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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Smart Home

Will Amazon Key Open the Door to In-Home Delivery?

“I don’t think so.” That was my mother this morning upon reading that Amazon officially launched Key, its in-home delivery service. With Key, Amazon Prime members can have packages delivered directly inside their homes, rather than having boxes left out in the open on a porch or stoop.

For smart-kitchen fans, this means groceries or, one presumes, same-day meal-kit delivery, can be left in the safety inside your house. This sidesteps the issue of leaving food out in direct sunlight or other inclement weather, as well as preventing dastardly thieves who might abscond with unattended packages left outside.

That is, if you are comfortable letting complete strangers into your house while you are away.

Amazon Key - October 2017

We knew this was coming, and Amazon seems well aware of the immediate trust issues in-home delivery brings up and has gone to great lengths to put nervous nellies at ease.

First, Amazon Key only works with Amazon Key-smart locks ($199 – $249) and Amazon Key Cloud Cameras ($149 each). Amazon sends an alert to your phone the morning of delivery with a specific time window for your package’s arrival. Amazon tells you when the delivery van arrives so you can start watching the livestream of the person entering your house to monitor their activity. (You can watch a recording if you miss the delivery.)

Drivers are instructed to knock first, just to make sure they don’t accidentally walk in on someone. If no one answers, they request the door to unlock with their handheld scanner. Amazon verifies the package and delivery address and unlocks the door. No codes are given to the driver. The door is opened just enough to slide the package inside and the delivery person asks Amazon to relock the door. After which, you receive another notification that the package has been delivered.

If you live in an apartment building or have a front gate, it’s a little more complicated, but Amazon says you can securely share any necessary main entrance code via the Amazon Key app.

Amazon is hoping you’ll use this wholistic approach to remote entry to go beyond package delivery and bring other Amazon-related services directly into your home. According to the Key site, “In the coming months, Amazon Key will provide customers with a convenient way to provide unattended access to professional service providers. This includes services from home cleaning experts Merry Maids and pet sitters and dog walkers from Rover.com, as well as over 1,200 services from Amazon Home Services.”

Amazon’s announcement follows Wal-Mart’s announced partnership with August smart locks and Deliv to offer fridge-to-fridge delivery. And while both Amazon and Wal-Mart are definitely cognizant of the security concerns, they both sense a bigger opportunity. As we wrote previously:

According to a survey conducted by NextMarket Insights on behalf of Comcast/August Home in early 2016, about 30% of online consumers said they would give temporary access to a service professional such as a house cleaner or delivery person. While that’s well below a majority, it’s probably enough to encourage Amazon and Walmart that there’s a market for this.

Amazon Key is starting off is small, with availability in only 37 cities across the U.S..

Which brings me back to my mom. I don’t imagine people her age will plunge into letting complete strangers into their home, but that reluctance seems like it might fade with successive generations (plus, she’s retired and home more often). Personally, I’m skeptical, but after reading all of the measures Amazon has put in place, I might be willing to try it. I imagine younger generations for whom riding in a stranger’s car or staying at their house will be even more open to the idea.

Walmart & Amazon Want To Send People Inside Our Homes. Will We Let Them?

A couple weeks ago, Walmart announced an agreement with August Home and Deliv to create a direct-to-fridge delivery service. The idea is to use August’s smart access technology to grant temporary access to a delivery person to place the groceries inside a customer’s fridge.

And last week, word leaked that Amazon was also working on its own direct-to-fridge delivery effort by developing a smart doorbell (one would assume the doorbell would also connect an electronic access control product like a smart lock). Both efforts are intended to add extra convenience for consumers and address the problems of unattended delivery.

This got me to thinking: as the epic battle for the future of grocery delivery extends from our doorstep and into our icebox, how many of us will let total strangers into our homes for a little extra convenience?

According to a survey conducted by NextMarket Insights on behalf of Comcast/August Home in early 2016, about 30% of online consumers said they would give temporary access to a service professional such as a house cleaner or delivery person. While that’s well below a majority, it’s probably enough to encourage Amazon and Walmart that there’s a market for this.

And there should be. The problems of “unattended delivery” are real; food left on your porch can get stolen or spoil, particularly if you spend long stretches of time at work or outside the home.  There are many consumers who would gladly adopt technology such as a smart doorbell/smart lock if it meant their groceries were safe and cold when they got home.

