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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Ashley Daigneault

Hot Off The Press From #SmartKitchen17

We were lucky to have an incredible cadre of journalists at the Smart Kitchen Summit this year, many of them joining on stage as panelists and moderators. Including the event itself, we saw coverage of several company announcements that happened at SKS from groups like Kenmore and NutriBullet.

Here’s a quick highlight reel and some stories to read more about what happened at this year’s Summit:

SmartBrief highlighted the discussions around the future of food retail & grocery, saying:

“The future of food was the overarching topic of discussion at the Smart Kitchen Summit last week in Amazon’s backyard, Seattle, Wash., and while many sessions honed in on new appliances in the consumer kitchen and new technologies to make cooking easier, one session focused on the future of grocery. Focusing on the consumer and how their behavior, demands and perceptions have changed to influence the industry today, Erik Wallin, co-founder of Northfork, a Sweden-based personal shopper service for retailers; Josh Sigel, COO of Innit; and Mike Lee, founder of The Future Market, a forecasting agency that builds concept products and experiences to imagine what the world of food will look like in the next 10-25 years, spoke about the challenges and opportunities that technology represents for the food retail industry.”

Digital Trends covered several new product announcements at SKS, including GE FirstBuild’s introduction of precision bakeware and NutriBullet’s new smart blender.

From the FirstBuild announcement:

“While it won’t be ready for Thanksgiving at your relatives’ abode, GE Appliances and FirstBuild will soon release a line of smart Precision Bakeware — pans that alert you when the brownies are done via an app. FirstBuild was at the Smart Kitchen Summit in Seattle this week to announce the new products. There are smart pans, ovens, and grills, but this is one of the few pieces of the connected kitchen focused on baking.”

From the NutriBullet story:

NutriBullet, along with Perfect Company, wants to make keeping tabs on nutrition a bi”t more seamless with its new NutriBullet Balance blender. The smart blender — introduced this week at the Smart Kitchen Summit in Seattle — has an accompanying app and integrated scale and can recommend recipes based on what you like and your diet.”

CNET’s Ashlee Clark Thompson was on hand not only to moderate a stellar panel on the role of the display (countertop, on fridges, etc) will play on video content for the kitchen, she was also cranking out stories for CNET on announcements like Kenmore’s lineup of smart kitchen appliances. From the piece:

“Kenmore, the appliance brand owned by Sears, has strengthened its ties to Amazon. Its new line of internet-connected refrigerators will work with the Alexa voice-activated digital assistant, the company announced this week at the Smart Kitchen Summit in Seattle.

The Wi-Fi-enabled refrigerators will send alerts to your phone if you leave a door open, when you need to replace a filter and if there are power outages. You’ll also be able to adjust your freezer and refrigerator temperatures when you’re away.”

Celebrity chef and Food Network star stopped by to chat with the NYT Cooking Executive Director Amanda Rottier on stage at SKS and discussed the role of technology and recipes and how the former is impacting the latter. Food & Wine covered their talk and Florence’s announcement that he is joining Innit as their Chief Content & Innovation Officer:

“‘Recipes served a purpose back in the day,” Florence told the audience “but inflexible recipes don’t work with the modern lifestyle anymore.’ Today’s recipe content is one dimensional because it doesn’t know who I am, my family’s nutrition needs and likes/dislikes, the food I have in my fridge, or the appliances I have in my home.’

Innit, on the other hand, does know all of these things. The smart kitchen maker aims to use technology to create a centralized hub for the kitchen, from software that knows what groceries you just bought and can suggest combinations and preparations based on your taste, to automated stoves and ovens that cook the food while you’re away.”

We were excited to have New York Times National Food Correspondent Kim Severson at the Smart Kitchen Summit this year to scope out how tech might be changing cooking for mainstream consumers. While Severson was skeptical about the role of technology and if the vision from some at SKS was took focused on replacing what people love about cooking, it’s always great to have insight from journalists who have their finger on the pulse of consumer behavior.

Severson’s piece in the NYT included:

“The conference, now in its third year, brings together people on the front lines of kitchen technology to try to figure out how to move the digital revolution deeper into the kitchen. The kitchen is where Americans spend 60 percent of their time at home when they are not sleeping, said Yoon Lee, a senior vice president at Samsung. That’s why so many tech companies are focused on it.

