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July 8, 2024

Podcast: How is Kraft Heinz Preparing for the Future of Food?

For most Americans, Kraft and Heinz products – Oscar Mayer hot dogs, Kraft cheese, Velveeta, and Jell-O – have been in our cupboards and fridges for as long as we can remember.

But being a big company today doesn’t always ensure success in perpetuity. The world around us – due to climate change, new retail consumer touch points and emerging technology – is changing more quickly than ever. Add in rapidly shifting consumer tastes in our social media-saturated lives, and a company like Kraft Heinz has to transform itself to meet this constantly evolving market.

To hear how Kraft Heinz is meeting the challenge of adapting new technologies and reimagining its product lineup, I caught up recently on an episode of The Spoon podcast with the company’s President of R&D for North America, Robert Scott. Scott, a long-time exec with stints at Coca-Cola and Abbott before he took over R&D for Kraft Heinz, had lots of opinions about how to ensure Kraft Heinz adapts to a changing world.

As a part of this conversation, Robert talks about:

  • The company’s partnership with NotCo and how they are using the Giuseppe AI to develop new plant-based products.
  • How he sees AI becoming interwoven into the company’s product development cycles
  • Why they created a Freestyle-like machine for custom condiments called the Heinz Remix
  • The idea behind the 360Crisp and innovating our food products and how they cook in our kitchens
  • How Robert would advise aspiring food scientist to pursue a career path in food research and development
  • And much more!

You can listen in to our conversation on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or just clicking play below.

If you’d like to dive deep into how AI is changing food at places like Kraft Heinz, you’ll want to make sure to be at the Food AI Summit on September 25th in Berkeley, CA.

July 2, 2024

Samsung’s 2024 Family Hub Gets Enhanced Food Recognition Features With Latest Update

This past week, Samsung announced they were updating software for those with a Family Hub fridge.

The update has a bunch of new features, many of which were announced at CES in January, but the most interesting one is what looks to be its much-improved food recognition capability. The new computer vision-powered features were are specific to the latest edition to the Family Hub line, the official name of which is the incredibly long Samsung Bespoke 4-Door Flex Refrigerators with AI Family Hub+ and AI Vision Inside.

According to the Samsung release, the latest update will allow the 2024 Family Hub to recognize more than 33 food items, including fruits and vegetables. Samsung notes in the release’s small print that they will continue to expand the number of items the system can recognize and that if the item is blocked by your hand, it will be listed as “unrecognizable.” The new update will also recommend recipes based on what you have on hand, including “thousands of recipes from the Samsung Food community.”

The update also includes enabling ‘Samsung Tap View, ‘ which mirrors content from Samsung Galaxy phones, such as photos or videos, as well as recipes you find on your phone.

On one hand, we have to hand it to Samsung. They’ve been at the smart fridge thing for a decade, and they’ve evolved the fridge from being primarily a fridge with a big monitor to stream music and video to one that looks like it’s finally getting smart inside with the camera and update.

As is always the case with Samsung, the company has so many platforms it can get confusing. One example is that the company made a big to-do almost a year ago when they announced Samsung Food, which is the evolution and Samsung-ification of the Whisk app. Samsung Food essentially looks to be the consumer electronics giant’s central recipe and food planning app, yet there’s just one passing mention of it in this latest update.

My guess is that in 2025, the integration between Samsung Food and Family Hub will be much farther along, and we may ultimately see the Samsung Food and Family Hub food and recipe management merged under one monolithic Samsung food and fridge app.

June 29, 2024

Scoop: Kalanick’s Latest Idea for Disrupting Food May Be No-Fee Bulk Food Delivery & Automated Pick-Up Kiosks

When Travis Kalanick showed up at the Food on Demand conference this past May, technology and restaurant industry insiders could hardly believe it.

After all, the Uber cofounder had gained an almost Howard Hughes-like reputation for secrecy over the past decade, saying nary a word publicly over the years while journalists and Internet sleuths searched for digital breadcrumbs about what exactly he was up to with CloudKitchens, a business under which he had quietly built the biggest network of dark kitchen/ghost kitchen facilities in the country.

But unlike the eccentric aerospace and film magnate who spent his days toggling between locking himself away in screening rooms and crashing planes, Kalanick made clear on stage in Las Vegas last month that he’s been busy building a new business empire focused on reimagining the world of restaurants and food delivery.

