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Podcasts

May 2, 2018

Podcast: What Food Tech Startups Should Know About AI

Meet The Spoon: Automat, our brand new podcast about food-related robots and artificial intelligence.

With more than 66 millions workers around the world projected to have their jobs automated, the time is right to understand our robot-filled future. Actually, between Flippy, Cafe X, Blendid, Spyce Kitchen and more, it’s looking like our robot-filled present.

Each week in the Automat, we’ll talk with a different expert using robots or artificial intelligence to change the way we grow, cook and shop for food.

But first, we should level set. Before we can delve into intelligent robots and AI, we need to know what AI actually is–and isn’t. Which is why I was excited to have Derrick Harris as my first guest. He runs the must-listen Architecht podcast and must-read newsletter covering the world of AI extensively. In this inaugural episode Derrick:

  • Gets you up to speed on AI
  • Breaks down the difference between AI, machine learning and deep learning
  • Explains why focus and utility are the most important thing for AI-based startups
  • Says why today is more important than the future for AI

Check out the first episode below. Have a suggestion for a topic or guest? Leave a comment and let us know!

April 13, 2018

Food for Your Ears: Podcasts Worth a Listen

I listen to food podcasts to help me fall asleep. That’s not a dig at their quality or content — quite the opposite. Food podcasts are typically a calm audio oasis at the end of a busy day in a chaotic world. Gentle discussions about recipes or food facts is a great way to drift off to sleep.

If you are looking for a little slumber-inducing relaxation of your own, or something to help make the weekend jog go faster, here are a few of food-related podcasts we enjoy here at The Spoon:

The Sporkful: From WNYC, the show proudly proclaims “It’s not for foodies, it’s for eaters,” and it’s true. Host Dan Pashman’s down to earth approach and curious mindset means you’ll always get a unique perspective on food and food culture. Good place to start: The Search for the Aleppo Sandwich.

The Splendid Table: It’s all in the title. This show is… splendid. Refined. Francis Lam recently took over hosting duties and helped make the show a “modern, multicultural weekly snapshot of the food world.” Good place to start: Eating in the Instagram Era.

Tech Bites: This show from hipster Brooklyn food-focused Heritage Radio Network covers all things food tech. Each week, Jennifer Leuzzi interviews founders on how they’re using tech to shake up the food system. Good place to start: 2018 Trends: Seaweed.

Milk Street Radio: Christopher Kimball’s new show is more global than his previous work on America’s Test Kitchen, but that just gives him a broader canvas from which to pull fascinating stories and interviews from interesting people. Good place to start: Nathan Myhrvold on Bread Science.

Healthy or Hoax: Is plant-based milk a fad or the real deal? Is your smoothie hiding things from you? New Zealand broadcaster Carol Hirschfeld ponders these questions and more on NZ Radio’s Healthy or Hoax podcast—a straightforward-yet-funny, evidence-based look at what’s behind all those food trends. Good place to start: Getting Milk Out of an Almond.

Of course, you can also listen to our podcasts for entertaining and insightful discussions about the future of food. Check out Mike Wolf’s recent chat with The Future Market’s Mike Lee about Reimagining The Grocery Store.

Do you have a favorite food podcast that you love to listen to? Leave a link in the comments below.

Special thanks to Catherine Lamb and Jenn Marston for contributing to this list.

April 7, 2018

Podcast: The Personalized Kitchen

Advancements in molecular sensors, real-time analytics and food production are laying the foundation for a world where consumers will consume food tailored specifically for them based on their own biomarkers, past behavior, and environmental data.

And while we may not be living in a futuristic world with personalized food manufacturing machines just yet (though we are getting closer), there’s no doubt one of the year’s biggest trends in food innovation centers around personalization.

Which is why I was excited to take the Smart Kitchen Show on the road last month to talk about the personalized kitchen.

My guests for this live taping of the Smart Kitchen Show at Target’s Open House in San Francisco included Shireen Yates (CEO of Nima), Kevin Brown (CEO of Innit), and Jae Berman (Head Coach and lead nutritionist for Habit). Friend of the show Brian Frank of FTW Ventures also stopped by to help with interviewing duties.

Enjoy the podcast by clicking below, subscribing in iTunes or downloading directly.

March 22, 2018

Podcast: Reimagining The Grocery Store with The Future Market’s Mike Lee

Growing up in Detroit, Mike Lee loved going to auto shows. His favorite part was seeing the concept cars auto makers rolled out to help consumers envision the future.

As he got older, Lee wondered why food companies never created similar concept products. Why not, after all, create the products of the future and show them to people?

Eventually, he decided to do it himself as part of his company The Future Market, and Lee brought his “concept cars” for food to the Fancy Food Show this past January. I had a chance to tour Lee’s vision for the reimagined grocery and knew at that point I needed to have him on the podcast to talk about what the grocery store of the future would look like.

Enjoy the podcast.

March 17, 2018

Podcast: What Caught Our Eye at the Housewares Show

The International Housewares Show is big. Very big. More than 60,000 professionals from all corners of the world convened in Chicago last week to check out the latest and greatest products coming soon to a home near you (or to your home).

