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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

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Revolution’s New Smart Toaster Will Have Wi-Fi and Tell You The Weather

Last week at CES, Revolution Cooking, a company that’s made a name for itself by creating the world’s most high-end, tech-enabled toaster, gave us a sneak peek at its latest-generation bread crisper.

The new Revolution toaster, which the company says will ship on May 1st, not only has the same recognizable touchscreen and proprietary and patented InstaGLO heating technology that powers the first generation toaster (and the new Macrowave oven), but it will be the company’s first Internet-connected edition.

So, why add Wi-Fi to a toaster? According to Sean Robbins, Revolution’s head of marketing, one obvious reason is to enable over-the-air feature rollouts and improvements to the product’s heating technology. However, perhaps the most significant reason relates to the role a toaster plays in a toast-lover’s daily routine.

“People who love to toast, it’s kind of a daily ritual for them,” said Robbins. “So we talked to our best customers and asked them what would you love to have on the home screen. We heard things related to what their daily routine is. ‘I want to start my day and make my toast, and I wonder what the weather is that day.'”

According to Robbins, the Revolution connected toaster is also the first to get the green light from UL. The product safety standard company, well-recognized for its certification stamp of approval, had previously frowned upon Internet-connected toasters. This is because adding connectivity to a product with an open heating element was considered a significant safety concern. Because of this, Robbins says that owners of their new toaster still won’t be able to remotely control the heating element, but they will have the comfort (and perhaps more importantly, retailers will have the comfort) that UL says this thing is safe.

While the Internet-connected toaster has become something of an Internet meme, often used to ridicule over-engineered products and an Internet of Things gone awry, there have been relatively few attempts to add connectivity to toasters. While some have taken a swing (and the tech press commentators have reacted predictably), the reality is since Revolution essentially kickstarted the whole high-end touchscreen toaster craze (there are a bunch of copycats on Amazon now) and has built a loyal customer base for its tech-enabled toaster, my guess is that they’ll likely find a receptive audience for those who also want their toaster to tell them whether they should bundle up for the day.

You can watch my interview with Robbins below.

Revolution Talks About Its Latest Smart Toaster at CES 2024

Combustion Releases Physics-Based Prediction Engine for Connected Thermometer

Today, Combustion announced that they have made a new physics-based prediction engine available for the Combustion smart thermometer.

According to the company, the prediction algorithm in this new over-the-air software upgrade, which they are calling the “new physics engine phase 1,” differs from the previous prediction algorithms in that it incorporates the ability to build a full simulation of the food in software. While the past model looked at the change in temperature and pacing of that change to predict when the food will be done, the new system will begin to factor in data around water migration, evaporation of moisture, and other factors interpreted from the eight sensors in the probe. From there, Combustion says they will be able to factor in temperature stagnation in large cuts of meat during BBQ (known as “stall”) and carry over.

The company’s announcements said that during phase 1 of the rollout, the new physics predictive model will run during the first 30% of the cook and then “switch over to the original predictive engine.” This is because Combustion expects “the new engine to make some mistakes and that early predictions may not always be stable.”

The announcement about the new update, free to existing Combustion thermometer owners, claims it “isn’t just a tweak to the existing algorithm, it’s the first step toward a new kind of cooking math.” I used the Combustion this past Thanksgiving and look forward to trying out the new features.

When Combustion launched its multisensor probe last year, it was a wake-up call for the existing smart thermometer market, which had developed mainly around single-sensor connected solutions. Since then, Meater has come out with the Meater 2 Plus, which has five internal sensors and an ambient temperature sensor, and other companies are likely developing multisensor versions of their thermometers. Combustion’s push to upgrade its software to create new capabilities is part of the company’s effort to stay ahead of the market as others look to adapt their hardware.

Chris Young, the CEO of Combustion, dropped into Dave Arnold’s Cooking Issues to talk about the new update and the broader vision for the thermometer, which includes making it open for other developers. Young says that the product has an open API, and they “have a lot of people creating cool stuff with” the thermometer.” You can listen to the interview portion where Young talks to Arnold about the thermometer updates in the embed below.