“Can you do to the kitchen what Uber did to the car?” he asked. From there, Kalanick painted a vision of how the companies he’d assembled under his City Storage Systems holding company would do things differently. He suggested the sum total of his collected companies – such as shared/dark kitchens (CloudKitchens), Point of Sale software (Otter), and restaurant automation (Lab37) – could power a more efficient way of doing business than the disjointed, expensive, and fee-ridden state the restaurant and food delivery business had evolved into over the past decade.

It was during his talk that Kalanick talked up the idea of an ‘Intenet Food Court,’ where customers could get a hyper-personalized experience and order any type of food within 15 minutes. To realize that vision, Kalanick said food production and logistics would need to be automated, and his company was building the necessary infrastructure under City Storage Systems to deliver that.

“We paint where this all goes, but there’s a road to get there and we call it infrastructure for better food,” he continued. “That’s the mission of my company.”

Kalanick’s refererence to the concept of an Internet or digital food court was not the first signal from him or his company about the concept. In fact, in 2020, the company launched what it described as an Internet food court in the LA market, where it would aggregate all the food operators in the Koreatown facility and offer multi-tenant ordering. They even had a website URL, Internetfoodcourt.co. However, as of April 2020, the site had gone dead, and CloudKitchens had scrubbed its Internet presence of the term.

But then, in March of this year, the company started talking digital food courts again. That month, it posted a story on its blog about the launch of a Picnic-branded digital food court platform in Chicago. The location, which was formerly called Avondale Food Pickup before it was renamed Picnic, featured what the post described as a new digital platform that would enable a customer to order food on a new website (picnicfood.com) or in person via a kiosk or a human worker and then they would be able to pick up the food via a pick-up locker.

The pickup kiosk can be seen below:

The website for this Picnic shows you can ask for delivery or pickup, and currently the only location for pickup is the Chicago address in Avondale, and a Google search seems to indicate this was the first and only time Kalanick’s company had used the Picnic branding and the concept of a digital food hall since 2020.

And then earlier this week, what appears to be another version of the same Picnic company (same logo, different website) showed up on Linkedin and talked up a new platform concept in the Los Angeles market. The pitch? A ‘digital food hall’ and fee-free multi-brand delivery of food to different places of business or residential multi-family units. The concept, which is explained in the video below, is essentially bulk orders to various office buildings, schools, or wherever hungry people convene together each day.

According to the explainer video and the website, a Picnic “activation” starts with a location manager or employee/resident applying to be a Picnic delivery location. Once accepted, Picnic will put what it describes as a Picnic “shelf” at the location where the different individual meals are placed during a delivery.

This new Picnic doesn’t state anywhere on its website or on Linkedin that it’s a part of City Storage Systems’ network. The website‘s FAQ describes the company as a product of coworkers in the California market “who realized that it’s nearly impossible to find consistent lunch options that have variety,” and when The Spoon reached someone via a number found on the company’s Linkedin page, the person told us the company was not associated with CloudKitchens or City Storage Systems.

But we are confident it is for a couple of obvious reasons: Not only does it use the same logo as the CloudKitchens Picnic offering in Chicago, but the location’s address at 777 S Figueroa in Los Angeles is listed in multiple locations as being the same address as City Storage Systems.

Which, of course, raises all sorts of questions. For example, is this version of Picnic – a platform for bulk-ordered delivery of food to places of work and multi-family living – going to be the next big idea from Kalanick’s company? And does this mean the company is building out its own delivery network? And will Kalanick & Co roll out the digital food court and automated pick-up kiosks (such as that in Picnic Chicago) to its other ghost kitchen locations across the country?

A new delivery network would certainly be an interesting move for a founder who is largely responsible for not only reshaping personalized transportation with Uber and building the infrastructure for one of the biggest third party meal delivery companies in UberEats.

Finally, it also needs to be asked: Why Picnic? There are already a couple other Picnics in the food tech space, including Picnic in Seattle which makes pizza robots, and the grocery tech startup named Picnic out of The Netherlands. It seems like a curious move, especially since the US Trademark office awarded a trademark to the Seattle-based Picnic (their corporate name is Picnic Works) to use the term Picnic.

If you have any insights or leads on what else City Storage Systems is planning to do with its Picnic platform (either the centralized pickup Internet food hall concept or the bulk-delivery concept), drop us a line.

June 27, 2024

The Food AI Weekly Bulletin: Will AI Fakery Make Restaurant Reviews a Thing of the Past?

Welcome to the Food AI Weekly Bulletin, our new weekly wrapup that highlights important happenings at the intersection of AI and food.

