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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

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What Amazon Did (and Didn’t) Mention in its Holiday Sales Press Release

With Christmas now over it’s time for the annual releasing of the vague holiday sales stats from Amazon! This year, Bezos’ behemoth did not disappoint and shared with us a press announcement filled with unspecific terms like “record breaking” and “millions more.”

As we said back in November, though these puff pieces from Amazon are light on actual hard content, they are good to check in on and parse through if only to get even an iota of understanding as to what’s selling (and what Amazon is pushing) during one of the busiest shopping times of the year.

However, it might be most interesting to start with what Amazon was not touting this year: namely, it’s Alexa-powered microwave. Sure, a microwave probably isn’t topping a whole lot of holiday wish lists, but Amazon debuted the inexpensive device with plenty of fanfare earlier this year, in plenty of time for the holiday season. Plus, Amazon took the time in this press release to highlight how robust sales were for other mundane-and-not-necessarily-holiday-wishlist-toppers like Blink connected security camera, Amazon Smart Plug, Ring Video Doorbell 2, and TP-Link Kasa Smart Plug Mini Outlet.

Perhaps the middling to negative reviews of the Amazon microwave turned people off. But for a device that is meant to showcase how an Alexa integration could/should work, it’s absence from a year end wrap up — even in the vaguest terms — still stands out.

Also, last year’s holiday press release gave a specific shout out to the then just launched Amazon Key in-home delivery service. No mention of that this year either. Is this a change in strategy, or do people just not want to give strangers access to their front door? (Or both?)

But back to what the company did sell:

Echo devices. Amazon said it sold “millions more Amazon Devices this holiday season compared to last year – the best-selling Amazon Devices this holiday included all-new Echo Dot, Fire TV Stick 4K with all-new Alexa Voice Remote, and Echo.” The emphasis is ours there, since the company said it sold “tens of millions” of Alexa-enabled devices during the 2017 holiday season. It’s important to keep an eye on sales of voice assistants because whoever grabs the most market share will help determine who dominates the smart kitchen/home of the not-too-distant future.

Other food-related bits from the Amazon holiday round up include:

  • Shopping via Alexa tripled this year compared to last.
  • The DASH rapid egg cooker was a top-seller at the new Amazon Four Star store. (Probably because it is amazing.)
  • Customers nearly tripled the number of requested recipes this holiday season over last year and asked Alexa for cooking-related advice twice as much.
  • “Alexa helped mix hundreds of thousands of cocktails this holiday season – with eggnog and Moscow Mule being the most requested drinks.” (Last year Alexa only helped make “tens of thousands” of cocktails with Martini and Manhattan being the most requested.)
  • Theo Dark Chocolate Bar, Cacao with Sea Salt and the fresh chicken bahn mi sandwich were top sellers at Amazon Go stores.
  • The best-selling items for Prime Now pick up at Whole Foods were organic honeycrisp apples, boneless/skinless chicken breasts, and Atlantic farm-raised salmon filets.
  • The fastest grocery delivery was in St. Paul, MN, where that grocery order got to its destination in 12 minutes and 19 seconds.
  • Boston, Hoboken, NJ and San Francisco were the cities with the most grocery delivery via Prime Now and Whole Foods.

So that puts a bow on this Christmas. Join us again next year for this holiday tradition, when we’ll see if “thousands of people” have bought an Amazon House.

Surprise! Amazon Says it Sold a Lot of Amazon Devices (and Instant Pots, too!)

Amazon put out a news release today touting its record-breaking holiday shopping weekend. And, in what will come as a shock to absolutely no one, the company said the best-selling products across all categories sold on Amazon.com were Amazon devices like the Amazon Echo Dot, which Amazon just happened to put on sale… on Amazon.

Get where we’re going with this?

The retail giant is always vague on details, and this release proved no exception, saying only that it was the “Biggest holiday shopping weekend ever for Echo devices, with millions sold worldwide—all-new Echo Dot was the #1 selling product on Amazon globally, from any manufacturer, in any category.”