Whether you attended in person, or missed it this year, we’ve got you covered. Mike Wolf and I walked the show floor to find the best bits of connected kitchen tech.

In this podcast, we talk about how the whole smart home industry is maturing, the prevalence of connected devices, and the very cool things we came across (precision heated plates and baby bottles!).

February 23, 2018

Big Food Invests In The Future: A Talk With Tyson Ventures’ Tom Mastrobuoni

If you’ve listened to an investor conference call for a big food company lately, there’s a good chance you know the following:

  • Consumers are asking for healthier options and want to understand better where their food comes from.
  • The world’s population continues to grow in the face of an increasingly stressed food ecosystem.
  • Food brands are increasingly establishing direct relationships with consumers and exploring new business models that represent big departures from traditional food retail.

In short, big food is being forced to think about the future.

Some of the ways they are doing this are through partnerships, incubation and accelerator initiatives and establishing direct investment arms. Tyson Foods is doing all of the above, and one of the people at the heart of the company’s investment efforts is Tom Mastrobuoni, the CFO for Tyson Ventures, our guest for this week’s episode of the Smart Kitchen Show podcast.

One of the things I talk to Tom about Tyson’s recent investment in Tovala. The deal was interesting to me because it was Tyson’s first investment in a connected kitchen and food delivery startup, joining the group’s other investments in clean meat startups Beyond Meat and Memphis Meats.

Tom and I also talk about how Tyson and other companies are thinking about technologies such as AI, Blockchain and much more.

Have a listen below, download here or subscribe on Apple Podcasts (or wherever you listen).

February 12, 2018

Podcast: The Future of (Food) Media Is Conversational & AI Driven

If you’re looking for someone who can build a media company with the future in mind, you could do a lot worse that Shelby Bonnie.

Bonnie first showed his ability to build forward leaning media properties with CNET, a company he cofounded that helped set the template for tech media for much of the past couple decades. For his next act, Bonnie cofounded Whiskey Media, a company that tapped into the power of passionate communities with brands like Tested, Screened and Giant Bomb just as social media platforms like Facebook were beginning to change the media landscape.

And Bonnie’s latest bet? A company called Pylon, which is leveraging AI-powered voice assistants and chatbots to create media properties that power content delivery in vertical interest areas such as food and cooking.

I caught up with Shelby to talk about those early days, how he sees media evolving over the next decade and how he thinks Pylon can help shape that new future.

If you are an appliance maker, food brand or any company that touches the consumer, you’ll want to listen to this podcast to get an understanding of the future of consumer media.

You can listen to the podcast below, download it here or subscribe to the Smart Kitchen Show on Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

February 2, 2018

Podcast: A Chef’s Journey To The Intersection Of Virtual/Augmented Reality & Food

Ever since I saw Chewie and CP30 playing hologram chess in Star Wars as a kid, I’ve been intrigued by the idea of creating virtual images and worlds.

A generation later, I more fascinated than ever by what we now call augmented and virtual reality. I’m especially intrigued about where these new technologies intersect with food, and a week doesn’t go by where I read about an innovator creating a new way to enhance the shopping, restaurant or cooking experience with AR or VR.

Another person excited about this fast growing space is Jenny Dorsey. A year ago, the professional chef had an epiphany: she needed to become the foremost authority on nexus point between AR/VR and food.

On the podcast, I catch up with Jenny to hear how her journey to become the go-to expert in this exciting area is going and learn about some new and interesting ways that augmented and virtual reality are changing food.

You can listen to the podcast below, download here or find it on Apple podcasts.

January 25, 2018

The Founder of Reviewed.com Wants To Reinvent Cooking With This Robot Cooking Appliance

A hypothetical question: What do you do for a second act after spending a good chunk of your teens and twenties building one of the leading product review sites in the US?

You start a company to reinvent one of those product categories you used to review.

At least that’s what you do if you’re Robin Liss, cofounder of Suvie, a Boston based startup that is creating a next-gen cooking appliance. Liss, who started what would become Reviewed.com in her basement at the tender age of 13, sold her company to USA Today in 2011 and managed and grow the site as part of Gannett until she left in 2015.

While she didn’t leave Reviewed with plans to create a cooking appliance startup, it didn’t take long before Liss and her cofounder, Kevin Incorvia, conceived of what eventually became Suvie.

Robin Liss and Kevin Incorvia, cofounders of Suvie

“When I was leaving Reviewed.com, I thought I was going to enjoy my time on the beach,” said Liss when I sat down with her this week to talk about her new company. “But when I was at Reviewed I was really into sous vide cooking, and I thought how can I take this to the next level?”

That next-level cooking idea rolling around Liss’s head eventually crystallized into the Suvie, an ambitious new take at a countertop cooking appliance that includes multiple zones for each staple of a typical dinner: proteins, vegetables, starch, and sauces. Put simply, the Suvie cooks each staple separately using optimized processes for each (sous vide for the protein, steam for veggies, a water dispenser/chamber for starches) but syncs the process across the different cooking chambers so they are finished at the same time.

To top it off, Liss and Incorvia insisted on creating an appliance that enabled “cool to cook”, which means the Suvie would keep food chilled all day and initiate a cook remotely via an app. To do that, they started looking into adding refrigeration.