Nowadays, there’s a lot of noise around how AI is changing food, so we decided to create a weekly brief to bring you what’s important, decipher through all the noise, and deliver actionable insights. If you’d like to sign up for our weekly Food AI Weekly, you can do so here.

Highlights

Is AI Ruining Restaurant Reviews? A new study shows people cannot distinguish between real and AI-generated reviews.

AI Food Art Is Everywhere (And It’s Not Great for Freelancers) Generative AI tools like Midjourney and DALL-E are revolutionizing food imagery, but what does this mean for freelancers and creatives who traditionally provided these services?

First, Al Michaels. Next, How About an AI-powered Anthony Bourdain? The news of Al Michaels allowing AI to replicate his voice has almost everyone freaking out, but what does it mean for the future of AI-generated avatars of famous food personalities?

Swallowing A Robot. Endiatx has developed the Pillbot, a tiny robot that can be swallowed to explore the gastrointestinal tract, potentially revolutionizing diagnostics and personalized nutrition.

Food & Nutrition Centric LLMs Could Be an Investible Opportunity. VCs see potential in industry-specific AI models, particularly in the domains of biology, chemistry, and materials, as these specialized LLMs could offer unique investment opportunities.

Brightseed’s Forager AI Finds Novel Bioactives. Cranberry giant Ocean Spray teams up with Brightseed to uncover new bioactive compounds in cranberries.

Our Favorite AI Food Art of the Week. We’ll be making this a regular feature. If you’d like your art featured, submit it on our Spoon slack. 

We’re going to be exploring all of this at our Food AI Summit in September. Join us won’t you? Super Early Bird pricing expires at the end of this month.

Is AI Ruining Restaurant Reviews?

What happens when humans can’t tell real restaurant reviews from fake ones? The restaurant industry has begun asking itself this question as a tidal wave of fake AI reviews floods online sites.

According to Yale professor Balazs Kovacs, humans are already losing their ability to discern the real from the fake. Kovacs recently unveiled the results of a study demonstrating AI’s ability to mimic human-written restaurant reviews convincingly. For his test, Kovacs fed Yelp reviews into GPT-4 and then asked a panel of human test subjects whether they could tell the difference. At first, the results generated by GPT-4 were too perfect, so Kovacs then prompted GPT-4 to insert “

While this raises obvious concerns about the authenticity of online reviews and the trustworthiness of consumer-generated content, it shouldn’t be surprising. Figure 01’s human-like speech tics were creepy, but mostly because of how human its awkward conversation seemed. With typos and sub-par grammar—in other words, what we see every day on social media—it makes sense that AI-generated reviews seemed more human.

One potential workaround to this problem of AI-generated reviews is using AI to detect and notify us what fake content is, but early tests show that even AI can’t tell what is real and what is fake. Another suggestion is to require reviewers to have purchased a product to review it (similar to having Amazon labels whose reviews are from verified purchasers) and apply it to restaurants. My guess is that this will be the best (and potentially last) line of defense against the coming tidal wave of AI reviews.

AI Food Art Is Everywhere (And It’s Not Great for Freelancers)

One early application of generative AI, as it applies to food, is the creation of images. Midjourney, DALL-E, and other tools allow us to create instant realistic images with a few sentences. As a result, we’ve seen CPGs, food tech software companies, and restaurant tech startups jump on the generative art trend.

While that isn’t necessarily good news for actual artists (this WSJ article is a must-read about the impact of AI on freelancers and creatives), these tools have democratized professional-ish like photos and art for folks in the same way Canva made professional-style graphics and presentations available to anyone.

One company that’s benefitted significantly is Innit. The company, which focused in its early life on hiring celebrity chefs like Tyler Florence and spending tens of thousands on photo shoots for a recipe, is now whipping them instantly with generative AI for its Innit FoodLM.

While most Internet-savvy marketing types at food brands, restaurants, and other food-related businesses have at least learned to dabble in generative AI prompt engineering, that hasn’t stopped some from trying to create a business out of it. Lunchbox created an AI food image generator utilizing DALL-E as the underlying LLM over a year ago (the website has since gone dark), and just this week I got pitched on a new AI-powered food generator that wants to charge for its service (which is essentially a user interface to manage prompt engineering for an underlying LLM (which most likely is Midjourney or GPT-4). There’s likely a small lifespan for these types of services, but my guess is most marketing folks will learn to prompt engineers directly with popular image generators like Midjourney.

First, Al Michaels. Next, an AI-Powered Anthony Bourdain?