Still, I’m not completely sure if we’ll ever see a majority of Americans trusting enough to let complete strangers into our homes.  My wife and I have had home cleaners come twice a month for about a decade, but I didn’t feel comfortable with them being alone in our homes until after a year or so had passed and I got to to know them personally. How many of us ever get to know our grocery delivery guy?

Historically as consumers, our comfort levels rise as we get more accustomed to new situations enabled by technology. Take Uber or Airbnb. Ten years ago most of us would have scoffed at the idea at getting into a strangers car or sleeping in a person’s home. Now it’s considered perfectly normal.

But will we ever have that same level of comfort with unattended access? It’s our home, after all, not someone else’s.  My guess is that slightly more consumers will get comfortable with the idea of letting strangers into their homes, but not a whole lot more.

And that’s probably fine with Walmart and Amazon, both of which are working on other alternatives such as grocery pickup, drones and locker access. And who knows, maybe Amazon is working on refrigerated version of a storage locker us less trusting types could install our our doorstep.

Sonos gets Alexa (and soon Google and Siri)

If you’re like me, Amazon’s Echo plays a central role in your kitchen. Player of music, answerer of questions, setter of timers, forecaster of weather. The Echo is super convenient, but the sound quality is definitely lacking.

Since it was announced last year, I’ve eagerly anticipated the marriage of Alexa’s voice control with the room-filling sound of Sonos Play speakers. Today, Sonos announced that Alexa integration is finally here, along with a new Sonos One speaker with Alexa built in — as well as forthcoming Google Assistant and Siri support.

For existing Sonos and Alexa owners, the Amazon connected assistant is available via a Sonos app beta update available today. With it, you’ll be able to control your Sonos speakers with your voice via the Echo and Echo Dot.

With the Sonos One (available October 24), Sonos is vying to become Switzerland of connected home assistants. The $199 speaker sports Alex integration out of the box, with support for Google Assistant and Siri (via iOS) coming in 2018.

This is probably the best position for Sonos to take as it feels the squeeze between cumbersome traditional high-end audio and the more convenient but lower fidelity smart home devices like the Echo. The timing is good too, given that today Google unveiled its beefy Google Home Max smart speaker and the upcoming Apple Homepod bills itself as having superior audio. Being agnostic to your assistant ecosystem of choice could give Sonos an edge and a chance to regain some lustre.

We had three Sonos speakers in our house, and almost immediately stopped using all of them once we got an Amazon Echo. Despite having worse sound, the device was in the kitchen, so it was more convenient to where our family mostly congregates. It’s such a high-class problem, but after experiencing Alexa’s voice control, running to get my phone to control my speaker felt like so much… work.

But was we played more music in the kitchen — whether to cook to, do homework by, or just throw an impromptu dance party — sound quality became more important. My pre-Sonos One solution was to plug an Echo Dot into a Sonos Play:5, but that takes up a lot of counter space, has dangling cords and can make it harder for Alexa to hear my voice. With its smaller footprint and newer technology, the Sonos One becomes an interesting proposition.

Walmart Jumps Gun on Google Home Mini

There have been rumblings (and pictures) of a Google Home Mini for a few weeks now. Google’s answer to Amazon’s Echo Dot was expected to be unveiled at Google’s hardware event tomorrow — but someone over at Walmart had an itchy trigger finger and accidentally posted the product for pre-order today.

Whoops.

According to 9to5 Google, the Home Mini will cost $49 and available to order on October 19th. From that article:

There’s still a lot we don’t know about the device through this listing, such as its audio specifications. It does, however, tell us the weight which is under a pound and the size which is 4.53 x 4.53 x 4.72 inches. Unfortunately, one of the images does hint at the power port, and it looks a lot like microUSB.

The Google Home Mini reportedly acts just like the full-sized Google Home connected assistant, giving you news, playing music, answering questions, etc.

One thing I can’t tell from the pictures posted is whether there is a line out jack (so you can plug the Home Mini directly into a bigger speaker like the Sonos Play 5), like the Echo Dot offers. It doesn’t look like there’s one, which is a bummer.

Regardless, this is welcome news if you’re in the Google ecosystem and looking to expand the number of those connected assistants around your house. By offering a lower-priced offering, Google hopes to goose sales for voice assistant platform, much like Amazon saw with the Echo Dot.