After looking at a variety of cooling methods like thermoelectric cooling (the cooling technology used in wine coolers and, somewhat notoriously after this Wired review, the Mellow), they decided the Suvie would use a compressor. Compressors are standard in most refrigerators, but the problem was they couldn’t find a compressor small enough for their countertop cooking appliance.

Eventually, they worked with a large appliance maker to have a custom compressor made for the Suvie.

“We have a custom, small compressor, which is one of the key parts that make this work,” said Liss.

But unlike a fridge, which cools by forcing coolant into coils and absorbing heat, the Suvie team decided to use water to cool the food. They came up with a novel water-routing concept that takes cold water from a water chamber and distributes it to water jackets in each of the four zones and chills the food until its ready to cook.

When Liss started thinking about her new company, there were a few underlying trends she felt made it the right time to try and reinvent cooking. One was the ubiquity of mobile phones. She saw mobile was becoming more important in people’s lives as a way to not only discover food but would also become they way control their cooking appliances.

She also saw the growth of precision cooking techniques like sous vide and connected appliances as a signal that things would change drastically in the consumer kitchen in coming years.

The last trend she focused on was the rise of meal kits, as she watched the emergence of first generation meal kit companies like Blue Apron and started to think about how they could incorporate meal delivery into their offering.

And it was this last trend that led to her other big idea. Unlike meal kit providers like Blue Apron that have their own warehouses and pack food for shipment, Liss wanted to create a product that they could open to a variety of food packers and distributors as a way to sell their products as part of a meal kit. In short, she saw the beginning of what could become a new distribution platform.

“[Meal kits] are the first step of what will eventually become a platform,” said Liss. “What we’re trying to do is build an appliance that can bridge the technology gap between existing food suppliers and the appliance that can cook it intelligently.”

This early focus on using a variety of food packers and distributors forced the company to make an open approach integral to the design of the Suvie appliance.

“There were some restrictive rules I put on our engineering team at the beginning,” said Liss. “One was we don’t want us packing our own food. The reason we did that is we wanted to make sure the existing food supply chain could easily pack for their device using the equipment on their floors.”

In a way, Suvie is emblematic of a new trend in the smart kitchen space where startups are looking to pair recurring meal subscriptions with smart cooking hardware. Tovala, Nomiku, and ChefSteps are other examples of companies going down this route but, according to Liss, Suvie has a bigger vision.

“That’s really important when you think about the business and platform because that way if new food brands want to pack for Suvie, they don’t have to build new cooking methods, they don’t have to precook stuff. The raw veggie guys don’t have to think about how long it takes to cook the chicken. They can just pack their raw vegetables like their doing now because of this platform.”

To assemble the final meal kits, Suvie has partnered with a local mission-driven organization in the Dorchester area of Boston that employs economically disadvantaged workers.

Liss said the company plans to launch a Kickstarter in February and plan to ship the product by the end of this year. If successful, the campaign will add to already $3.75 million in seed funding that the company has raised. Pricing for the Suvie will be announced next week when they unveil the Kickstarter campaign.

After more than two years working in stealth, Liss is excited to get what she unabashedly calls her “robot multizone cooking appliance” into the world.

“It’s so exciting and so much fun,” she said. “I do wish we got as much attention as the robot cars. I think it’s just as important a category as self-driving cars.”

You can listen to my full conversation with Robin Liss, founder of Suvie, below (or through Apple podcasts).

January 13, 2018

Podcast: The CES 2018 Smart Kitchen & Foodtech Wrapup Show

CES 2018 is in the books. It was a hectic week packed with smart kitchen news and showcases. Mike was on the floor in Las Vegas and reveals the big trends (voice activation everywhere!), the cool news stuff (guided cooking!), and the countertop dishwasher he calls “sexy.”

Take a listen for all the in-depth analysis you need. You can also subscribe to the Smart Kitchen Show in Apple Podcasts or download it here.

January 11, 2018

Podcast: Digitizing Flavor

We are increasingly able to measure, quantify and understand flavor through digital technology.  In this episode of the Smart Kitchen Show, I talk to Daniel Protz of FlavorWiki about how his company is developing a system that that measures consumer taste and preferences for food.

You can listen to this episode by clicking play below, download this episode using this link, or just subscribe to the Smart Kitchen Show on Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

December 18, 2017

Podcast: Using AI To Predict Food Product Success

It’s a well known fact within the packaged food business that billions of dollars are wasted every year on bringing food products to market that don’t succeed.

So what if we could use machine learning and predictive algorithms to create products with a much higher success rate?

That’s what we talk about on this week’s podcast with Analytical Flavor Systems CEO Jason Cohen. Cohen’s company uses AI to understand flavor perception biases of individual consumers and predict how consumers will like flavor signatures across a broader population of users.

In this podcast we talk about:

-Why 9 in 10 of food product launches end in failure

-how AI can be used to better predict food product success

-How consumers know what they like but often are not good at becoming product formulators

-Whether machines can ever replace humans when it comes to understanding food flavor perception

And a bunch more!

Enjoy the podcast. 

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