Almost everyone here this week at Benaroya Hall, the home of the Seattle Symphony — whether an executive from a major appliance manufacturer, a Google engineer or a hopeful young entrepreneur with a popular Kickstarter concept — agreed that it was only a matter of five to 10 years before artificial intelligence had a permanent seat at the dinner table.”

Huge thanks to all our friends in the press who attended the 2017 Smart Kitchen Summit, we look forward to sharing insights into next year and beyond about the future of cooking, food and the kitchen.

This Company Uses Blockchain To Fight Global Food Fraud

Sometimes bad food is caused by undercooking or leaving fresh foods out too long – but often it’s because the item was either fake or contaminated before it even reached retail or a restaurant. After suffering a terrible case of food poisoning likely due to this problem while visiting Shanghai, Mitchel Weinberg was inspired to do something about international food industry fraud.

A former trade-consultant, Weinberg founded Inscatech, a global network of investigators that down evidence of food industry fraud and malpractice. Inscatech’s agents inspect a variety of reports of counterfeit and contaminated food products before they reach retailers and food producers with most problems originating in China.

“Statistically we’re uncovering fraud about 70 percent of the time but in China, it’s very close to 100 percent,” Weinberg told Bloomberg Technology. “It’s pervasive, it’s across food groups, and it’s anything you can possibly imagine.”

Currently, Inscatech is in the process of creating molecular markers and genetic fingerprints to help more effectively identify natural products and determine what’s real and what’s not.  Other companies are taking a digital approach and developing technology to monitor where that product originated.

As more Chinese food companies become part of the global supply chain, big supermarket companies, including Wal-Mart Stores, are recognizing the reputational danger of food fraud. Wal-Mart recently completed a trial using the technology, blockchain to monitor their pork supply chain in China. Blockchain, an eight-year-old technology that cryptographically records transactions, helped Wal-Mart to reduce their tracking time from 26 hours to only a few seconds.

Blockchain works as a database of records. It can potentially improve traceability by creating a chain of history that is impossible to alter without destroying the current sequence. Alibaba has also recognized the potential for blockchain within their platforms and is planning to implement a project with food suppliers in Australia and New Zealand, as well as Australia Post and auditors PricewaterhouseCoopers.

“Food fraud is a serious global issue,” said Maggie Zhou, managing director for Alibaba in Australia and New Zealand told Bloomberg Technology. “This project is the first step in creating a globally respected framework that protects the reputation of food merchants and gives consumers further confidence to purchase food online.”

However, Inscatech has its concerns about blockchain. Their agents focus on working with informants who bring attention to the exact location where the food-fraud is taking place and believe that blockchain is only as reliable as the person providing that data. As of right now, blockchain is still the best system in place against fighting food-fraud. In a global food industry that relies mostly on just paper records, blockchain will help identify those putting data into the system and if incorrect, allow them to be held responsible.

Cooking Tech That Lets You Keep Taste & Save Time

The Smart Kitchen Summit Startup Showcase provides a platform for exciting startups, inventors, culinary makers and cutting-edge product companies to showcase what they are working on and let others experience it firsthand. Now in its third year, the Startup Showcase + PitchFest take place during SKS on October 10-11, 2017 in Seattle and is sponsored by the leading maker of soups and simple meals, beverages, snacks and packaged fresh foods, Campbell Soup Company. Campbell’s will provide a $10,000 cash prize to the winner, announced at live at SKS. Below we take a look at one of these finalists, IXL Netherlands.

What does the future of cooking really look like? Current heating techniques often blunt flavor and take away a food’s core nutrition. One startup in Europe hopes to change all that with a new cooking technology known as Pulse Electric Field (PEF). IXL Netherlands combines the effects of electroporation and pulsed ohmic heating in the eCooker, allowing cooked food to maintain its nutritional value, flavor, color, structure and taste.  The appliance features three individual compartments. Each compartment works independently of one another, consisting of two vertical electrodes that are connected to a high voltage pulse generator inside the apparatus featuring electronic communication. The machine has the capability to program different process parameters and their results can then be stored.