 

Beyond The Countertop: June Introduces Intelligent Wall Oven For $1,995

June, the company behind the intelligent countertop convection oven, has introduced its first wall oven, the June Pro.

The June Pro, available for sale today on the company’s website for $1,995, comes in a 24″ wall model, with other sizes to be made available soon. In addition to being the company’s first wall oven, the June Pro will have the same features which made the original June stand out, such as in-oven HD camera, fast-heat carbon fiber heating elements, app control, and automatic software updates. The June Pro’s internal dimensions are the same as the countertop model, with a height of 12.8 inches, 19.6 inches wide, with a depth of 19 inches. The June Pro, which is expected to ship within 30 days, comes with “white glove” installation service.

I caught up with June’s CEO, Matt Van Horn, by phone to talk about their new product. When asked about the biggest difference between the June Pro and other ovens, he didn’t hesitate.

“The best feature of the June is it’s the first appliance to get better over time instead of worse,” said Van Horn. “All the learning we are able to collect from consumers that make it available to us, all that gets pushed into software updates.”

The June Pro wall oven

While some Wi-Fi capable ovens from other manufacturers such as GE have added new software features in the field such as Alexa compatibility, June takes it to another level. Van Horn pointed to a recent software update that June rolled out a few weeks ago that added slow cooker and warming drawer capability to existing June countertop ovens.

“We literally build new appliances in software,” said Van Horn. “We researched slow cookers and figured out how to do that with our current hardware.” The new slow cooker and warming drawer feature will be available in the wall ovens as well according to Van Horn.

One of the selling points of the June countertop oven was its ability to identify foods using an internal HD camera, which provided the necessary information for the oven to initiate an adaptive cooking program as well as monitor the progress of a cook.  When it first shipped last December, the original June could identify up to twenty-five food types, a number that was expected to increase over time.  While Van Horn wouldn’t tell me how many foods the original June could now identify over half a year after shipping, he did point to how continuous changes to the June OS allows the company to make improvements to the June’s adaptive cooking programs.

“One of the biggest complaints from customers was our bacon cook program,” said Van Horn.  When the company analyzed the data, they realized one of the most important variables when cooking bacon was the number of slices.  Cooking one slice of bacon required a completely different cook program than when cooking nine slices of bacon. Eventually, they adapted the program, so the oven automatically accounts for the number of slices (the internal camera will identify this) while also allowing for the user to input variables such as desired crispiness in the June app.

“We turned one a one sized fit all bacon program into 36 bacon programs,” said Van Horn.

One big positive with June’s new product is it is much more in line with pricing for its product category. While the first June oven had many features which set it apart from others in its general category, it was hard for many to accept a price point that was five to ten times more than other countertop convection ovens. At $1,995, the June Pro is a bit more pricey than some other 24″ wall ovens but doesn’t induce the same kind of sticker shock as the original June (which will, for now, remain priced at $1,495).

I’m also interested to see if and when the June Pro becomes available through brick and mortar retail. Like the June countertop oven, the June Pro will first only be available through the company’s website (the original June can now be bought through Amazon). While I realize going to brick and mortar retail would require the company to give up significant margin, I still think many consumers want to see how an oven looks built into a kitchen, even if that kitchen is a display unit in a Home Depot.

My biggest critique of the June Pro is its small internal dimensions. At the same exact size as the June countertop, it’s one cubic foot interior is much smaller inside than traditional 24″ ovens, which usually come with a five cubic foot cooking chamber. Consumers used to multiple oven racks or cooking tall items will probably pass on this device. Based on this, it will be interesting to see if future ovens offer a larger internal capacity.

Despite this, I think this is a big announcement for June. Simply having a built in oven product opens the company up to a whole new set of consumers.  Discriminating cooks who want access to high-end cooking features often available only in professional ovens that go for $10 thousand or more can now access some of those in an oven for two thousand bucks while not having to give up counter space to do it.

Hear June CTO Nikhil Bhogal speak at Smart Kitchen Summit in Seattle on October 10-11, 2017. Use the discount code SPOON to get 25% off of tickets. 

Group That Brought Us Wireless Charging Wants To Do Away With Power Cords In The Kitchen

Appliance garage getting tangled up with power cords?