The Internet freaked out yesterday when news broke that Al Michaels has agreed to let an AI copy his voice, and rightly so. First off, it’s creepy. Second, this is the exact thing was the main reason the Hollywood writers and actors guilds kept striking for so long, so I’m guessing the Hollywood creative community isn’t exactly happy with Al. And finally, it goes to show you that if you throw enough money at us humans, the temptation to cave to the bots will be too much.

My guess is we’ll eventually see AI-generated avatars of famous chefs. All it would take is for the estate of Julia Child or Anthony Bourdain to get a good enough offer and it won’t be long before we hear (and maybe see) their avatars.

Swallowing A Robot

According to Venturebeat, Endiatx has developed a microscopic robot that can traverse your body and is equipped with cameras, sensors, and wireless communication capabilities. The robot, called Pillbot, allowing doctors to examine the gastrointestinal tract and be used both for diagnostic and therapeutic purposes.

The company’s CEO, Torrey Smith, has taken 43 of these Pillbots and swallowed one live on stage, which can be seen here. If this technology actually works (and those pills can be made smaller because, holy cow, that’s a literal big pill to swallow), it’s not hard to imagine these being used to dial in and optimize personalized nutrition regimens.

Food & Nutrition Centric LLMs Could Be an Investible Opportunity

Business Insider asked some VCs what they’re bored by when it comes to AI and what they’re excited about. Not surprisingly, they talked alot about how it will be hard for startups to break through in foundational large language models, where big players like Open AI and Google play. And like any good VC looking at an early market they talked up up picks and shovels

Even as investors shift their focus to promising AI infrastructure startups, there may still be some opportunities for new LLM startups to win, especially when they’re trained for specific industries, explained Kahini Shah, a principal at Obvious Ventures.

“We’re excited about what we call Generative Science at Obvious, i.e, large, multi-modal models trained in domains such as biology, chemistry, materials,” she said.

Brightseed’s Forager AI Finds Novel Bioactives

Brightseed, a company that uses AI to accelerate bioactive and food compound discovery, announced that it has (in partnership with Ocean Spray) used its Forager AI to uncover novel bioactive compounds in cranberries. Forager identified multiple bioactives, such as terpenes, which Brightseed believes hold significant potential for human health. These findings, based on in silico analyses, will undergo further clinical validation and will be presented at the American Society of Nutrition’s NUTRITION 2024 conference.

This acceleration effect of new health-positive compounds is another example of the AI acceleration effect I wrote about yesterday. Things are beginning to move exponentially faster at every stage of the food value chain, which over time means our basic understanding of the rules underpinning what we do (such as food product development) gives way to entirely new rules that are rewritten in large part by AI.

Our Favorite AI Food Image of the Week: Hungry Monkey

We like looking at AI-generated food art and figured we’d show you some of our favorites on a weekly basis. 

If you’d like to submit your AI-created food art (or if you’ve found one you think we should feature, drop the image and the source/attribution (preferably a link) on our Spoon Slack.

June 26, 2024

‘All The Rules Are Changing’: Why AI is Accelerating Change to Every Part of the Food Business (and Beyond)

This week, I attended the Fancy Food Show in New York City. It’s long been one of my favorite food conferences, mostly because I just love walking around and sampling all the great food. I mean, who wouldn’t?

While the fantastic food samples on the show floor are reason enough for me to get on a plane to NYC, the real reason I was there was to give a keynote talk on how AI is changing the food business.

Granted, the crowd at Fancy Food isn’t your typical Silicon Valley audience, the types that get excited about technology for its own sake. Instead, these are usually successful small to medium-sized businesses making anywhere from $1 million to $250 million annually by selling your favorite hot sauce or healthier crackers.

In other words, the good stuff.

Since these are food brands first and not technology companies, I kept my talk straightforward. I discussed how AI has long been used in the food business, how new forms of AI (particularly generative AI) are advancing rapidly, and how, over the next decade, every rule governing their business—from sales and supply chain to customer acquisition and product development—will change dramatically.

If you just rolled your eyes, I understand; I’ve long been skeptical of hyperbolic warnings about ‘disruption,’ and by now, most of us are tired of hearing how AI is a big deal. But that didn’t stop me because, despite all the talk, I still think most people underestimate the significant difference AI will make in our daily lives in the next decade. In other words, most of us are unprepared for how dramatically the rules governing business and everyday professional life will change.