Food Valley Award winner 2011 Nutri-Pulse e-Cooker, IXL Netherlands

This sounds overly technical – but the process for users is fairly straightforward. Users start by placing the food in one of the baskets along with a liquid sauce that acts as an energy transferring medium. They can then select a cooking strategy based on the type of food they’re cooking from the program on the tablet. The eCooker then cooks the food using electrical pulses, evenly heating the contents without destroying taste or nutrition. Once the required temperature is reached, the unit automatically turns off to save energy. And, as it turns out, cooking via electrical pulses is pretty quick.

The result is a healthy, hot meal using low temperatures cooked in just a short period of time.

To learn more about IXL Netherlands, visit http://www.e-cooker.eu/

Use this link to get 25% off to the Smart Kitchen Summit & see the startups in action!

Move Over Coffee Pot, Chime Is The Keurig For Chai

Coffee gets all the glory – the fancy machines, the social media memes, the cute mugs. But outside the U.S., different forms of tea are even more popular than coffee. First created in India, chai tea is renowned for its unique, spice-based flavor and has a cult-following of devotees across the globe. The team at Camellia Labs believe that the chai tea latte is just as special as a cup of coffee and deserves its own unique experience and they inveted Chime, the first authentic chai tea brewer to create just that.

INTRODUCING CHIME - AUTHENTIC CHAI IN 3 MINUTES!

Like a Keurig or similar cup-based brewing machine, Chime is a single touch brewer. Chime simmers milk for the beverage while combining whole tea and spices in a brewing chamber. When the two are ready, the milk and steeped tea come together for the ultimate chai tea. The machine uses recyclable capsules called Chime Caps that are filled with Indian tea, similar to K-Cups. The current flavor lineup includes black tea, cardamom, ginger, cardamom ginger, and masala.

Chime lets users tweak the temperature, strength and milk content of the beverage to further customize their chai tea latte. The system adapts to a user’s chosen preferences and remembers for the next cup. With Chime, Camellia Labs is looking to increase the chai market presence and make chai tea more accessible to people who are currently unfamiliar with the drink to create a whole new wave of fans of the unique beverage.

To learn more about Camellia Labs and Chime, visit http://brewchime.com/

The Smart Kitchen Summit Startup Showcase provides a platform for exciting startups, inventors, culinary makers and cutting-edge product companies to showcase what they are working on and let others experience it firsthand. Now in its third year, the Startup Showcase + PitchFest take place during SKS on October 10-11, 2017 in Seattle and is sponsored by the leading maker of soups and simple meals, beverages, snacks and packaged fresh foods, Campbell Soup Company. Campbell’s will provide a $10,000 cash prize to the winner, announced at live at SKS

Use this link to get 25% off to the Smart Kitchen Summit & see the startups in action!

Bubble Lab Wants Robots To Brew, Pour & Serve You Coffee

The Smart Kitchen Summit Startup Showcase provides a platform for exciting startups, inventors, culinary makers and cutting-edge product companies to showcase what they are working on and let others experience it firsthand. Now in its third year, the Startup Showcase + PitchFest take place during SKS on October 10-11, 2017 in Seattle and is sponsored by the leading maker of soups and simple meals, beverages, snacks and packaged fresh foods, Campbell Soup Company. Campbell’s will provide a $10,000 cash prize to the winner, announced at live at SKS.

Imagine your Starbucks coffee one day being served to you by a robot – that’s the vision that Beijing based Bubble Labs had when they created the Drip barista robot. Drip is a precision engineered fully self-functioning mechanical arm that can brew, pour and serve coffee all while maintaining product consistency. It mimics the movement of a human performing every piece of the coffee brewing process.  Drip first wets the filter and warms the server. Then, it distributes the coffee cups, pours the coffee and cleans up the space, while wiping down the counter, and even discarding the filter offering a complete coffee creation experience. Every detail is considered – down to the ability to create recipes and customize parameters that Drip then utilizes to create product that is consistent.

Robotic barista making hand drip coffee by Bubble Lab

Busy café owners often run into the issue of creating consistent, quality-made product for mass quantities of coffee, while also maintaining a level of cleanliness in their establishment. Drip aims to enhance the experience of café-goers while also streamlining and simplifying operations for managers. Drip also gives baristas back their time, freeing them up to create different kinds of coffee drinks rather than wasting time on the same product. For example, Drip could be calibrated to only create black coffee so baristas in a shop are able to create lattes adorned with eye-catching designs that may be more time consuming.