Not to worry. Eventually, those pesky power cables may some day be a problem of the past. That’s because the Wireless Power Consortium, the same group behind the Qi wireless charging standard, has set its sights beyond mobile phones and now hopes to change how appliances are powered in the kitchen.

Imagine A Cordless Kitchen

So what would a cordless kitchen look like? Not unlike those futuristic videos you’ve probably seen, one where everyday surfaces like kitchen countertops and tables can send power to products ranging from coffee makers to cookware.

In a white paper published by the WPC in February, the group highlights a few key use cases, two of which are illustrated in the artist rendering below.

Using cordless appliances on a kitchen counter. Image credit: Wireless Power Consortium/Philips

The first image on the left is one where a small kitchen appliance like a blender is powered without the need for a cable. In the second image on the right, the counter acts not only as a source of heat using induction heating, but also utilizes wireless power technology to enable communication between the cookware and the heat source to set the appropriate power for high-precision cooking.

How Does It Work?

How will wireless power in the kitchen work? Like the Qi standard for smaller devices like phones, the KWG will use induction charging, where a magnetic power coil (MPC) in the surface couples with a second coil in the appliance.

If you are familiar with induction heating for cooking, this utilizes the same induction power transfer concepts, only in this case instead of heating a pan or other piece of cookware, the power is converted back to electricity.

The KWG has settled on NFC as the primary communication technology in part because it is safer. One obvious safety benefit of NFC is the technology requires close proximity for communication, which means practically zero chance of an appliance communicating with the wrong transmitter.

A Long Cook Cycle

The history of the Wireless Power’s Kitchen Working Group (KWG) dates back to 2013 when consumer electronics giants Philips and Haier started pushing the WPC to look at developing a kitchen standard.

Four years later, the group is still busy plugging away and, while things are moving slowly, the group chaired by Hans Kaublau is still working towards a world where kitchen cords are a thing of the past.

Why are things moving so slowly?

According to Kablau, there are few reasons. One is it’s simply taken some time to get wireless power charging to the point where it can power appliances. Qi, the WPC’s first standard, took years to develop, starting in 2009 with 5W power requirement and in 2015 bumping that up to 15W capability (medium power). This year, the WPC hopes to enable charging of high power devices with 100W capability.

Second is it takes time to get buy in from all the major stakeholders. While Haier and Philips were there from the beginning, the group has yet to get buy in from appliance giants Whirlpool and Electrolux.

Another challenge may be a divided industry. There continues to be something of a wireless power standards battle going on, with the Airfuel Alliance developing a different set of technologies for wireless power that utilizes resonant charging, a technology that offers benefits over WPC’s inductive charging such as longer ranges for power transfer. The Airfuel Alliance, which is backed by technology powerhouses like Qualcomm and Samsung and battery giant Duracell, doesn’t have a kitchen-focused initiative, but does say the technology can be used for “kitchen applications”.

All of this still that hasn’t stopped the two founding companies of WPG’s Kitchen Working Group from working on prototypes. In 2016, Philips showed off a prototype on Fuji TV in Japan of an electric fryer with wireless power. You can see the video of the product in action below:

Cordless Kitchen Demonstration by Philips with Würth Elektronik Coils

The KWG is hoping to finalize the version 0.9 specification by the end of 2017. The specification has largely been defined but is currently being tested by the working group.

As a result, “we could be looking at products out next year,” said Kablau.

While I am excited for a future where we see cords go away and all our kitchen appliances are magically charged simply by setting them down on the counter, I suspect such a future is still a long way off.  One only has to look at how slow induction heating has been to take off in the US to see how resistant the traditional kitchen and appliance makers – as well as consumers – are to change.

Still, that doesn’t mean I’m not excited for the future of the cordless kitchen.  There are clear benefits of dropping power cords, whether it means a more orderly countertop or the greater safety of no cords on wet surfaces, and with cordless kitchen products debuting as soon as next year, it might be time for the industry and consumers to start getting excited as well.

If you want to hear Wireless Power Consortium Char Hans Kablau speak about the cordless kitchen, make sure to come to the Smart Kitchen Summit in October. Use the discount code SPOON for 25% off of tickets.

Wallflower Adds To Growing List Of Startups Trying To Prevent Kitchen Fires

Kitchen fires are a problem.

