers where food is picked up, including restaurants, ghost kitchens, and cafeteria operators. On the other end, Minnow is focusing on selling their pods into commercial real estate including office buildings, residential spaces like apartments and condos, and college campus locations — basically, where food is delivered.

While delivery lockers aren’t a new idea, Minnow differentiates by being designed specifically for food. Each pod is insulated, lit from the inside, and includes UV lights and antimicrobial surfaces.

“We did research and found that people don’t like the idea of reaching into a dark space to get their food — they want to know that the space is clean and sterile,” said Sperry.

Not only is the Minnow pod designed for food and strong connectivity with 5G on board, it’s also providing a standardized and easier way for third-party delivery drivers to find a delivery location to drop off food without navigating secure lobbies and elevators, gated entryways or confusing campus maps.

When asked about Minnow’s support model and whether a multifamily property owner would be able to use the Minnow pod “as a service” versus a straight purchase, Sperry responded, “The purchase typically has a SAS component because the device is always connected to our servers and monitored in real-time. We monitor the food continually, we know what’s happening in every pod and in most cases, it’s considered an amenity for the residents of that building.”

The Spoon video crew was able to get a quick demo of a Minnow pod live on the CES show floor — check it out below.

CES 2022: Demo of the Minnow Pick Up Pod

MycoTechnology Mushroom Tech Drives New Shelf Stable Alt-Protein

A few years ago, it might have seemed bizarre to anyone to have meatless crumbles, vegan cheese, or molecular alcohol alongside smart home and digital health tech on the show floor. But with the launch of Impossible Foods in 2020, CES has started to embrace a wider definition of food tech — one that goes beyond the smart kitchen. That’s why it’s no surprise that MycoTechnology — a company that created a mushroom technology that turns mycelia into different forms of alternate protein — has chosen this week at CES 2022 to launch its consumer-facing brand.

Goodside Foods is debuting shelf-stable meatless crumbles made from plant protein powered by fermentation. While there are a good deal of alt meat products derived from plant protein, Goodside’s meatless crumbles stand out because they only include three ingredients and they’ll last a lot longer and without refrigeration.

Powered by MycoTechnology’s mushroom fermentation platform, Goodside Foods meatless crumbles contain a pea and rice protein blend fermented by shitake mushroom roots or mycelia. The brand claims that the natural fermentation process makes their plant protein easier to digest.

In a written statement, Lisa Wetstone, Director, Innovation and Growth Strategy at MycoTechnology, Inc. commented, “Consumers deserve plant-based protein that is delicious, clean and nutritious. Our protein doesn’t contain anything extra or unnecessary – just three simple ingredients that can work for a thousand and more of your favorite recipes.”

MycoTechnology and Goodside Foods are at CES showing off their mushroom tech platform and the first consumer product to come from said tech — if you want to try shelf-stable meatless crumbles and learn more, visit booth #53753 in the Venetian (formerly Sands) Expo Hall A-C.

Where to See Food Tech on the Show Floor @ CES 2022: Day 1

While CES 2022 will be smaller this year as the show returns to in-person after hosting an all-virtual show in 2021, we’re excited to see food tech as an official category on the show floor. The Spoon team will be in the Sands Expo in Booth 53752 talking to leaders from startups to funders and execs across agtech, robotics, future food and kitchen tech.

We’ll have videos and reports as the show goes on. To start, here’s a quick list of booths where you’ll see food tech and smart kitchen innovations and the companies behind them:

  • Bear Robotics — Booth #53755 — Bear Robotics is utilizing AI and autonomous robot technology, deploying bots to take care of everything from drink and food serving to bussing. Bear Robotics works with top chefs and restaurants, providing front of house labor support.
  • MycoTechnology — Booth #53753 — MycoTechnology harnesses the metabolic engine of mushrooms, known as mycelium, using natural fermentation to create novel ingredients that solve the food industry’s biggest challenges. (Stay tuned for a story on their consumer facing brand launching at CES.)
  • Yo-Kai Express — Booth #53758 — Yo-Kai debuted as a robotic ramen vending machine and announced a 2021 expansion into other autonomous food and cooking devices at the Smart Kitchen Summit Japan.
  • Edamam — Booth #53860 — Edamam structures and organizes food and nutrition data and sells it as a subscription to businesses in the food, health, and wellness sectors. They have worked with food and retail giants include Nestle, Amazon, and The Food Network and according to the company have close to 100,000 developers using Edamam’s APIs.
  • Northfork — Booth #53959 — Northfork is a Swedish-based startup that enables shoppable recipes online, bridging the world of digital recipes and food retail.
  • Apex / “OrderHQ” Smart Food Locker — Booth #53958 — Apex Order Pickup Solutions is the creator of the OrderHQ smart food locker, a secure, contactless solution for food pickup and delivery services. The lockers combine front and back of house technology, including hot and cold storage as well as integration with fully automated order fulfilment.
  • Uvera — Booth #54058 — Uvera is a Saudi cleantech startup that wants to reduce food waste with a device that claims to increase the shelf-life of fresh food up to “97% on average within only 30 seconds of using the device, without any chemicals.”
  • Yangyoo / Armored Fresh — Booth #53761 — Yangyoo is a Korea-based food tech company launching Korea’s first vegan cheese alternative first developed by its US subsidiary, Armored Fresh. The future food brand uses a similar fermenting process that produces natural cheese on plant-based protein milk.
  • Endless West — Booth #54061 — Endless West is a beverage technology startup founded by biotechnologists using science to create a blend of wines and spirits; its first product – Glyph – is the first molecular-made whiskey, created without aging or barreling.

(Shared) Booth #51830

  • Picnic — Robotic pizza machine designed for back of house operations in restaurants; they first launched onto the scene at CES 2020 and started filling orders in the middle of 2021.
  • iUNU — iUNU (you knew) is a Seattle agtech firm creating an AI-based platform for greenhouses and vertical farms that assists indoor growers with yields, farming waste and overall operations.
  • Minnow was the winner of the 2020 Smart Kitchen Summit Startup Showcase for their contactless food delivery solution called the Minnow Pickup Pod. An IoT-enabled locker for businesses and multifamily properties, Minnow streamlines food delivery on site.

We’ll add more companies to the list as we cover news and discover additional companies! Follow us at @TheSpoonTech on Twitter and LinkedIn as well as hashtags #CES2022 and #CESFoodTech for social updates.

Meet the Innovators Selected as Finalists for the 2021 SKS Startup Showcase

Every year, we put out a call for innovators who are using tech to disrupt and ultimately improve the way we eat, prep and interact with food. We receive Startup Showcase applications from all corners of the global food system and get to learn about the ideas that will spark change and help shape the future of food and the kitchen. In the end, our editorial team selects 10 or so finalists who represent the most unique and transformative ideas in food tech.

In its 8th year, the SKS Startup Showcase has served as a launching pad for some of today’s most interesting food tech startups. With companies as diverse as smart stove and food delivery startup Tovala, food delivery packaging startup SavrPak, and upcoming Shark Tank contestant IncrEDIBLE Eats, alumni of the Showcase are making an impact across the food innovation landscape.

Each finalist will get a chance to pitch on stage at the 2021 Smart Kitchen Summit, happening virtually in just a few weeks on November 9th and 10th.

If you want to see the finalists pitch and have a chance to network with some of the top leaders and newest startups in food and kitchen tech, grab your ticket to SKS here.

Let’s meet the 2021 Startup Showcase Finalists.