Although the Drip arm is set to work for coffee making now, Bubble Labs have shared that additional robots for varying scenarios are also in the product pipeline. Robot taco makers, anyone?

Learn more about Bubble Lab at http://www.bubblelab.com/

Use this link to get 25% off to the Smart Kitchen Summit & see the startups in action!

Chefling Is The Smart Kitchen Personal Assistant You Never Knew You Needed

The Smart Kitchen Summit Startup Showcase provides a platform for exciting startups, inventors, culinary makers and cutting-edge product companies to showcase what they are working on and let others experience it firsthand. Now in its third year, the Startup Showcase + PitchFest take place during SKS on October 10-11, 2017 in Seattle and is sponsored by the leading maker of soups and simple meals, beverages, snacks and packaged fresh foods, Campbell Soup Company. Campbell’s will provide a $10,000 cash prize to the winner, announced at live at SKS.

Created in 2016 by a group of Northwestern University grads, the Chefling app was designed to be the ultimate smart kitchen assistant. The app, available on both Android and iPhone aims to resemble life spent in the kitchen of an average family and comes with three main features: a home inventory management system that syncs across devices, a colorful shopping list and a smart cookbook that suggests recipes based on available ingredients.

The home inventory management system monitors what a user buys and then keeps an eye on freshness levels, based on purchases. It also syncs across every family member’s device so any quick trips to the grocery store are simplified. The shopping list feature allows users to organize and create a list that is not only easy to browse, but easy to share. The cookbook feature browses a user’s inventory using an algorithm that calculates recipe matches based on what is in the pantry.

Chefling also has Amazon Echo and Google Home skills so users can operate the app hands-free through voice control.

Chefling’s long-term goal is to bring the platform outside of the phone and into smart fridges, as well as incorporating advanced A.I. elements and image recognition technology to create an assistant that is truly integrated with the home kitchen.

Learn more about Chefling at http://www.chefling.net/.

Use this link to get 25% off to the Smart Kitchen Summit & see the startups in action!

Toast Wants To Make Going Out To Dinner Better For Everyone – Even The Servers

Steve Fredette, Aman Narang and Jonathan Grimm’s venture into entrepreneurship first began while waiting for their drinks in their favorite after-work bar. The wait seemed never-ending and the three engineers decided among themselves that there had to a be a way to improve the customer experience in bars and restaurants. MIT graduates and naturally gifted tinkerers, they began to imagine all the ways they could potentially improve the dining out experience by removing common pain points, like splitting checks or updating menus. From there, Toast was born.

Toast is a full-service, cloud-based, point-of-sale system created for the restaurant industry. It streamlines every element of running a successful restaurant – front-of-house, back-of-house, online orders, loyalty programs – and syncs them for easy access and quick changes. Toast provides real-time data, across multiple locations, to zero in on what’s working and what’s not, so owners can pivot when needed. In addition to their platform, Toast offers hardware that easily integrates their solution into a variety of terminals or tablets.

“In a world where consumers expect on-demand everything – television, meal delivery, car rides – businesses cannot afford to be slow,” says co-founder and president, Steve Fredette. “Toast brings efficiency, convenience and an exceptional customer experience to the restaurant industry at a time when the demands are higher than ever.”

Addressing the unique challenges only found in the restaurant industry is part of Toast’s service model. “Every member of the Toast team, no matter what their area of focus, has some level of restaurant experience on their resume. Toast is designed for restaurants, by people who know, love and have worked in restaurants,” says Steve. This attention to detail is found in every aspect of the platform’s user experience – from their customizable POS interfaces that include table setup, menu setup and kitchen workflow, to real-time POS customization like adding tickets directly to a kitchen’s display screen to reduce back and forth time from servers, to post-service reporting that dial down on every aspect of the restaurant’s sales and efficiencies. Toast brings the power of data analytics and insights to restaurant ownership and management to allow for more streamlined operations and better customer experiences.

When restaurant patrons can air their grievances as they wait for the check via Yelp or Facebook, a positive experience is more necessary than ever before. By simplifying and optimizing all operations, owners can transform their teams into nimble guest experience gurus. This allows the focus to transfer back to the diner, resulting in a more attentive server, shorter wait times and splitting checks with ease.