This belief was reinforced last week when I caught up with Samantha Rose, a long-time consumer-product entrepreneur. She transitioned from being an editor at a Yale magazine and an award-winning poet to building a highly successful housewares startup, which she sold in 2021 to Pattern Brands. Since then, she started a third-party logistics and business services company and is now raising funds for a new venture that buys distressed consumer product brands to turn them around. And, somewhere along the way, she was featured in a Chase card commercial.

In short, Sam has mastered the modern rules of today’s business. Yet, when I asked her about AI, she said, “I wish I could take a year off to study and become an expert on AI because I feel like all the rules are changing.”

I thought if someone as savvy as Sam feels the need to go back to school on AI, what chance do the rest of us have?

After my talk, I led a panel on AI, where we delved deeper into how businesses may change and how small food business entrepreneurs should prepare.

One theme that emerged from the session is that growing food brands need to pay attention to how consumer buying behavior will be radically impacted by AI. Imagine a future where we have our own AI copilots telling us what to eat, where to get the best deals, and more. In a world where everyone is guided by an AI or multiple AIs, how will that change consumer behavior when it comes to buying food?

This is already starting to happen and will undoubtedly be widely adopted in a decade.

And then there’s the purposeful creation of AI-derived information sent to consumers with the intent of changing their buying behavior. We’re seeing it in restaurants as AI reviews flood review sites, and they’re already good enough that consumers can’t tell the difference.

As a publisher, I can’t help but think about how Google deemphasizing website search results and pushing their own AI-generated answers will impact not only my business but also the type of information consumers consume to steer their behavior.

Bottom line: Every direction we look, every industry and its associated value chains are changing faster than ever before. The rules are changing. Unfortunately, most of us can’t take the time to study and will all have to learn on the fly.

I’ll share the suggestions I made for these businesses at the Fancy Food Show in a follow-up post.

June 18, 2024

Is Food Waste Reduction About to Have Its ‘Nest Moment’?

When the Nest came out in 2011, it quickly became popular for its innovative design and its ability to allow users to track their energy usage more accurately. While the Ecobee thermostat is largely recognized as the first true smart thermostat, most would agree it was Nest—especially after Google acquired the company in 2014—that exposed a much broader swath of the population to the concept of using smart home technology to manage energy and reduce energy bills.

Nowadays, about one in six households has a smart thermostat, and using one to reduce energy bills is often listed at the top of home energy management and budget-saving tips.

Meanwhile, although most people recognize that food waste is also a waste of money, only a tiny fraction of US households use any innovative technology to avoid it. The main reason is that tracking food waste is difficult. Until recently, it required users to pull out a spreadsheet and make numerous estimations of how much food ended up in the waste bin.

But that may soon change, in part because those who helped build the Nest are now trying to bring the same type of management and tracking dashboards that helped users become more aware of how much money they could save by better managing their home heating and cooling. Mill, co-founded by Nest co-founder Matt Rogers and one of the thermostat company’s first hires, Harry Tannenbaum, helps users keep track of how much food they are keeping out of the waste bin. According to the company, this is helping them reduce waste and save money.

According to Mill, their device is resulting in changed consumer behavior. In a new report published today, Mill states that users of their device reduced the amount of food they throw out by 20% within a few months of using the food recycler.

From the report:

Mill aggregated millions of device days of data from April 2023 to May 2024 and found that the median Mill household added around 5.5 pounds of food scraps per household per week. Notably, the median amount of food scraps added to Mill decreased over time—by over 20% in the first four months—and then stabilized.

With the average US household wasting up to $1,900 in food annually, this translates to roughly $380 in savings over the course of a year. If you’re doing the math, that’s about three times the savings a household gets from using a Nest.

With such obvious bottom-line benefits, will users start embracing smarter food waste management tools? Possibly, but with a couple of caveats. While energy management is something that is easy to track via lower energy bills, the savings from food waste reduction are less direct and obvious to the consumer. It’s also more expensive to buy a Mill recycler, setting a home back a thousand dollars (or $30 a month if on a subscription plan). There are cheaper products—the Lomi costs about $379—but from my experience using it for six months, the Mill is quieter and compacts more food than competing composters.

There’s no doubt that food waste reduction is having a moment. Just last week, the Biden administration announced the first national White House strategy on food waste reduction, and businesses have finally begun taking it seriously, in part because of state and local laws forcing their hand. All this comes against a backdrop of higher consumer prices for food, which has translated into consumers buying less food and being a bit more mindful of the food they already have in their fridges and pantries.