  • AIGecko is powering a touchless checkout kiosk with their AI-powered food recognition API. Customers can select food and place their selection at the kiosk and using artificial intelligence that drives both facial and food recognition at the kiosk. Guests can also get the nutritional information of their dish and get connected to a nutrition expert through the connected app.
  • Blix is a smart food maker that promises to eliminate both the preparation and the cleanup of cooking a meal from scratch. Blix includes a smart lid with an integrated blade and RFID tag to ensure consistent results each time a dish is made.
  • Castiron is a central hub and platform for independent kitchen-based chefs to sell their creations direct to customers. It also includes resources and creator community to support and grow their business. Castiron says their customers include bakers, juicers, jammers and similar culinary artisans to market and sell their goods.
  • Chocomake is a smart home chocolate maker and ingredient kit developed by a female-led startup launching in 2022. The appliance allows users to create custom varieties of chocolate in different shapes, composition and texture. Chocomake can help with allergies and dietary restrictions and can produce vegan, non-GMO and sugar-free chocolate with easy prep and cleanup.
  • Clew is a countertop appliance that grinds, heats and dries home food waste in two hours and transforms it into shelf-stable material that can be refined into compost or place into a recycling stream for further processing. After processing through the Clew appliance, the amount of waste material is reduced by mass by over 80%. Clew is working to produce an early prototype.
  • Mezli is building containerized robot restaurants called “auto-kitchens.” The “restaurant-in-a-box” business leverages automation and shipping containers to power a fully autonomous kitchen able to cook, plate and pack each dish. Mezli founder and CEO told The Spoon that their auto-kitchens can go 48 hours or make 300 meals (whichever comes first) before requiring servicing by a non-robotic worker.
  • Natufia is an integrated and automated indoor smart hydroponic kitchen garden created for at-home food growing. The smart kitchen garden can grow up to 32 simultaneously with automatic watering and lighting and gives users of 40 seedpods. Natufia customers can grow everything from leafy and microgreens to vegetables and flowers.
  • Ottonomy creates autonomous robots that enable contactless deliveries of food and retail products. Ottonomy robots require zero human supervision for navigation and can operate in both indoor and outdoor environments. The company’s proprietary software claims to allow for fully autonomous operation in crowded and unpredictable environments including in airports, malls and office buildings.
  • Culineer is a platform where farms can educate and communicate with consumers looking for locally produced foods. While consumers often don’t know how to cook everything they may purchase direct from farms, farmers don’t have resources and time to provide food level education. Culineer fills that gap with recipes, harvest updates, education and peer support; this gives farms increased customer satisfaction and retention.
  • WSVC is an appliance company that has invented a new type of multi-purpose microwave oven that features traditional microwave cooking as well as Waterless Sous Vide Cooking (WSVC). WSVC cooks food with low consistent heat similar to sous vide but without the water bath and vacuum seal. WSVC will debut for the first time at the 2021 Smart Kitchen Summit.

Deadline To Pitch Your Food Tech Innovation At Smart Kitchen Summit Is Near

Each year since 2015, the leaders in food, appliances, retail, delivery, and kitchen come together to discuss and demonstrate the tech innovation that’s transforming the way we buy, cook and eat food. The 2021 Smart Kitchen Summit (SKS) will remain virtual this year on November 9th + 10th but will still include an audience favorite: the Startup Showcase.

The Startup Showcase is a once-a-year competition that gives future food and food tech startups with the most interesting, cutting edge solutions a chance to pitch our executive-level audience of investors, C-Suite leaders, chef and culinary experts, food and tech journalists, retail and tech giants + more.

The applications only require basic information as well as a place to talk about your product and a place to talk about why you’d be a good fit for the SKS Startup Showcase.

The deadline for applications is 11:59 pm PST on Thursday, September 30.

The Spoon editorial team will review each application and any supporting materials that were linked in the submission; Startup Showcase finalists are selected from this group and give the chance to pitch and demo their solutions live at SKS 2021 on November 9th and 10th.

Take a look at past Startup Showcase coverage on The Spoon and videos from prior events.

For virtual tickets to the 2021 Smart Kitchen Summit, visit the registration page and sign up. {Hint: if you can afford it, the VIP level will not only give you access to the entire SKS 2021 digital archive, but you get to choose from some lovely free merch!}

We hope to see you in November!

Review: Setting Up A Smart Indoor Grow System

I am not a person who keeps plants alive. Two dogs and a human, I can manage but for some reason, remembering to water an indoor plant is not something that makes it into my daily routine. So when my mother-in-law got me a “Smart Garden 3” from Click and Grow, I was slightly skeptical that I would not be successful at growing lovely herbs in my kitchen.

But once I read a little more, I realized that the entire smart indoor growing system was designed to be idiot-proof setup and equipped with enough technology to barely need any human involvement or interaction at all. (This are the kinds of tech I am here for: devices that make up for my shortcomings. I’m one personal trainer robot away from living my best life.) Click and Grow is the Keurig of indoor gardens and took the idea of putting coffee in pods and instead, put a combination of seeds and nutrient-rich soil inside “plant capsules.”

The unboxing of my indoor smart herb garden

In addition to the three basil capsules that came with my Smart Garden 3 (you can get bigger gardens and therefore, grow more capsules at one time), Click and Grow allows users to order different herbs, flowers, fruits and vegetables from their site or on Amazon. It even has a subscription program where you can sign up to receive regular deliveries of pods.