According to National Fire Protection Association, almost half of all home fires are caused by cooking equipment. Most of those are due to inattention, either because we get distracted, busy or may be suffering from some age-induced memory issue.

Cooking equipment cause nearly half of all home fires

But here’s the good news: there are a new crop of companies trying to bring modern approaches to kitchen fire prevention. The newest of these companies is Wallflower, which announced their Smart Monitor kitchen fire monitoring product this week.

The Wallflower is slightly different than the other kitchen fire-prevention devices launched over the past couple years in that it’s a lower-cost, alerting-only system. The others, like InnoHome and Inirv, automatically shut-off the stove in addition to alerting the home owner.

Why did Wallflower decide to make an alert-only system? According to company CEO Victor Jablokov, the main reason was to provide a lower-cost device with simple features. He explains their thinking in a Medium post:

“One of the biggest challenges companies face when developing new products is deciding which features to release first. Every feature, no matter how small, must be scrutinized to judge its benefits to the end customer. Smart companies know that must-have features should make it into the first release, and nice-to-have features don’t. Too many companies make the mistake of piling every possible feature on their first product. Usually, that ends up making the product more expensive, more complicated, and more confusing than necessary. The end result? Weak sales.”

According to Jablokov, not having a shut-off feature wasn’t that big a deal with beta testers. He said, almost without exception, everyone who received an alert was close enough to come and shut off their stoves themselves.

This makes sense. To me it’s analogous to a smoke alarm or a DIY home security system, where alerts are intended to get the home owner to take action.

That said, I think many will be willing to pay extra for the a fire prevention device that will shut off their stove, especially those who suffer from mobility issues or just just want an extra layer of prevention.

Below I’ve put together a comparison guide for each of the kitchen fire prevention startups, including Wallflower, InnoHome, IGuardFire and Inirv.

Comparison of products focused on kitchen fire prevention

The Kenmore-Amazon Deal Examined

Last week, Sears and Amazon announced a partnership that will bring the Kenmore brand of appliances to Amazon.com. The deal, which also brings Amazon’s smart home voice assistant Alexa to the Kenmore lineup of smart appliances, marks the first time in Kenmore’s hundred plus years the iconic appliance brand will sold through a non-Sears channel.

The reaction to this deal was mixed. Wall Street loved the idea of Kenmore tapping into Amazon’s retail savvy and Alexa platform, while others saw the deal as something of a white flag for Sears.

The reality is this deal has many net positives – and a few downsides – for both. Let’s break it down for each side:

Sears/Kenmore

Sears’ struggles over the past few years are no secret, and with more stores closing every year, it’s no surprise that Kenmore’s market share has also been shrinking. By virtue of its up-to-now exclusivity with Sears, the appliance brand has simply been in less storefronts every year, which has meant less opportunity to capture the consumer dollar..

Sears stores 2010-2016. Source: Business Insider

The Kenmore brand has also lost some luster over the past decade, as Gen-Xers and Millennials have looked at new entrants into the appliance market such as Samsung and LG. The brand is, in many ways,  mom and dad’s (or grandma and grandpa’s) appliance brand, so the addition of Alexa smarts could give the brand a well-needed upgrade.

The deal also allows Sears to keep its most popular remaining brand. Last year, the company sold the Craftsman brand to Black & Decker, which gave the company a liquidity lifeline, but also meant it was beginning to cut into bone as it struggled to turn itself around.

Long term, however, the deal still doesn’t seem to change the long-term trajectory for Sears. The company’s existing retail format is expensive and outdated and this does nothing to change that. If anything, it could mean less sales of Kenmore appliances in Sears storefronts as more are sold online through Amazon, which could accelerate store closures long term.

Amazon

The deal for Amazon is almost (but not entirely) net-positive. Not only do they get a semi-exclusive distribution deal as the Kenmore brand’s only non-Sears sales channel, but it also likely locks the Alexa platform in as Kenmore’s primary voice interface.

Long term, it also makes Amazon a bigger player in white goods and appliances. While it’s unclear if Amazon would launch their own brand of appliances – my gut tells me they probably wouldn’t – you can never rule anything out with Amazon.

The biggest downside for Amazon? How this deal could benefit other voice assistant and smart home platforms.