My hope is that companies like Mill will now start eyeing how to keep food from going to the bin in the first place. Other startups like Wisely, Silo, and Ovie are making products that help consumers more smartly store in their fridges, while big companies like Amazon have been researching ways to make the fridge smarter when it comes to food waste management. If someone, Mill or otherwise, can finally build food waste management systems millions of consumers use – before and after it goes bad – then we might finally be able to make a dent in our national home food waste problem.

June 18, 2024

‘It’s Algorithmic’: Surreal Brewing’s Founder Says Process for Non-Alchohol Beer Based on Science, Not Gimmicks

Nearly a decade ago, Tammer Zein-El-Abedein and his wife, Donna Hockey, had reason to celebrate. Donna had just successfully overcome a breast cancer diagnosis, and so the couple hoped to commemorate the good news in a healthy way.

“We wanted a nonalcoholic beer,” said Zein-El-Abedei in an interview at Smart Kitchen Summit earlier this month. But, according to the former Google executive, they couldn’t find any non-alcoholic beer “outside of the stuff that’s been out for the last 30 or 40 years, which just wasn’t very interesting.”

So they decided to brew their own. Nine months later, in June 2018, the couple’s first beer (and their company Surreal Brewing) was born. It didn’t take long before the plaudits started rolling in, first in the form of a gold medal at the World Beer Awards and, in 2019, the award for the world’s best non-alcoholic and low-alcohol beer.

Since then, the pair have grown their non-alcoholic craft beer lineup, including four different types of IPAs, a Kolsch, and a couple of Porters. They’ve also expanded across the country, getting distribution into states like Virginia, and became the first non-alcoholic beer poured on tap at Disney World.

Experts generally agree there are four ways to make non-alcoholic beer, including “arrested fermentation,” extracting alcohol from brewed beer, watering down beer (um, gross), and simulated fermentation (which skips the fermentation altogether and adds ingredients and enzymes to simulate a similar result). Zein-El-Abedein doesn’t go into the specifics of the company’s brewing techniques but says its patent-pending brewing process is based on chemistry and not special gimmicks.

“The way we approached making our product is based on science,” he said. “We don’t have a special hoodaddy that you pour in, which comes out non-alcoholic. We don’t do any of that stuff. We actually engineered a process from the ground up that is algorithmic.”

If you’d like to listen to our full interview with Zein-El-Abedein, just click below.

Surreal Brewing Company and the Future of Non-Alcoholic Beer

June 13, 2024

MOTO Pizza’s Lee Kindell Talks Drone Delivery and Humanoid Robots

Last week at SKS, we had a chance to sit down for an interview with MOTO founder Lee Kindell.

Anyone who’s spent time with Lee knows he’s an enthusiastic proponent of technology, both in his restaurants and in our lives. That’s why it no surprise that he’s embracing drone delivery and hopes to see Zipline drones dropping his craft pizzas on front doors in the Seattle market by the end of this year.

While some of us may have been creeped out by the realness of Figure 01’s speech and ability to hand us fruit, Lee was nothing of the sort and said he expects the speed at which we will adopt robotics into our lives will surprise us.

You can watch our full conversation with Lee below.

MOTO Pizza's Lee Kindell Talks About Building a Fully Automated Pizza Restaurant

June 11, 2024

Podcast: The Smart Kitchen Summit Recap

Last week, The Spoon and almost three hundred of our closest friends spent an eventful couple of days in Seattle, talking about how technology is transforming the consumer meal journey.

After the dust had settled, Carlos Rodela and I got together to talk about some of the highlights of SKS 2024, We talked about some of the products we saw and our favorite sessions from speakers on stage.

You can listen to the audio-only podcast, but I’d recommend watching the video below, complete with pics and videos of the action at Block41 in Seattle.

A Look Back at Smart Kitchen Summit 2024

June 10, 2024

Don’t Call It a Comeback: Take-Aways and Thank Yous For Smart Kitchen Summit 2024

Last week, we produced the first in-person Smart Kitchen Summit (SKS) since 2019.

It’s hard to believe it’s been that long. In some ways, we’ve lost all sense of time given what has happened over the past five years, including a pandemic, but still, five years is a long time.

Bringing the event back was something we wanted to do for the last couple of years, both because we missed it and because we were hearing from our community, who also wanted SKS back. However, before we did, we wanted to ensure the timing was right. For many reasons (more on that later), we finally felt it was the right time when we announced SKS 2024 last December.

When we held our last event, we didn’t know it at the time, but we were, in a sense, closing the first chapter on the smart kitchen. Many of the first attempts by appliance companies, food brands, and startups building enabling technology had either gained traction or, in many cases, had not, making it a good time to reassess.