Cooking Issues Episode 124 | Chris Young Returns

The Kara Pod is a Coffee Machine That Refills Itself by Pulling Water from Thin Air

This year at CES, Kara Water debuted the Kara Pod, a combo coffee brewer and air-to-water countertop machine. The Kara Pod takes company core technology, which turns humidity from the air into drinking water, and combines it with a coffee machine that can produce up to almost a gallon of water (3.2 liters) per day, which can be used as drinking water or for brewing coffee.

Kara Water was founded in 2017 by Cody Sooden and Michael Di Giovanna. The two wanted to create a machine that could produce clean drinking water free of contaminants. Sooden’s interest in the technology started after he began experimenting with capturing water from air while studying architecture. He eventually wrote a research paper on harvesting moisture from the air, which ultimately became the genesis of the company’s technology.

Kara Water isn’t the first company to show off water-from-air technology at CES. We’ve seen Watergen debut a working model in 2020, and Zero Mass Water, which uses solar power to capture moisture and turn it into drinking water, showed off its machine at CES 2019. But this is the first countertop appliance model we’ve seen and the first time we’ve seen air-to-water combined with a coffee machine.

According to Sooden, the Kara Pod will start shipping in March for $299. You can watch our interview with Sooden below.

The Kara Pod Coffee Maker Gets Water Refilled From Out of Thin Air

Watch This Tour of The Yo-Kai Boba Robot at CES 2024

In what seems to be an annual occurrence at this point, this year Yo-Kai introduced a new robotic food kiosk and drew huge crowds at CES. This year, it was the company’s new boba robot, which features the ability to cook boba inside as well as prepare both hot and iced drinks.

The Spoon dropped by the Yo-Kai booth to get a video tour of the new boba-bot with company CEO Any Lin. When we broke the story of the Yo-Kai boba-bot a couple of weeks ago, we revealed that the company planned to open up a new sales channel by embracing small business owners through franchises. According to Lin, one of the reasons this new appliance helps make this possible is, unlike the ramen noodle bots that helped the company make a name for itself, the new boba bot only uses room-temperature, shelf-stable ingredients. That means they can ship ingredients to users without requiring large-scale cold chain logistics networks, a requirement which often necessitates bigger partners.

Whether you’re a small business interested in franchising a Yo-Kai boba machine or just a boba-loving nerd, you’ll want to check out the video below.

Tour of Yo-Kai's Boba Robot at CES 2024

The Guide to Grilling & BBQ Tech at CES 2024

While grilled food may not be ranked as highly as ice cream in our best-things-in-life lists , it’s not far behind. So it’s no surprise that we’re finding lots of technology to help us make us better backyard BBQ maestros at CES.

CES is starting today, and we’ve already stumbled across a number of cool grill and BBQ tech products at the press events we’ve attended.

Here’s what we’ve found so far:

Seer Grill

Seer Grills is not your typical-looking grill, as it holds the proteins (or veggies or whatever you’re grilling) vertically and cooks at a really high temperature using infrared heat. According to SEERGRILLS CEO Suraj Sudera, the AI works through a combination of sensor data, cook preferences inputted by the user, and intelligence built into the software around different food types.

“The device will capture the starting temperature of, say, chicken breast and adjust the cooking in line with the preferences you’ve inputted in the device,” said Sudera. “Whether it’s a three-inch or five-inch chicken breast, it doesn’t matter. It will be whatever adjustments it needs, just like your cruise control on your car will adjust to keep you at the preferred speed.”

The hardware itself is somewhat unique compared to other infrared grills on the market in that it cooks meat vertically. The user puts the meat in a holder, which will sense the temperature and thickness of the meat. Once inserted, both sides are cooked simultaneously using infrared heat, powered by propane, which SEERGRILLS says can reach 1652ºF. According to the company, the grill can cook three ribeyes in one minute and fifty seconds, six burgers in a minute and thirty seconds, and four chicken breasts in two minutes and thirty seconds.