“Restaurants tend to function in a state of organized chaos,” says Steve. “From front-of-house to back-of-house, dining in to take out, and customer service to the customer experience, every interaction is interconnected. With Toast, we want to build on that by tapping into the restaurant supply chain with real-time, data-driven insights to reduce inefficiencies, improve interactions and elevate the guest experience.”

So what’s next for Toast? The company has already raised $101M in Series C funding, with plans to hire 1,000 employees by 2018 and were just named one of the world’s top cloud companies in the Forbes Cloud 100. The Toast leadership team is also looking beyond their current model for ways to further customize and curate the restaurant going experience.

“Toast is thinking bigger (and more conveniently) when it comes to food, and is already playing with ideas that will generate more speed and personalization from consumers’ favorite restaurants, bars and food trucks,” Steve adds. “Toast knows what is possible and is building a platform that can get there.”

At Smart Kitchen Summit, Steve Fredette will speak on how restaurants can leverage technology in the front and back of house along with other industry leaders in the Day 1 breakout session Tech Please: How Restaurants Can Leverage Technology In Front & Back Of House. Don’t miss Steve and check out the full list of speakers and register for the Summit, using code TOAST to get 25% off ticket prices.

The Smart Kitchen Summit is the first event to tackle the future of food, cooking and the kitchen with leaders across food, tech, commerce, design, delivery and appliances. This series will highlight panelists and partners for the 2017 event, being held on October 10-11 at Benaroya Hall in Seattle.

Carley Knobloch Wants Tech In The Kitchen To Be More Accessible

With the emerging popularity of smart home devices across every room of the home and the popularity of voice control devices like Amazon Echo and Google Home leading adoption, the media has become saturated with experts looking to educate consumers on how to use tech in their own homes. Of all the smart home gurus, Carley Knobloch might be one of the most well-known because of her practical, education-oriented approach and tone. Carley’s mission is to help people improve their relationship with technology and sift through the buzzwords to form their own opinions on connected living – one tap or swipe at a time.

Carley’s media legacy began with her blog, a carefully curated resource filled with product reviews, news and guides. The site’s aesthetic mirrors Carley’s approach to talking tech – simple, sleek and modern. The technology is not at the forefront but rather, a tool to help tell a greater story on how connected living can look. It’s not wires and bulky black boxes, but instead functional, stylish smart home living products and accessories that make life just a little bit easier.

In addition to her blog and social media pages, Carley is a regular contributor to the Today Show and CNN, and is the Technology consultant and host for HGTV’s annual smart home. Carley sees her role as specifically to educate those new to smart tech. “I’m helping the later-adopters and the smart-curious folks out there unpack what’s going on in this exciting space, and how it can improve their lives now, and in the future,” she says. For Carley, speaking to this audience is a unique position to

“I’m helping the later-adopters and the smart-curious folks out there unpack what’s going on in this exciting space, and how it can improve their lives now, and in the future,” she says. For Carley, speaking to an audience of mostly homeowners (with a heavily female audience) every day that is excited about the smart home and what it can do means helping them get started with products that make sense and are priced right. They want to buy products that are addressing their needs and solving real problems.

“When I started my blog and media career, there weren’t a lot of women— who run a home, a family and a business—  talking about technology. Most tech experts were speaking to the early-adopters and enthusiasts,” says Carley. “I set out to create an approachable conversation about tech in the home and the kitchen that everyday people could relate to: What’s going on? How does it affect me? Is it time to adopt? Will I be able to use it?”

Creating this open dialogue with her followers has helped Carley steer the industry conversation and better understand the issues that are directly impacting the adoption rate of smart home technology – in or outside of the kitchen. Many companies and manufacturers are taking a “rapid fire” approach to developing technology, without focusing on the end-user experience or adaptation.

“I think that ultimately, consumers are looking for the right price, and the right application: a layer of technology that will make their lives easier, not harder,” says Carley. “They are eager to figure out what technology is right for them in the kitchen and beyond— many are wary because the industry to date has been like the wild west with everyone firing products into the market that may not be ready or require a big learning curve.”

So where does Carley see the smart home conversation heading for product developers and manufacturers? “Manufacturers should be holding themselves to high standards, as early ambassadors for this product vertical,” she explains. “They have to get more right than they do wrong, or it will be hard to change consumer’s minds later.”