The first wave of the smart kitchen focused heavily on leveraging smart home technologies, voice interfaces, and app platforms to digitize knowledge around cooking and food journey management. Many interesting startups born during this time had been acquired or built sustainable and interesting businesses on their own. More eventually went out of business.

That’s why, as I built the program for this first year back, I wanted to take a realistic look at our industry’s progress, take stock of the lessons learned, and understand the current state of innovation. I wanted to have some ‘real talk’ so we can be clear-eyed about what we did right and what we did wrong and better navigate the next ten years of building products for the future kitchen.

Many of those lessons were articulated during the two days. Scott Heimendinger, who has been building products that utilize technology to help us become better cooks for more than a decade, summed up much of the problem with the first wave (and warned those this time around) on the opening panel.

“There’s a temptation that’s especially prevalent in our industry, but in others as well, that when new technologies become available to the world, we want to kind of slap those on what we’re doing,” said Heimendinger.

Scott and others warned that we must avoid repeating the same mistakes, especially as the industry embraces new technologies such as generative AI.

Another key refrain we heard during the two days was how critical it is to understand how we can meet consumers where they are in the kitchen and understand their needs. We need to build products that enhance their ability to cook great meals and make their lives easier, all while understanding the changing nature of living today as we witness growing challenges of buying homes, inflation, and a warming, increasingly resource-challenged planet.

Two speakers who addressed consumer motivation were Susan Schwallie and Barb Stuckey.

“They are outfitting utilitarian and multi-purpose kitchens and require appliances that work hard for them,” Schwallie said during her presentation, Harnessing Consumer Trends to Design the Kitchen of Tomorrow. “Gone are the days of single-use tools like avocado slicers and artisanal coffee makers, which required time and technique. Multi-purpose tools like air fryers resonate.”

One crucial aspect to consider about Millennials is their hyper-awareness of the cost of life in 2024. This, combined with their aspiration for ‘adult’ kitchens, underscores the significance of durability in their purchasing decisions, according to Schwallie. They seek products that can withstand the test of time, and the fear of planned obsolescence is a genuine concern for them. Many reside in ‘forever apartments,’ where storage and countertop space are limited, “making utility and flexibility important.”

Barb Stuckey delved into the changing nature of housing and how it impacts what Millennials and Gen Z think about their kitchen purchase decisions. According to Barb, only 40% of renters expect to own a home someday, and this permanent rental mindset has translated to this tech-forward generation, which is eyeing practical and multi-function appliances that often sit on the countertop.

We also looked further into the future during SKS, exploring potential scenarios that could be unlocked through the application of new technologies. One scenario described by Mike Lee, author of Mise, during his talk, is a society in which a large segment of our population utilizes AI-powered personalized nutrition platforms to guide their every move. Mike expressed his belief in the great potential of personalized nutrition but also emphasized that we as an industry need to recognize that “something is lost when eating in a silo.”

Another conversation focused on how robotics and automation will be used in the consumer kitchen. It’s a particularly interesting time for this conversation, as we increasingly hear about companies like Apple, Tesla, and the Bot Company eyeing the home market for robotics. Moderator Wilson Rothman pressed those building high-end and pricey robots about the key needs they were solving and how they envisioned consumers getting these products into their homes. Robin Liss, who makes a countertop robot named Suvie, talked about the importance of a “constant feedback loop” of usage data to make products ever more usable and affordable.

This is only a sample of what we heard. We will examine and explore insights from the stage as we publish videos and transcripts of the sessions in the coming weeks. For now, though, I just wanted to reflect and thank those who made SKS 2024 possible.

When we had the first SKS in 2015, we were on the precipice of a new wave of innovation around cooking and food technology. Looking back, we’ve documented many of those stories here at The Spoon and have, in recent years, started to hear from others beginning their journeys building new products and platforms for the consumer kitchen. As we’ve listened over the past twelve months, it’s become evident to me there is a new wave of innovation building, where innovators are leveraging advances in AI, synthetic biology, heating, robotics, electrification, and much more to build the future companies and kitchens of tomorrow.

We hope to help document these stories on The Spoon, through podcasts, and at our events for the next decade, and we hope you come along for the ride!

***

Now for some thanks. Big thanks to the SKS sponsors Whirlpool, Current Backyard, Fresco, Schott, Chefman, Suvie, Else Labs, Pot Robotics and Cibotica, all of whom helped make SKS possible.