The device itself was a little smaller than I expected – but also taller, and the shelf I planned to put it on was too narrow. The bottom of the garden has a holding tank for the water as well as three circular spots for each seed pod.

The overhanging handle at the top is the grow light – a completely automated light I might add that rotates when the light is on and the intensity of light based on best grow practices for the plant you are growing.

On the top of each pod is a QR code – this is where the “smart” part of the name comes in. The garden comes out of the box just like this, so the first step in the instructions is to download the Click and Grow app.

The app is easy to navigate and once you open it, it prompts you to choose what indoor garden device you have and then you’re able to add plants to your garden. The QR code on the top of each plant capsule is scannable in the app, and the above screen appears with the plant’s “birthday” and details. You can also rename them to help you remember which plant is which – helpful especially if you are planting three of the same kind. (They also give you the old fashioned garden tags you can write on that stick up from each capsule.)

If you click the water icon, you can record when you watered your plant, therefore giving the app the ability to remind you when it’s time to water again. But because the water tank underneath holds more water than each plant needs daily and doles it out according to the plant’s needs, you don’t have to water daily. Or even weekly. Every 13-14 days, you have to fill the tank back up, but the device itself has a visual cue in addition to the app.

(The app has additional functionality like an album where you can upload pictures of the plant as it grows and a grow icon where you can put in measurements. I…am not that involved in my basil’s growth. I know, neglectful. My son is the one who checks on it daily.)

Once you scan each plant into your app, you remove the tops to each capsule which reveals another white cover, this time with a hole in the middle. This is where the plant will inevitably emerge as it grows. The kit also comes with three plastic domes and the instructions say to take each dome and place it on the top of each capsule to create a greenhouse-like environment for the seeds and soil. Once you start to see greenery and the plants begin to grow, you can remove the domes.

The next step was to add water. There is a rectangular spot on the top of the garden next to the capsule spots and the indicator inside rises as you add water. I counted the number of cups it took to fill the tank and it was around seven cups for the model of indoor garden I am using (Smart Garden 3).

The final step of setup is to plug in the garden. The instructions do warn you that the light basically rotates – 18 hours on, 6 hours off – so if you don’t want your device to go on in the middle of the night, you should plug it in for the first time in the morning. I guess that would matter more if you were keeping your indoor garden near your bedroom or you lived in a small apartment. Ours is on the kitchen counter, far from our beds and not where anyone is usually in the middle of the night, so I plugged it in the afternoon. Sure enough, ours cycles off as I’m waking up for the day. The light is pretty bright though, it’s almost as strong as the overhead light above our kitchen sink.

RESULTS: We are only a little over two weeks in, but so far, it’s been one of the easiest plant-growing experiences I have ever had. I’ve watered it a total of one time and the plants are finally started to grow little basil leaves. They look incredibly green and healthy and my four-year-old son is fascinated by them.

Click and Grow says it can take 4-6 weeks to have fully matured plants but they can last for a while, and you’re encouraged to trim them in a way that promotes regeneration.

I’m looking forward to having fresh basil right from my own kitchen and I’m already trying to decide what to grow next – lettuce or strawberries or flowers?! Too many to choose from. I can definitely see the appeal of systems like these – they are budget friendly (the startup kit was $50 for the device and the basil capsules) at least to start – and they give you the option to have fresh produce in any season with little effort.

If you read some of the Amazon reviews, many people point out that the refills themselves are pricey – up to $20 for rosemary and tomatoes. Given that plant seeds are a dollar or two at any garden shop, that price might prove unsustainable. However, there seem to be plenty of online guides on how to take the pods and make your own capsules to work with the system.

I’ll post an update when we have fully grown plants and we taste our first harvest.

In 2018, Seaweed Is The New Plastic

It’s no secret that the world produces—and wastes—mass amounts of plastic. But when you actually take a look at the numbers, it’s downright shocking.

National Geographic says that of the whopping 8.3 billion metric tons of plastic the world has produced, 6.3 billion metric tons have become plastic waste. And of those 6.3 billion metric tons of plastic waste, only nine percent has been recycled. That means 79 percent of all the world’s plastic ends up in landfills and ultimately, the oceans.