A Look at the Perfecta AI-Powered Grill at CES 2024

GE Profile Smart Indoor Smoker

The GE Profile Smart Indoor Smoker makes its debut at CES this year. For those who follow GE closely, you’ll probably know this is the grown-up, ready-for-mass-market version of the Arden smoker developed by GE Appliances’ incubation factory, FirstBuild. It’s not all that surprising this GE Appliances wanted to graduate this baby to the big time since, well, it’s a pretty great idea. I mean, an indoor smoker just kind of speaks for itself, doesn’t it?

The device has impressive specs, including its active smoke filtration technology, five adjustable smoke settings that let you control the smoke levels to dial in preferred flavors, and six preset food settings that turnkey smoking for brisket, pork ribs, pork butt, chicken wings, chicken breast and salmon.

The device has a fairly small footprint, but doesn’t sacrifice on cavity size as it can handle three racks of baby back ribs, a brisket, up to 40 chicken wings or a 14-pound pork butt.

GE Profile Indoor Smoker at CES 2024

Current Backyard Electric Grill

Startup Current Backyard debuted its first product at CES, the Current Backyard Electric Grill. The product, which they claim is the world’s largest consumer backyard grill, will be available in early February at the company’s website and this spring at retailers such as Best Buy, Ace Hardware and Williams Sonoma, with the base model going for $899.

The specs are impressive:

  • Company claims 150 degrees hotter than the leading gas grill brand
  • 700 max temperature for the ultimate searing experience
  • Full Wi-Fi connectivity & proprietary app
  • Dual-zone control
  • SmartClean auto-clean feature
  • 4x more energy efficient than the standard gas grill

Current Backyard Electric Grill CES 2024

Weber Summit Smart Grill

The newest entrant from the one of the biggest names of outdoor grilling is the Weber Smart Grill. The Smart Grill is the BBQ brand’s first with an infrared broiler for searing, and includes a big touch screen all sorts of digital controls to help make cooking easier. Not surprisingly, the grill is pricey, starting at $3,800.

Weber Grills Summit & Searwood first look at CES 2024

The CES 2024 Food Tech Exhibit Walk-Around Guide

Welcome to the CES 2024 Food Tech Walk-Around Guide!

If you’re at CES (or even if you’re not) and want to check out all the cool new food tech products on display this week, this is your go-to guide.

Not only have we scoured the CES exhibitor guide, company websites, and all the press releases that have hit our inbox, but we’re also walking the show floor here in Vegas to bring you all the food tech news coming out of Vegas this week.

You can use the handy table below to read a description of what each is showing off at CES, as well as find a link that shows a map with the location of each company’s booth. The embedded airtable guide is also sortable, and you can pop out each company to get more information about them.

We’ll be keeping this list updated. If you don’t see your company on here (and you have a product to show), drop us a line.

CES 2024: Sevvy Smart Cooker Cooks Food By Sending Electric Currents Through Food

I don’t know about you, but when I bake anything, we’re talking about 25-30 minutes in an oven. But if you’re using a new technology debuting at CES from a startup called Sevvy, that time drops to just four minutes.

How does it work? According to the company, their technology utilizes “integral heating” through electrical currents. This means a combination of Pulsed Electric Field-based and Ohmic heating technology to enable quick food preparation at low temperatures. These currents pass through the food, simultaneously delivering the same amount of heat throughout the entire dish, which, according to Sevvy, drastically reduces cooking and baking times.

I personally verified that the company’s blueberry muffins, which company CEO Kamiel de Leur says took just four minutes to make, were just as tasty and as those made using traditional oven heating. But de Leur says it’s not just faster cooking times that sets their technology apart. Because Sevvy reduces the need for cooking and baking fats by up to 50% and decreases salt and sugar usage, de Leur says their technology is also healthier.