Now in her second year at Smart Kitchen Summit, Carley wants to help tackle conversations on how the IoT is affecting big brands across the appliance industry and will lead a fireside chat with Kenmore/Sears and GE leadership charged with this very task.

Don’t miss Carley at the 2017 Smart Kitchen Summit. Check out the full list of speakers and register for the Summit, using code HGTV to get 25% off ticket prices.

The Smart Kitchen Summit is the first event to tackle the future of food, cooking and the kitchen with leaders across food, tech, commerce, design, delivery and appliances. This series will highlight panelists and partners for the 2017 event, being held on October 10-11 at Benaroya Hall in Seattle.

SideChef Plans To Be The Engine Behind Sharp’s Smart Kitchen Appliances

SideChef began in 2013 with a mission to make cooking easy and fun and to take the guesswork and heavy reading out of recipes. Over time, the recipe app startup has evolved to think of itself as a platform for the connected kitchen and today announced a partnership with electronics and appliance giant Sharp at the Smart Kitchen Summit in Japan.

SideChef will now be the smart software behind Sharp’s connected appliance lineup, powering the mobile app and recipe content to provide guided cooking tools when using the brand’s products. The first internet-enabled appliance from Sharp that will include SideChef’s intelligence is the Sharp SuperSteam+ Convection Oven, an oven that includes a new way to grill, brown and even roast foods using super heated steam.

This announcement builds out SideChef’s vision of being the de facto smart kitchen platform, giving manufacturers software that can bridge the experience and control of different kitchen devices and engage users to go beyond basic connectivity. The Sharp “powered by SideChef” app will include over 5000 machine ready recipes with built-in control for the integrated appliances. The recipes give users a guided cooking experience, automatically setting timers, playing educational videos or suggesting helpful tips based on the ingredients, time of day, season or location.

SideChef’s CEO and founder Kevin Yu says that the company will also help Sharp build an engaged user community and drive relevant content – which is a core strength of SideChef’s business. But Yu hopes to help manufacturers think differently about their IoT strategies and move past connectivity as the end goal.

“We’re not just here to connect things or teach people how to cook. That’s a great goal, but that’s 1.0. We want to help manufacturers see how they can create real engagement and monetization from these platforms,” commented Yu in an interview with The Spoon.

It’s not a surprise that SideChef is thinking beyond the intelligence inside the app to the user experience and engagement. Yu’s background is in game design and development, so he’s often thinking about the gameification of activities in the kitchen.

“The goal is to get the user engaged and willing to spend more money in micro transactions. This is what we think of as modern monetization for the smart kitchen,” he adds.

Sharp is one of a handful of appliance manufacturers looking at third party companies to connect and serve as the content partner behind their connected appliances. Earlier this year smart kitchen startup Drop announced an integration partnership with GE and later Bosch and Innit, a kitchen platform and data company also explored work with Whirlpool in the past.

“Sharp was looking for ways to combine convenience with perfect cooking results from our next generation of smart connected home appliances,” Jim Sanduski, President of Sharp Home Electronics Company of America said in a prepared statement.  “SideChef already offers an award winning mobile culinary platform so partnering with them to integrate cooking operation and control was an easy decision.”

The company plans to roll out its internet-connected line of products starting with the SuperSteam wall oven along with the Sharp app powered by SideChef in fall 2018.

SideChef and Sharp announced their partnership at the first-ever Smart Kitchen Summit in Japan. To see Kevin Yu and others speak at the 2017 Smart Kitchen Summit in Seattle in October, use code SPOON for 25% off tickets.

Delivery Platform DoorDash Hires Marble’s Robot Drivers For Food Delivery

If you live in San Francisco and order from DoorDash, you might find a friendly Marble robot on your front door step the next time you get takeout. Today DoorDash announced it would be using autonomous ground-delivery robots made by Marble, a robotics startup, for a food delivery pilot program in select San Francisco neighborhoods.

Marble was founded in 2015 by robotics enthusiasts Matt Delaney, Jason Calaiaro, Kevin Peterson while they attended Carnegie Mellon and describes themselves as a “scrappy robotics startup” working to build autonomous urban delivery robots. Scrappy as they might be, DoorDash is the second delivery pilot they’ve announced this year, partnering in April with Yelp’s Eat24.