Fortunately, this is one problem that some foodtech startups are tackling by searching for sustainable materials to replace plastic packaging. A major contender in the running? Seaweed.

For the past eight years, seaweed’s place as the alternative raw material of choice has grown, and there are already several startups developing a wide range of applications for seaweed, from biofuel to cosmetics and food to pharmaceuticals. An early innovator, Loliware launched its first range of cups made from agar that are safe to consume; agar is extracted from red seaweed. Since then, startups have come out with edible water bottles made from brown seaweed and one group won a prestigious design award for their use of seaweed in commercial packaging for perfume and other goods.

Wondering how seaweed can possibly become the new plastic? It’s not as outlandish as it sounds.

First, seaweed is cheap, easy to harvest and extract, and readily accessible—it is available on every coastline. And, when compared to other potential sustainable materials, seaweed is the clear winner. For example, bioplastics, which are made from starches such as polylactic acid, require fresh water and fertilizer to grow—seaweed doesn’t. In fact, seaweed can grow up to three meters per day.

Because it is so abundant, just 0.03% of the brown seaweed in the world could replace all the polyethylene terephthalate (PET) plastic bottles used every year.

Seaweed’s biggest potential lies in disposable packaging. Inspired by peelable fruits (such as bananas and oranges), the idea is to use seaweed as a biodegradable container. By replacing unsustainable plastic containers, seaweed packaging would solve the problem of the shelf-life gap—the difference between the biodegradability of the container and that of what’s in the container.

Milk is a great example of this. Pasteurized cow’s milk has a shelf life of about one week – but the plastic jugs they are sold in? Each container could take up to 500 years to decompose. Seaweed packaging can decompose in around 4-6 weeks

Replace that plastic bottle with seaweed packaging, and you have a far more comparable shelf-life ratio; seaweed packaging biodegrades in soil in only four to six weeks. Plus, unlike plastic, seaweed doesn’t break down into micro-particles that are impossible to collect.

The problem has been getting more attention lately – two years ago the Ellen McArthur Foundation, a UK-based nonprofit put out a report and launched a new initiative called the New Plastics Economy, calls on major manufacturers to adopt circular modes or production and consumption for plastics where reuse and recycling becomes the responsibility of the makers of plastic containers (instead of hoping consumers do it) as opposed to a linear one which exists now.

Statistics in the report are sobering; according to the foundation “95% of the value of plastic packaging material, worth $80-120 billion annually, is lost to the economy” and they predict by 2050 (just 32 years from now), the world’s oceans will contain more plastic than fish.

Speaking of oceans, there’s another reason seaweed trumps plastic – it actually reduces global warming. Besides being cheaper, more accessible, and more sustainable, seaweed absorbs CO2 and mitigates ocean acidity. Some startups have started to pop up around seaweed farming and maintenance – like New York’s GreenWave, who are building autonomous seaweed farms to both reduce costs and reduce global warming.

2018 might be the year of seaweed and generally more innovation around sustainable packaging and circular life cycle strategies to steer the world away from its intense reliance on plastic.

Smart Kitchen Appliances: What If “Smart” Means Superior Instead Of Connected?

One of the core discussions around the smart kitchen at SKS over the past three years has been the function and usability of smart devices in the kitchen. What devices will actually help us cook better food more easily and what are just silly attempts at connectivity for connectivity’s sake?

Breville has a different take on what makes an appliance smart, and it goes well beyond the ability to connect to its devices via a smart app. The new Breville Smart Oven Air has unique technology that allows for incredibly precise temperature control and can actually change how the heat is distributed. In other words, depending on the requirements of the specific dish you’re cooking, you can make the oven hotter at the front, top, bottom, or back of the chamber.

Allen Weiner of The Spoon sat down with Scott Brady, General Manager of Global Marketing at Breville at the 2017 Smart Kitchen Summit to talk about how Breville’s smart oven makes life easier in the kitchen. According to Brady, “this precise heat distribution lets you complete a lot of simple cooking tasks a lot better.”

For example, if you’re baking a cake, you’ll want the heat focused on the bottom of the oven to prevent it from cracking; whereas, for a pizza, you’ll want the heat evenly distributed throughout. Both are possibilities with the Breville oven, so that you can get the perfect finish no matter what you’re cooking. And the guesswork of how to heat and at what temperature isn’t left up to the user – the oven will course correct and heat to perfection no matter what the dish.