The company has six issued patents for the electric current-based cooking technology, which de Leur hopes to license to strategic partners, including home appliance manufacturers and makers of professional cooking equipment.

You can watch my full interview with de Leur below:

Sevvy Shows Off Pulsed Electric Field-based and Ohmic Heating in Sevvy Smart Cooker at CES 2024

Watch The ColdSnap Countertop Ice Cream Appliance In Action at CES 2024

It goes without saying that everyone likes ice cream, and that was never more apparent than at last night’s CES Unveiled press event.

The first thing I saw when I walked into the crowded room was a huge crowd of journalists lining up to get a serving of ice cream (another truism is journalists like free food). The ColdSnap machines were cranking away as ColdSnap workers – including ColdSnap CEO Matthew Fonte – handed over cups to attendees.

Last fall, ColdSnap expanded its production facility in the Boston suburb of Billerica, adding 20,000 square feet with an additional 24,000 square feet of space leased across the street. Now, as they look to scale, they’ve added automation equipment and project they will be able to manufacture 30 million pods per year.

Part of what makes ColdSnap intriguing is its ability to make instant ice cream from room temperature, shelf-stable liquid. As Fonte told me last year, a product like this could be potentially transformative for markets where cold chain storage is not widely available or cost-prohibitive.

“China’s ice cream market is as large as the United States, but they have 25% the amount of refrigeration per capita that we do here in the States,” Fonte said. “If you could circumvent the cold supply chain and give them shelf-stable pods, they can freeze their ice cream on demand, they can reach the masses there and grow that market four times.”

You can a peek of the ColdSnap in action below.

ChefPaw to Show Off Home Pet Food Maker at CES 2024

While most kitchen tech gadgets at CES this week are for preparing sustenance for two-legged creatures, ChefPaw is explicitly designed to create homemade food for our furry friends.

ChefPaw, which is a creation from the founders of pet health products company Innovet, is essentially something akin to a Thermomix for dog food. The product, for which the company has filed a provisional patent, features a large mixing bowl and a mixing blade, allows pet owners to mix raw ingredients like vegetables and meat. Users follow their own chosen recipes (or recipes provided by ChefPaw), and the device will cook up to six pounds of homemade dog food in about 40 minutes.

You can see the ChefPaw in action below:

If you want to buy a ChefPaw, you will have to be committed to the idea of homemade pet food because it isn’t cheap. The ChefPaw will set you back $639 plus tax and shipping, which isn’t exactly as spendy as a Thermomix, but it’s more than twice as much as a low-end Thermomix clone and 4-5 times that of an Instant Pot, another popular home appliance for making pet food.

But who knows? My guess is there is probably a market for dedicated pet enthusiasts who will spare no expense for their pet on a dedicated pet food maker. If you’re at CES and want to check out the ChefPaw, you can find it in Eureka Park at the Venetian Expo starting January 9th.

GreenSwapp Shows Off Tech to Display Carbon Impact Data on Retail Shelf Price Labels at CES 2024

Imagine walking down a shopping aisle, where alongside the price of each product is a score indicating its carbon impact. That’s the world that Dutch startup GreenSwapp hopes to usher in beginning next week at CES, where it will show how its AI-powered product carbon tracker works with electronic shelf labels and Point Of Sale (POS) systems.

The demo will be showcased at a mini supermarket installation within the company’s CES booth. There, attendees will witness the future of sustainable retail—a future where price tags display cost and climate ratings. The company hopes that the score will guide consumers in making eco-friendlier choices and serve as a nudge towards a more sustainable lifestyle. At the checkout counter, the receipt shows the purchase’s collective carbon impact (using an A-F grade scale) compared to the average shopper.

The company has already integrated its GreenSwapp AI carbon tracker with the leading online grocer in the Netherlands. They have completed a pilot for the technology with Ahold, the Netherlands’ largest retail group. The company is hoping to enter the US retail market in 2024.