The companies report that the pilot will allow them to “explore how to best optimize last-mile deliveries” and the first restaurant to take part in the robot delivery program fast food chain Jack in the Box. They made a quick video to show off Marble robots toting its first DoorDash deliveries in the North Beach neighborhoods of San Francisco.

Jack in the Box | Robot Delivery

The revenue model for robotics companies to partner with retail or food delivery services hasn’t been fully divulged; a spokesperson did say that Marble is being compensated for the work done in the pilot but declined to elaborate. However, delivery fees for a robot driver versus a human are the same for DoorDash customers. Marble said it didn’t have any hard data about how robot drivers create cost savings for delivery companies but that it hoped to share that information down the road.

Food delivery is an increasingly crowded space; aside from traditional restaurant delivery, “new delivery models” – companies like DoorDash, GrubHub and Eat24 – is expected to be a $20 billion market by 2025 according to a McKinsey report. In order to create efficiencies and differentiate, companies are looking to innovations like robot delivery drivers to stay ahead. And Marble isn’t the only game in sidewalk robotic delivery – former founders of Skype launched autonomous robotics startup Starship and received a $17 milllion investment earlier this year from carmarker Daimler Benz.

Starship had also announced a pilot in Redwood City, CA with DoorDash earlier this year. When asked if this program was designed to replace the competitive pilot, DoorDash responded that it was “…continuing the existing pilot with Starship in Redwood City, Washington DC, San Carlos and Sunnyvale. The Marble partnership adds to that relationship, allowing DoorDash to bring robot deliveries to San Francisco while also testing a new type of form factor and technology.”

Meanwhile, if you happen to see a Marble delivery robot on the sidewalk, you’ll probably see a human chaperone with it to answer questions and assist with interactions. At times when there isn’t a person nearby, Marble says they have remote operators ready to assist with issues and so far, they haven’t encountered any problems in the neighborhoods they’re serving.

Making Traditional Food Prep Smarter With Vitamix

Vitamix is a household name is the kitchen; in 1949, founder William G. Barnard demonstrated the Vitamix blender in the first U.S. infomercial in the early days of television. Since then, Vitamix has worked to uphold William’s mission, developing kitchen food preparation tools as technology continues to mature and provide new capabilities. As COO, much of Tony Ciepiel’s work is thinking about how the market is evolving and how Vitamix can lead in bringing new technology to traditional kitchen prep devices like the Vitamix Ascent Series.

The company’s smart blender series builds on the traditional Vitamix blender and adds emerging technology and capabilities such as built-in timers and wireless connectivity. “As we began designing and planning for the launch of the Ascent Series, we asked ourselves how we might add value for our customers through intuitive design and maximum ease of use,” said Ciepiel. “Among other things, that line of thought drove us to incorporate Near Field Communication (NFC) technology into the containers for our Ascent Series blenders.”

Through NFC, the blender can detect what size container has been placed onto the base and will change blending program parameters accordingly. Those parameters include ramp-up times and blade speeds as well as the overall length of a blending program. “That was really a breakthrough moment that brought us to the forefront of intelligent technology within the blending space. We intend to remain there.”

In addition to the Ascent Series product, Vitamix has plans to launch an app that gives customers control over their blenders and what they can make. The app includes the ability to design blending programs that can then be uploaded to the blender to provide users the ability to customize programs to meet their needs. The app pairs those programs with recipes that go directly to the blender. Vitamix allows users to access those recipes but also works with their Perfect Blend Smart Scale, to let the user know exactly – down to a fraction of an ounce – how much of each ingredient to load into the blender container, and can scale the recipe to desired volume or calorie count.

“When you combine that level of automation, product intelligence and connectivity, you impart the expertise of professional chefs to the novice user, which in turn creates unparalleled joy of use and a real feeling of accomplishment,” said Ciepiel of the app.

But how are consumers reacting to this kind of technology? Tony sees it as both an opportunity and a challenge. “One of the interesting challenges we face as an industry is giving consumers a compelling reason to invest their time and money into learning how to integrate “Internet of Things” features into their daily lives,” said Ciepiel. “We’re in a unique position to evolve a product that people already love for its convenience and reliability…. we need to help our customers understand why we’re integrating new, connected technology into our products, and why it’s more than worth their time to come along for the journey.”