Another trend in kitchen appliances seems to be more all-in-one functionality. The future kitchen will likely not have a slow cooker, an oven, a toaster, a microwave and a sous vide machine but rather one or two devices that does most of that with ease. Breville is trying to pull that off with the Smart Oven Air. For one, it’s bringing in air-frying, which is a much healthier way to prepare your favorite fried foods. Instead of using hot oil, the oven uses fast-moving convection heat to mimic the effect of a traditional deep-fryer. Precise temperature control and regulated air movement mean that this oven can also dehydrate fruit, as well as act as a slow-cooker.

The question is: The Breville oven may be smart, but where does the company stand on connectivity?

For Breville, Brady says, “We don’t want to be connected for connected’s sake.” Instead, their goal is to create products that offer unique, new technology that’s truly helpful—not cumbersome. The future of smart kitchen devices is creative technology that actually makes culinary tasks easier for the user when combined with the convenience of an app, a built-in recipe database and intelligence baked into the device itself.

Brady says Breville is working on products that meet this promise, and you can expect them in 2018.

Building A Common Language For Food

Perhaps the most overused buzzword in the past several years is IoT – Internet of Things. We’ve even seen IoE (Internet of Everything) and IIoT (Industrial Internet of Things) emerge – but this year at SKS 2017, we were introduced to another Internet of phrases – one that has a chance to completely transform how we interact with food in our lives.

IoF stands for the Internet of Food, an effort to create a digital language and infrastructure for food. At the 2017 Smart Kitchen Summit, Dr. Matthew Lange of UC Berkeley and IC-Foods presented on the beginnings of IoF, describing it as “bring[ing] a common data language and ontology to the world of food and the impact on activities, such as food shopping and cooking.”

Despite its name, the Internet of Food is not just about food; it’s about every process and industry related to food, such as the environment, agriculture and health. The idea is to create a language to operationalize all food-related data pertaining to these subjects and impact every industry that may touch the food chain.

This means thinking about food outside of the kitchen—before it gets into the kitchen, and after it leaves the kitchen before we eat it. Lange explains that IoF is about annotating these processes and building a vocabulary that can explain the likes of flavor components, nutrient components, energy usage, etc. By developing an ontology about how food moves through the supply chain, farmers, for example, can be given more appropriate advice about how to best grow, store, and deliver food.

When it comes to smart things in the kitchen, most people immediately jump to thinking about appliances. But Lange insists we’re getting ahead of ourselves. Suppose, for instance, you have a sensor that measures the precise humidity and temperature of a drawer in your refrigerator. Seems handy, right? “But this doesn’t mean anything if you don’t know at what humidity and temperature that spinach should be stored,” notes Dr. Lange.

This is where the Internet of Food comes in. When we bring smart into the kitchen, we have to think one step before appliances and gadgets and get smart about food itself first—and we have the data to do it.

There is already a plethora of food data available: there are traditional data sets harvested from governmental and private researchers, and there is data about food sourced from the Internet of Things. The vision for the Internet of Food is to combine all these data sets and develop an ontology to tag the data, making it interoperable between scientific disciplines and different people on the supply chain.

Beyond technical efficiency, the IoF also aims to improve perhaps the best part about food: its flavor. The question is: How can we know which flavors go well together? Lange makes an analogy to musical notes; if you dissect a musical scale, you’ll see that C plays in harmony with E, but no so much with F#. What if we can apply this systematic principle to food and food flavors? According to Lange, with a developed ontology for food, we can find an algorithm to make sense of why certain flavors are in harmony with one another.

The Internet of Food expands “smart” out of the kitchen into every process related to food harvesting, shopping, and cooking. Watch Dr. Matthew Lange’s full talk from the 2017 Smart Kitchen Summit:

Oliver Aims To Take One Pot Cooking To The Next Level

The holy grail of convenience cooking has always been the one pot solution. Since the early 1970s, the CrockPot and other less famous brands of slow cooking machines dominated the kitchen as the solution for “set it and forget it” meals. Whether it was pork roasts, applesauce, stews or chili, the Crock Pot lets users combine (mostly) raw ingredients, turn the device on and come back later in the day to a fully cooked meal. In 2009, with the rise of the electric pressure cooker, the Instant Pot debuted and the debate began as to which technology was actually more useful.