FWIW, last December, when Amazon released a similar batch of vague statistics, the company reported selling “tens of millions of Alexa-enabled devices” worldwide over the entire 2017 holiday season.

OK, obviously Amazon releasing glowing stats about Amazon devices sold at a discount is a total corporate puffery, and I am complicit in writing about it. But, as vague as these stats may be, they are important to consider as more people adopt smart kitchen tech. Amazon’s Alexa is locked in a battle with Google Home to be your preferred voice ecosystem. Dominating voice control could in turn determine which kitchen appliances you buy, or impact where you buy your groceries.

Hardware startups, software developers and appliance makers alike want to align with a winner when it comes to incorporating new smart tech into their products. Amazon can create its own dominance by dint of controlling one of the largest e-commerce companies on the planet. Consider that at last count, Amazon had 100 million Amazon Prime subscribers worldwide. That’s a huge user base to be potentially guided into buying an Amazon Echo device.

The more Echo devices are sold, the more people will want to use Alexa in their homes, which means more third-party support for even more devices and apps. The more third party devices and apps that incorporate Alexa means that Amazon is collecting even more of our data, which Amazon can then use to sell us more stuff, more of its own stuff (like groceries from Whole Foods) or even create more of its own devices like the Alexa microwave, which, now that we mention it, was not mentioned in the Amazon press release.

The point is, the more Amazon can flex its retail power, the more it can dominate the emerging world of smart assistants and voice control in our homes.

Alas, Alexa devices weren’t the only thing the company sold over the Thanksgiving to Cyber Monday shopping season. I throw this in here as just a bit of Amazon sales trivia, but Instant Pots continue to steamroll other kitchen appliances, with Amazon saying the Instant Pot DUO60 was also a top seller this past weekend. During the 2017 holiday season, the Instant Pot DUO80 was the top-selling kitchen item.

So take these numbers with the appropriate amount of salt, and be on the lookout for a release from Google touting its own Google Home Cyber Monday sales, followed by another holiday season recap from Amazon at the end of December.

What’s Going on with PantryChic?

As a journalist, it’s my job to ask questions. Sometimes, however, those questions go unanswered. At which point I have to choose between waiting for an answer, or writing up what I have so far. After months of trying to get updates, it seems like it’s time to stop waiting for answers and just ask the question out loud: What’s going on with PantryChic?

PantryChic is the connected storage system that doubles as a precision dry goods dispenser. The company was actually a sponsor of the first Smart Kitchen Summit as well as a Startup Showcase finalist in 2015. I, personally, was excited by PantryChic as I get pretty persnickety about measurements and following recipes exactly. So PantryChic’s ability to pour out exactly one quarter cup of flour was just what I need.

The Spoon first wrote about the product back in March of 2017, when we did a video demo of the product at the Housewares Show in Chicago. Mike Wolf wrote at the time:

Those looking to get their hands on a PantryChic won’t have much longer to wait. Christopher [Lee, Co-Founder] told me they’ve secured funding and found a manufacturer and expect the PantryChic to ship this year.

2017 came and went, and the PantryChic did not ship.

Fast forward to March of 2018, when I did a video demo with PantryChic’s inventor and other co-founder, Nicole Lee, at this year’s Housewares Show in Chicago. She told me that the product would retail for $299 and was estimated to launch in August of this year.

August has come and gone and so far as I can tell, PantryChic is still not shipping. There’s no place to order on their website, and no mention of a shipping date. I emailed PantryChich in August, September and again last week to see what was happening with the product and have yet to hear back.

It could be nothing, or it could be a slight delay in manufacturing — that’s not uncommon for independent inventors to experience as the move from prototype to scaling. Perhaps the company is in deep, confidential talks with an appliance manufacturer, trying to do something along the lines of what Bartesian did with Hamilton Beach. That would be great!