Think about it: For other Amazon appliance partners, the deal probably is a bit of an annoyance. After making much of their CES this year about Alexa integration, Whirlpool probably can’t help but be a little annoyed with this deal. This deal will reinforce the reality that while an Amazon Alexa integration is necessary, it would be wise to not put all your eggs in the Alexa basket.

The deal could also have an upside for Google and Apple. While many appliance companies have already done Nest integrations and have been working on Google Assistant integration, this deal will likely push them to push down on the gas pedal. For Apple, who has been moving fairly slowly with HomeKit and Siri integration, this could serve as an opportunity to evangelize their platforms in the face of growing dominance of Alexa’s voice assistant in the smart home.

If you want to hear the head of Kenmore innovation, Chris McGugan, talk about this deal, make sure to not to miss the Smart Kitchen Summit. Just use the discount code SPOON to get 25% off of tickets. 

Embracing Chaos: How Some Are Turning To Tech To Reinvent The Supermarket

The grocery store landscape is changing fast. Retail food palaces are simultaneously going big, small, mobile and even virtual to please millennial consumers who want it now, want it digital and want it delivered. At the same time, this rapidly growing audience wants it fresh and healthy. Add in technology, which has become a weapon for giant grocery chains, start-ups and food-tech visionaries who see such tools as AI, virtual reality, predictive algorithms and mobile apps as paths to new models of buying food, and the result is a market hurtling towards chaos.

One person embracing the chaos is Tomas Mazetti. Mazetti is the person behind Moby, a grocery store of the future concept that the Swedish inventor/activist created in partnership with China’s Hefei University.

One crucial part of this project is Himalayafy, a spinoff of Mazetti’s bicycle-powered coffee cart business Wheelys.  Himalayafy is the brains and infrastructure for the Moby store—an autonomous, staff less store that is open 24 hours a day. Portable and self-contained, the future for the concept is to economically offer fresh groceries to people who live in remote and rural areas where a large-scale retail supermarket is difficult to sustain. One Moby store can handle a number of underserved areas because it can easily move from one location to another.

“The biggest costs to have a store are the place itself to rent in a central city–it’s ultra-expensive–and the staff is really expensive, and we’re removing both of these at the same time,” Mazetti told Fast Company.

When customers enter the Moby structure, they are met by an AI-powered hologram with purchases scanned and track during the shopping process. Much like Amazon’s proposed grocery store experiment, shoppers need not wait in a checkout line at the end of the process.

Software and AI power Moby to manage its inventory and drive to a local warehouse for restocking when needed. In an area with more than one Moby, the stores can replenish one another when products run out. The delivery process for sharing goods could be handled by drones.

“It’s common in stores that one store has run out of milk, another has run out of eggs, but both of them need to have a truck go back and forth to a warehouse,” added Mazetti. “We can ship these products in between, so we don’t need to go back and forth these long distances to rural areas to do this.”

As one of the global hotspots for mobile payments, Shanghai was chosen for the beta test of Moby. That location also is prime because it’s the site of the manufacturing facility that builds Wheelys coffee carts. One issue to overcome is the restriction of fully autonomous cars on Chinese roads. Mazetti hopes to roll out Moby stores on a large scale in 2018 with many of the purchases made by communities where residents band together to purchase this grocery store of the future.

It’s not just upstarts like Matettiz who are using tech to reimagine the supermarket.

Tesco, the giant British grocery chain, took its retailing expertise, knowledge of the South Korean market and emerging digital prowess and built its virtual supermarket in 2011 at a popular subway station. After downloading the Homeplus app, users can scan the CR codes on strategically placed posters that resemble the aisles of a grocery store. Orders are generally delivered the same day.

Just four years later, there were 22 Homeplus virtual stores in South Korea, and today the brand is the country’s No. 1 online retailer.

Your Face Is Your Key: Exploring Facial Recognition with TrueFace’s Shaun Moore

Back in 2014, Shaun Moore and his cofounder Nezare Chafni started selling a consumer video doorbell called Chui with facial recognition technology. They eventually realized the future of the company was not in doorbells, but in developing robust facial recognition and detection technology that could be applied to a variety of scenarios.

TrueFace.ai was born.

In the podcast, Shaun and I talk about those early days, the hyper competitive video doorbell market, the decision to pivot to becoming an enterprise facial detection technology provider and how this technology will eventually be applied to nearly any situation where personal authentication  is required.