The push for climate impact data for retail purchases has started to gain more traction in Europe, it may take a while before US retailers jump on board. That said, progressive states like California, which just pushed new climate emission reporting requirements into place last fall, could move in this direction much quicker.

In some ways, the push for more data on climate impact on consumer purchases is reminiscent of the move to add nutritional information to restaurant menus over the past decade. However, just as more nutrition data hasn’t necessarily changed consumer eating behavior, it remains to be seen just how motivated consumers are to change their behavior, particularly if they don’t perceive it as having an immediate impact on their lives (which, unfortunately, is how many US consumers view the somewhat more esoteric nature of climate impact data).

If you’d like to check out the GreenSwapp future store concept at CES, you can find them in Eureka Park in the Venetian Expo area at booth 61440.

CES 2024: Revolution Unveils the Macrowave, a Smart Oven That Combines Infrared & Microwave Heating

Revolution Cooking, a startup best known for its high-end touchscreen toaster, is showing it’s not a one-trick pony next week at CES with the reveal of its newest appliance, the Macrowave.

According to Revolution, the Macrowave is a smart oven that combines the same patented InstaGLO infrared heating technology it’s become known for with its toaster lineup with microwave heating. Add in convection/air frying capabilities and some interesting, innovative oven features, and the Macrowave looks like a compelling new entry to the countertop kitchen tech space.

The way it works is the electromagnetic radiation from the appliance’s built-in microwave heats the inside of the food, while the InstaGLO infrared heating crisps and heats the outside of the food. From the sound of it, that combination could provide a better answer for microwaved frozen foods like pizza or frozen burritos, which are often served molten-hot in the middle and soggy or even cold on the outside.

The video below shows how the Macrowave will result in faster and more even cooking for frozen food like pizza, proteins like chicken wings, and veggies.

Say Hello to The Macrowave

While the Macrowave isn’t the first product to combine air frying with microwave technology, it’s one of the few that use infrared heating combined with microwave and air frying. Other manufacturers like LG have combined infrared with microwave technology, but these products lacked the smart cooking algorithms and precision heating detection.

And it’s these smart cooking programs that differentiate the Macrowave from previous entries. The programs, which allow the user to choose a food item like pizza, fries or hot pockets, optimize the right combination of infrared, microwave, and convention air for each item.

The oven also allows you to combine cooking steps manually using the Micro+Bake and Micro+Air Fry modes. Add in an internal temperature probe for precision heating, and the Macrowave looks like it does present a fairly unique set of capabilities compared to anything we’ve seen on the market.

No word yet on pricing for the Macrowave, but we’ll keep you updated when we find out.

The Macrowave will make its first appearance at CES’s Unveiled event, the press event two days before the show opens.

Where Food Comes From Acquires Upcycled Certification Program From Upcycled Food Association

Third-party verifier of food production practices Where Food Comes From, Inc. (WFCF) announced today it had acquired the Upcycled Certified Program from the Upcycled Food Association.

The Upcycled Food Association launched its certification program in early 2021, becoming, at the time, the first certification program for the nascent upcycled food industry. Since then, 93 companies have obtained Upcycled Certified status for over 480 products, according to the Upcycled Food Association. The group claims it has helped divert an average of 390,000 tons of food waste annually.

WFCF makes sense as a natural home for the Upcycled certification program given the company’s focus on with food industry verification. The company manages verification programs for organic foods, non-GMO foods, and the humane treatment of animals among others. And now with the acquisition of the UPFA’s verification program, they add a fairly fast-growing new category to their stable.

As for the Upcycled Food Association’s future, the non-profit group looks to continue to facilitate the growth of the industry even as it exits the verification business.

“The Upcycled Food Association is looking forward to ongoing collaboration to effectively serve the broader food waste reduction community and to ensuring that upcycled food companies have the resources they need to develop and bring to market new upcycled food products,” wrote the Upcycled Food Association CEO Angie Crone on her Linkedin.