Big thanks to my good friend and event consigliere, Surj Patel, who did a masterful job MCing for the two days. Thanks to Sandie Markle and Louis Leboa for helping corral speakers during SKS. Thank you to my good friend Carlos Rodela and awesome videographer Luca Nilon-Volpentesta for doing interviews and capturing some great video.

Thanks to Heather Moore, a long-time friend (and fellow puppet-lover) for capturing amazing photos of all the action at SKS.

Also, thanks to other volunteers such as Hamid Ali (congratulations on a great career at Google!), Cormac Wolf, and Andrew Miller.

Thanks to Renton Technical College for feeding us. We are big supporters of RTC’s mission of educating young people and preparing them for careers in food service.

Thanks to the team at Kind and Co for being awesome event ninjas and ensuring all the little (and big) things that go into producing an event got done.

Thanks to all the speakers for SKS 2024 for taking time out of their busy schedules building businesses to book flights and come to Seattle to share knowledge.

Thanks to all of our event partners, who helped spread the word about SKS, ensured we filled seats, and tapped into their networks.

Thanks to our attendees, who, through their energy and insight during the show, truly made SKS 2024 an amazing event.

Thanks to the media for coming and writing about SKS.

Thanks to the SKS Advisory Council, which helped shape my thinking about this year’s program and made connections when needed.

Finally, thanks most of all to Tiffany McClurg, who did so much to make SKS 2024 a rousing success. She not only helped make SKS so much better and kept the trains running on time during the show, but also got to step out on the first day and watch her (and my) son graduate from the University of Washington.

We’ll see you all next year!

June 8, 2024

Scenes from Smart Kitchen Summit 2024

The Smart Kitchen Summit wrapped up this week, and boy, did we have a great time discussing how new technologies will drive the next wave of cooking and kitchen innovation!

I’ll be sharing some of my thoughts next week, but I thought I’d share some of my favorite shots from the show. Thanks, as always, to Heather Moore for great work.

Above: Kicking off SKS 2024 with some great insights from Scott Heimendinger, Chris Young and Kai Shaeffner.

Above: SKS MC Surj Patel talks with Ladle Cooking’s Sumati Sharan

Above: Chef, meet Chef. Two authors connect at SKS. Chris Young (Coauthor, Modernist Cuisine) shakes hands with James Briscione (Author, The Flavor Matrix).

Above: Talking Cooking Robots. A food robotics session with Mark Oleynik (Moley Robotics), Robin Liss (Suvie) and Assaf Pashut).

Above: SKS attendees check out what’s next in cooking technology.

Above: MOTO Pizza CEO Lee Kindell shows off his t-shirt on stage.

Above: Wisely founder Rachell McCray talks about the future of food storage with Ovie’s Stacie Thompson.

Above: The sun breaks through just in time for happy hour at SKS 2024

June 4, 2024

Your Future Induction Stove May Be the Foundation for That Home Power Wall

If you’re like me, you’ve considered installing a giant home battery to help transition away from traditional grid-connected power.

And if you’re also like me, you haven’t done it because it’s expensive, and there’s a lot of housework you need to do to make it happen.

But what if you could put together a home battery power system piece by piece, starting with a big piece, such as an induction stovetop?

That’s the dream of Sam D’Amico, the CEO of Impulse Labs. Sam’s company is building a new stove with a big battery built in to help folks who aren’t wired for induction (the rule of thumb is you need a 220V outlet on a 50-amp circuit). Impulse’s induction cooktop has a built-in battery that stores up energy via a traditional circuit and draws upon it when it’s time to cook. Perhaps more importantly, it can also be the foundation of a fractionalized battery system that, when pieced together with other batteries, can store power from solar panels and power your home.

“You’re deploying a pretty large home battery system piece by piece,” Sam said in a recent episode of The Spoon podcast. “And then once that’s deployed, you’ve got something with which you can essentially make the home all electric.”

Sam says his conversations with utilities tell him they are excited about the concept of fractionalized home battery backup and that they might even be interested in subsidizing some of this transition.

“There’s definitely a lot of interest there. You can already see incentives from utilities for more efficient appliances today. That’s already a thing that’s happening.”

The push towards electric cooking is coming at the same time there’s strong demand from consumers to move towards solar, and battery prices are dropping. The end result is you might just see these trends converge towards a new home power system in which many of your big appliances (stoves, washing machines, water heaters) combine to power your cooking and more.

You can hear more about this in my full conversation with Sam by clicking play below.

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