Food Network, Scripps Takes a Small Step into the Guided Cooking Fray

Food Network is jumping on board the guided cooking bandwagon. Well, sort of.

The folks at Scripps Lifestyle Studios have taken the long-time Food Network app, In the Kitchen, and added a voice assistant to its functionality. The logic behind the update was that many cooks can’t easily interact with their digital screens when their hands are immersed in dough or other sticky, gooey food prep items. The add-on feature called “Cook with Me,” uses a one-way voice assistant named “Sage” (clever, huh). A cook starts by searching on his or her favorite Food TV recipe.  By using the “Cook with Me” feature, the chef simply says “Sage, next,” and the step-by-step instructions will move on to the next screen.

Yes, it is cool except for the fact the app does not speak the steps; the home chef must read the screen to move from slicing vegetables to adding cheese (in the case of Fresh Corn Tomato Salad). There is an ingredients tab for the recipe which lists everything you will need to make Fresh Corn Tomato Salad. However, the ingredients list section is not voice enabled.

While a cool, new feature, “Cook with Me” offers some ergonomic issues, especially for those who only own small screen digital toys such as an iPhone. Those with micro-sized kitchens (and less-than-perfect visual acuity) may be hard pressed to find the perfect spot to use the app without straining their eyes. It is, however, a small step toward Food Network recognizing the need for guided cooking technology.

Food Network and Scripps may have a long way to go to compete with a host of smart early adopters who has hooked up with Amazon to use its Echo voice assistant set of products to provide recipe search and step-by-step cooking instructions but they are making progress elsewhere. For example, the company recently announced it has updated its popular Alexa skill for the new Amazon Echo Show, making it easier for users to get inspired, explore what they’re in the mood for, and enjoy recipe videos and preview images that enhance the value and enjoyment of their cooking experience.

Heading the pack of those aligned with Amazon’s Echo (aka Alexa) in the world of step-by-step guided cooking is Meredith’s Allrecipes.

Introducing the AllRecipes Skill for Amazon Alexa! | Cooking Skills | Allrecipes.com

While perhaps not powered by Food Network’s roster of celebrity chefs, the Echo-Allrecipes functionality is rather robust. Cooks can search for recipes or ideas by ingredient or sets of ingredients. Need something cooked in a short time frame—just tell Alexa and she (it is a woman’s voice, after all) will comb through the tens of thousands recipes and find a suitable one for any purpose. If you’re using the Echo Show visual skill and the recipe has a video, you can use your voice to watch the video, pause when you need it, watch it again.

For Amazon—especially with its recent Whole Foods bid—guided, interactive cooking is one more weapon in the home grocery delivery business. “Allrecipes, I’d like to make a soufflé….Wait, I don’t have any eggs…Please send me over a dozen Grade A-s.” Within 30 minutes, Amazon Fresh pulls up to my house. You get the picture.

As with anything that Amazon touches, the data is as important as any element of the applications. It’s not clear what data-sharing agreement exists between publisher Meredith and the Seattle digital retailer. The opportunity for the home cook asking for recipes can yield significant data Amazon could use to sell. This could range from cookware and small appliances to specialty food products.

Google Home is not without its recipe skills. The search engine giant has teamed up with Bon Appetit, The New York Times and Food Network to amass a cache of around five million recipes.

And of course, there’s always Microsoft’s Cortana. Having just quietly launched their own hardware product, the software giant across Lake Washington from Amazon can’t be left out of the picture entirely. At the time of the launch of the Invoke in May, The company has five AI skills that are food related, with guided cooking offered via Food Network, Cook.ai and mixology from Bartender.

Curious About The Echo Show? Here’s My ‘One Day’ Review

The Echo Show arrived this week. Like many, I was excited to put the latest addition to the Echo lineup through its paces.

Welcome to my one day review.

Why write a review after using a product one day? Doesn’t one need to spend weeks – maybe even months – with a product like the Echo Show to really understand the possibilities of this complicated and interesting new product?

Yes, but here’s the thing: For most products, you also are able to notice things right away. Not unlike a first date when you show up at the restaurant and notice your date for the night has three eyebrows or is a loud talker, there are things you notice right away when you’re around someone or something.

So here goes:

Out of Box Experience

The install experience was painless, quick and well optimized. Once I pulled the Show out of the box and plugged it in, it walked (and talked) me through the installation.