But given the delay of more than a year at this point, plus the months-long radio silence, I’m left wondering if something more serious is going on. Especially since it’s been a rough year for independent food tech inventors. Cinder crashed and burned, HOPii went flat, and iGulu is still having all kinds of issues.

So what is going on with PantryChic? I can’t say for sure, but hopefully this won’t be the last time I write about them.

SKS 2018: 4 Ways Cooking in the Future Will Be Different

Yes, you’ll still have a kitchen in 10 years, but it won’t look the same. At the Smart Kitchen Summit, Jon Jenkins, Director of Engineering at Hestan Smart Cooking, and author Dana Cowin chatted with The Spoon’s Mike Wolf about ways in which our relationship to cooking and the kitchen is changing and what the heart of the home will look like in the future.

1. Our relationship to kitchen tech will be emotional.
“If you have a kitchen, you’re using technology,” Jenkins explained onstage, adding that the difference between now and the near future is your relationship to that technology. He noted that making food surfaces an emotional response for the cook, one that technology needs to be able to replicate. “If I hit a button, am I getting any joy from that at all?” Jenkins asked. “We need to be creating something better than just hitting a button.”

2. The screen is key to future kitchens.
Jenkins also noted the importance of screens in the kitchen, particularly for younger generations, who’ve grown up with iPads and video-enabled learning. “I think this notion of showing people how to do something is really important,” he said. Underscore that word “show” — although voice-enabled cooking tools do exist, the panelists generally agreed that visual help is more effective for, say, learning how to peel an apple.

3. Cooking will be a lifestyle, not an action.
Meanwhile, Cowin, who’s the former editor of Food & Wine, noted that despite the thousands of recipes the magazine has published over the years, many of its readers have never actually used them to cook. Rather, they just enjoyed the lifestyle around being a food enthusiast. “People compose rather than cook,” she said onstage.

4. Technology needs to address the entire food ecosystem.
Cowin also noted that foodtech should cater to more than just the food enthusiasts and people with substantial disposable income. How, for example, will the kitchen serve people of lesser means in the future? How will it help make the food system more sustainable? How will it affect workers? These and other “moral” questions will be ones appliance makers and other foodtech companies will need to address in future.

Check back for more posts throughout the day, and follow along for a steady stream of updates on our Twitter and Instagram feeds.

Would you Buy an Amazon House?

As I look around my house and see the number of Echo devices plugged in, look at the empty cardboard boxes piled up in my garage and finish watching season one of Forever on Prime Video, it doesn’t feel like much of a stretch to see how dependent I am on Amazon. At this point, maybe I should just say well, I’ve gone this far, it’s probably easier to just buy an Amazon house.

The idea of living in an Amazon house just got a little less crazy. Amazon announced today that its Alexa Fund has invested in Plant Prefab, a company that makes prefabricated houses. According to the Plant Prefab website, the company is:

“…the first home factory in the nation dedicated to sustainable construction, materials, processes, and operations. We believe homes can and should be built in ways that minimize their negative impact on energy, water, resources — and the health of the people who live in our homes and who build them.”

The CEO of Plant Prefab told Fast Company in an email:

“We will work with Amazon to integrate Alexa and other smart home technology they have into our standard home platforms… We’ll be working with them to create better integrated Alexa and other smart home technology solutions to help improve the quality of life and utility of people who live in the homes we build.”

Hooking up with a prefab home manufacturer does provide Amazon with an additional sales channel, and the company has been making moves to embed itself more deeply into the bones of our houses. Amazon purchased connected camera company Blink last December and followed that up with the purchase smart doorbell maker Ring in March. The company launched Key delivery, which uses a combination of smart locks and connected cameras to allow in-home delivery of packages while you’re out.

If that weren’t enough, at last week’s media event, Amazon unveiled its own brand of microwave, as well as new Echo devices which include a new Guard mode to listen for the sound of broken glass or a smoke alarm. It also announced a $25 smart plug to turn any appliance into a connected device. And if that weren’t enough, Amazon launched Connect Kit, which makes it easier for companies to create smart home devices.