The Instant Pot has a slow cooker feature, but the love of the device comes from its ability to produce cooked food in a much shorter amount of time through pressure cooking.

But whether you’re team Crock Pot or team Instant Pot, one thing remains true: one pot cooking tech hasn’t changed much in the last 40+ years. They still require users to dump a slew of ingredients all at once into a large bowl (or manually add different ingredients at different times) and hope it all cooks perfectly. But not every food item requires the same amount of time – or the same levels of heat – to cook.

This was the challenge Else Labs was trying to tackle with new one pot automated cooking machine Oliver. The technology and device design allows ingredients to be divided into dispensing canisters and then placed into the pot for cooking when the recipe-driven app tells it to.

Else Labs Founder & CEO Khalid Aboujassoum sat down with The Spoon’s Allen Weiner at the 2017 Smart Kitchen Summit.

“This technology takes slow cooking to a new level. You can taste every ingredient – they all have the right texture and right flavor because they were cooked correctly,” said Aboujassoum.

Oliver isn’t exactly a slow cooker; it mimics the way you’d cook on a stove top (saute onions first, add vegetables, cook meat around it, make the broth separate, etc) – but it enables automation and connectivity to take over and relieve the cook from standing over the stove for the entire process.

Oliver does what Crock Pot and Instant Pot can’t – understand the sequence and temperature of how each ingredient should be cooked and mimic those actions the way a human cook would. Oliver dispenses at the right time and heats to the right temperature with a robotic stirring arm built in to stir as needed.

“Tell Oliver ‘I need food by six’ and the machine will do the math for you in terms of when to start, stir, dispense and stop,” said Aboujassoum.

Another differentiator? Oliver records the work of pros so busy home cooks can replicate their work. According to Aboujassoum, the recipes generated from the Oliver app are all created with professional chefs. As the chefs make their recipes with Oliver, Oliver and the app capture all the actions, recording the sequence so it can be automated and replicated for Oliver users. Eventually, the plan is to let the Oliver user community contribute and add recipes using this same method to capture a more diverse range of content.

It took almost 40 years for the Crock Pot to have a serious competitor but it seems the Instant Pot may not enjoy the same length of time as a crowd favorite. Oliver is poised to launch in 2018.

 

Sears Cuts Ties With Whirlpool In Another Effort To Survive

For almost a century, Sears carried staple appliance brands from Whirlpool including Maytag, JennAir and KitchenAid. But amidst the retailer’s struggles to remain profitable in a tough environment, Sears has announced it is cutting ties to Whirlpool and will no longer carry the brand’s appliances.

It appears that the retailer’s decision stemmed from Whirlpool’s attempt to raise margins in an increasingly competitive appliance market environment. In a statement, Sears commented, “Whirlpool has sought to use its dominant position in the marketplace to make demands that would have prohibited us from offering Whirlpool products to our members at a reasonable price.”

The decision is effective immediately and Sears reported that it would sell off the rest of its Whirlpool inventory while immediately pulling subsidiary brands including Maytag and KitchenAid from store floors. Sears will continue to sell its Kenmore brand and other popular appliance brands including GE, Bosch, Samsung and Electrolux.

These recent changes may not be enough to keep Sears from going under and the announcement comes in the last quarter of a rocky year for Sears; the company has been in the process of closing less profitable stores, including all those in Canada and has attempted to reinvigorate its e-commerce efforts through a partnership with Amazon. In a “if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em” mentality, Sears signed a deal with the Seattle based e-commerce giant to sell Kenmore appliances on Amazon.

Sears business dealings with Whirlpool aren’t entirely over though, the company still manufactures the Sears Kenmore line of appliances and will continue to do so according to Sears. Kenmore is attempting to remain competitive in the connected appliance space, launching a new suite of smart kitchen appliances with Amazon Alexa compatibility at the 2017 Smart Kitchen Summit.

Whirlpool, on the other hand, has spent the past several years dipping their toes into the smart kitchen space, first partnering with food platform startup Innit, then announcing voice connectivity inside their devices and after dissolving the Innit partnership, buying Yummly, one of the internet’s biggest food & recipe sites.