The device found my Wi-Fi network, had me enter my password, and within a minute it had checked in with the cloud and knew this was Michael Wolf’s new Echo Show. The Show started to download a software update, which took about five minutes. Overall, the product was installed and running in 10 minutes.

The Sound

For about five minutes, I thought this device sounded horrible. Then I saw the layer of protective plastic over the speaker.

This is why I don’t write five minute reviews.

Plastic removed, the Echo Show sounds good. Not quite as good as my Sonos Play 3, but it could give my Play 1 a run for its money.  Turned up, the Echo Show is fairly loud.

Volume is controllable via Alexa, but it also has volume up and down buttons on top of the device, which I like. Sometimes you just like old fashioned physical buttons.

The Echo Show Shape and Look

Like many this week, I was surprised at the beefiness of the Show when it arrived at my house. This is mostly due to Amazon’s early press images and videos which showed the the latest Echo mainly from the front of the device. When you actually see the Show in all its glory, it’s a lot deeper than you expect.

So Amazon intended for you to mainly see the Show from one side: its front. This is clear not only because of how deep and heavy the back side of the Show is, but also because the sides of the device are angled inward. It reminded me of those early big screen TVs before everything became ultra-thin.

Because of these angled sides, you can walk from side to side and still have the illusion that this is a thin device. See video below:

Given the shape of the device, it works best against a wall. While I’m sure that with so many of today’s modern kitchens having islands, I’m sure many Echo Shows will end up stranded one one (sorry), but I’d suggest putting it up against a backsplash as it just looks better.

The device’s front screen leans ever-so-slightly backward. When I pushed the device with my hand and tried to tip it over from the front, it stuck stubbornly in place. It’s clear that Amazon gave some thought to how this device would sit on a surface like a kitchen counter as people and things moved around it and possibly bump into it.

Visual Information + Voice = Game Changer

Here’s something I realized right away: By finally giving Alexa a screen, Amazon has opened up immense new possibilities for potential applications and content opportunities.

This may sound like an overstatement, but it isn’t.

The main reason for this is the powerful combination of synchronized voice control/visual information. While the Amazon visual skill cupboard is slightly bare at this point, you can see from what few samples there are that by adding visual information, Amazon’s created a new and exciting direction for the Echo.

I spent the most time with new Allrecipes visual skill. While the skill feels very much like a 1.0 effort (I’ll have a review of the Allrecipes skill soon), but I can nonetheless see the potential. I was able to bring up recipes, pick one I like, browse the ingredients and cooking instructions.

But the coolest feature of the Allrecipes app was the ability to play and pause videos.  This is really important because if you’re like me, you like to watch and rewatch videos as you move through the cook process.

At the risk of being repetitive, let me say it again: it’s this combination of voice search and command with visually rich information in a shared-screen computing device is by far the most exciting thing about the Echo Show.

There are other aspects about having an always on screen that are important. The “sleep screen” info on the Echo Show is unobtrusive, natural and well placed. Maybe because Amazon has had so much practice creating sleep screen content  with the Kindle, but it’s clear Amazon thought about placing interesting and relevant info on a device. With the Echo Show, the device not only shows basic temperature and time info, but it scrolls through headlines, suggestions for using, etc.

The Camera

Of course, the camera’s most obvious benefit is the ability to communicate with others via voice chat. While I haven’t done a drop-in with my own Show yet, I did try it out in store at Amazon Books and the video quality seems really good.

Less obvious is the camera is being used as a sensor. When I turn out the lights the screen soon goes into soft-light mode, which I thought was a nice feature. And while it is early days for the Show, I expect at some point Amazon will unlock other computer vision capabilities that could really unlock contextually relevant information.

“I Would Use That”

When it comes to Alexa and our first two Echo devices, let’s just say my wife Tiffany has been indifferent to annoyed. Sure, she’ll ask Alexa to play music, but for the most part doesn’t see the value.

But after a few minutes playing with Echo Show, she was sold.

She tried out the Allrecipes app. She searched for a recipe and tried the video feature and liked it. She started, paused, played a video of making a strawberry smoothie, something my daughter wanted to make.

After a few minutes, my wife said, “this is something I would use.”

And of course, she then suggested I get rid of another one of my kitchen gadgets taking up counter space in order to put this one in the kitchen.

But hey, progress, right?