But Plant Prefab doesn’t operate at the scale Amazon normally operates. It seems like there is, like always, a data side to this deal. Getting in with builders allows Amazon to understand on a neighborhood level where these types of new homes are being built, and small things like what different building codes are in various municipalities, and how new building materials perform. It could also give the company architectural know how to better integrate things like secure delivery boxes, or temperature controlled ones that require electricity for food delivery, directly into homes.

Or perhaps, Bezos can take this prefab building knowledge and put it to use as part of his recent philanthropy to help fight homelessness.

Whatever the reason, it’s clear Amazon isn’t just interested in our house, it wants to re-create our world. Smart technology will become a standard part of modern houses, whether that’s having the smarts built in or creating the space and modularity for easy wiring and installation of future technology.

The other question is, how will big will Amazon’s influence get in the home building space and how will that impact other players and professionals in the home electronics installation space, like those in CEDIA.

Whether or not Amazon becomes dominant in this space, or becomes another Sears Kit House remains to be seen. But building smart homes from the ground up is sure to be a topic we continually revisit. In fact, we’ll be holding a conversation with Bruce Thompson, CEO of Urbaneer about “Designing the Kitchen Ecosystem of the Future” at our upcoming Smart Kitchen Summit in a couple weeks. Get your ticket today to be a part of the conversation.

Whirlpool’s Brett Dibkey on How to Be Smart in the Smart Kitchen

Whirlpool made waves last year when it acquired Yummly, a popular recipe site, in order to boost their foothold in the smart kitchen space. With fingers in the grocery fulfillment and guided cooking pies, as well as a patent for an induction-powered sous vide cooking appliance, appliance giant Whirlpool is working hard to establish itself as a leader in the future kitchen space.

Next month, Brett Dibkey, Whirlpool’s Vice President of Brand Marketing, IoT, and Business Units, will return to the Smart Kitchen Summit (SKS) stage to talk about this very topic. We got to ask him a few questions in advance — on Yummly, IoT, and millennials — to get the smart kitchen juices flowing.

See the full Q&A below.

The Spoon: What role you do see Whirlpool and other connected appliance makers playing in the smart kitchen revolution?
Bretty Dibkey: Honestly, I don’t see Whirlpool’s role in the smart kitchen revolution any differently than our role in the (analog) kitchen revolution of the early 20th century. Like it was then, our focus today is on building and delivering products that create real meaningful value for consumers. While our definition of “products” may be changing, we remain obsessed with the principle of purposeful innovation. The smart kitchen will only be “smart” if the technology we deliver is purposeful and removes real friction from the lives of consumers. This is what we’re laser-focused on.

Last Whirlpool acquired smart recipe platform Yummly. How do you see this partnership furthering Whirlpool’s presence in the connected kitchen?
Whirlpool Corporation has unparalleled presence in the kitchen through our brands and product portfolio. Our brands, including Whirlpool, Maytag, KitchenAid, and JennAir, give us reach across major appliances, countertop appliances, cookware, and cutlery.

What we were missing prior to the Yummly acquisition was a digital platform to help tie the “physical” experiences of our products together. Yummly gives us a strong platform on which to build a digital presence that helps consumers address a variety of kitchen pain points — answering the “what’s for dinner” question, providing step-by-step guidance for new recipes, sending instructions to cooking appliances to ensure perfect results, and even replenishing out-of-stock ingredients.

With the rise in food delivery, some worry that kitchens will eventually become obsolete. Do you think that the kitchen will continue to be the heart of the home?
Certainly cooking habits and practices are changing, but I think the kitchen is far from becoming obsolete. Millennials, in particular, are concerned about nutrition and promoting healthy food attitudes with their children. I think because of this, the average millennial is cooking at home almost 5 times per week and nearly 90% say it’s something they’d like to get better at.