Vitamix recognizes that a unique approach is needed when addressing the future of kitchen technology and communicating its benefits. Through in-depth research, they’ve been able to gain a better grasp on the voice of their customer and from that research, are working to develop products that can be woven seamlessly into customers lives.

“It’s not just creating technology for the sake of technology, but rather creating products that directly fulfill what customers want and help them achieve their personal goals, whatever those may be. This will inevitably include more connected, high-tech products in the kitchen as time goes by,” Ciepiel acknowledged. “The industry needs to create and agree upon technical communication standards sooner rather than later.”

The Smart Kitchen Summit is the first event to tackle the future of food, cooking and the kitchen with leaders across food, tech, commerce, design, delivery and appliances. This series will highlight panelists and partners for the 2017 event, being held on October 10-11 at Benaroya Hall in Seattle.

Don’t miss Tony Ciepiel of Vitamix at the 2017 Smart Kitchen Summit. Check out the full list of speakers and register for the Summit, using code VITAMIX to get 25% off ticket prices.

Klove Offers Low-Cost Entry Point To The Smart Kitchen

The current state of the smart kitchen is still, well, kind of expensive. And that’s ok – markets in their early days often produce products with high price tags as demand is still being developed and solutions still being realized. Intelligent ovens, smart fridges, connected tea infusers – it all sounds like an amazing eutopia of high tech deliciousness. But these solutions aren’t making cooking easier for the masses – at least not yet. But some areas of the smart kitchen are starting to produce at mainstream prices – most specifically in the sous vide space with sub $100 machines available at big box retailers like Target.

And then there are startups like Klove. The concept behind the Klove stove top knob is pretty cool – it’s a retrofit device that replaces your dumb stove knobs and adds a pretty crazy amount of intelligence into a little form factor.

The Klove smart knob acts as an entry-level guided cooking system – assessing the state of heat on whatever dish you’re preparing and letting you know when to adjust and when you can walk away. Klove comes with a host of recipes to start with, so you don’t have to guess what to cook when you get started.

Klove -Just Talk and cook

With a companion app (because of course) and Google Home / Amazon Echo compatibility, the Klove smart knob also has some machine learning baked in and will adjust recipes based on your preferences over time. Sure it might say to scramble eggs for 5-7 minutes, but maybe you like yours runny. The knob will learn that over time and adjust its alerts accordingly. Like a little digital sous chef who remembers your favorite type of pancake. (Chocolate chip. It’s always chocolate chip.)

There’s even a safety feature built into the device. Try to leave home with your stove on – the Klove app will alert you before you get out the door, ending the days of wondering “did I leave my stove on?” when you get to work. It will also alert you if you walk away from the stove for a minute or two and are needed to turn something up or down. If you’ve ever cooked something too long – or had boiled water overflow and spill onto the stove top, you’ll probably find this feature helpful.

The best part is that Klove is only $29. Well, for now – it’s available for pre-order on Indiegogo for $29 which is technically a price drop from the company’s first unsuccessful crowd funding campaign. But there seems to be some momentum this time around and the sub $40 price point is pretty attractive. If voice control is driving more interest in connected tech in the home, retrofit devices like Klove can help consumers see the value of technology to assist them in cooking better and easier at home.

Klove has had some momentum recently, having raised $250k from investors in a SEED round of funding and being named “The Next Big Thing” in food tech via the Nestle “Next Big Thing” startup competition in London. Klove isn’t the first company to create a retrofit smart knob for stoves – Meld introduced its smart knob in 2015 and went a step further than Klove to be able to automatically control the temperature during cooking as opposed to notifying someone to turn the dial up or down when ready. Meld ended up cancelling its Kickstarter when it was acquired by Meyer Corp (owner of guided cooking brand Hestan Cue) after the campaign was successfully funded. Hestan took the learning and knowledge behind the Meld knob and used it to build its current guided cooking platform – though the actual knob form factor never resurfaced.

Klove has about 4 weeks left to raise the initial $20k to get started on development – and with a few smart knob competitors in the space, it will be interesting to see how they do. For now, you can grab a Klove for $29 as an early bird backer and expect to see the smart knob right around Christmas.