Our job at Whirlpool is to make products — both physical and digital — that enable and inspire all consumers to cook at home more. While cooking will always play a role in fulfilling a basic human need, I believe it is also increasingly becoming an outlet for creativity and passion. For this reason, I think the kitchen’s place as heart of the home will endure for many years.

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Thanks, Brett! If you want to see him speak more about rethinking business models in the era of food tech, snag your tickets to the Smart Kitchen Summit on October 8-9th in Seattle.

Amazon’s Small $60 Microwave Could Actually be a Big Deal

As rumored, Amazon today announced its own brand of microwave with Alexa voice control built right in. The AmazonBasics Microwave will cost a measly $60 and shows how the company will use voice to better understand customers (and sell to them), as well as stave off smart assistant competitors from encroaching on the kitchen.

The microwave is on the small end, with 0.7 cubic foot cavity, has only 700 Watts of power, and features an Alexa logo button on the touchpad. I was a bit of a negative Nancy when I heard about an Alexa-powered microwave, but am ready to eat a bit of crow if this works as promised. From the press announcement:

With AmazonBasics Microwave, ask Alexa to reheat, defrost, or microwave for your desired cook time and power level. Plus, use a variety of quick-cook voice presets such as, “Alexa, microwave two potatoes” or “Alexa, reheat a cup of coffee” and the AmazonBasics Microwave takes care of the rest. Since Alexa is always getting smarter, new quick-cook voice presets will be added regularly.

What it also does is have users voluntarily tell Amazon what food they are microwaving, when they microwave and how often. As pre-sets are added, Amazon will have an even more granular understanding of what we are cooking, and will most likely notify users of specials and sales happening at Amazon Fresh or a Whole Foods nearby.

The Amazon microwave seems to stick it a little to the recently released GE Alexa Microwave with scan-to-cook technology. Depending on the pre-sets that are added, it removes the scan step (which requires using your phone) and makes cooking that much faster. It also allows for pre-set cooking of items that don’t have barcodes (see: potato).

The Amazon microwave also connects with a nearby Alexa for other voice commands. Press the Alexa button on the microwave and a paired Echo device wakes up to listen for a command like “two minutes and thirty seconds on medium” and the microwave will do just that (no need to say “Alexa” or “microwave”). While I haven’t seen it in action, this seems like more work than pressing 2, 3, 0, especially given the number of times Alexa mishears me.

There is also Dash Replenishment built into the Amazon Microwave that will re-order, ummmm, popcorn, when you… run out of popcorn. And that’s it for now. I guess. Huh. OK. To be fair, that re-order functionality will assuredly get more robust and add more microwaveable items to be replenished. But still, it seems like an add-on as we’ll already be telling the microwave what we are cooking. And if we order a four pack of Hot Pockets from Amazon, and we cook three of them, it will know I need more. Ideally.

As the company states in the press release, its new microwave is also a way for Amazon to show how other appliance makers can use the new Amazon Connect Kit to create smart devices. By getting appliance manufactures on to the Alexa platform, Amazon can better box out rival Google in the kitchen and slurp up all that data for itself.

In the end, the Amazon Microwave is a small device that actually could have big implications for the kitchen. We’ll get one in November and tell you how it works in real life.

FirstBuild Hackathon Produces “My Fridge Safe,” a Lockable Drawer for Your Fridge

Affixing a padlock to your fridge to help was a pretty standard joke/plausible weight loss solution in the sitcoms and cartoons of my youth. The “My Fridge Safe” puts a modern twist on that old saw using a Raspberry Pi, an electromagnetic lock and a power supply.

Created at the recent FirstBuild (which is backed by GE Appliances) 2018 “Hack the Home” Hackathon, “My Fridge Safe” was built in 35 hours and beat out hundreds of competitors to win first place and take home $3,000.

From the official press announcement:

“Josh Weil, Eric Ott and Alex Vance, a trio of local makers competing in their third FirstBuild hackathon, invented a locking drawer inside a refrigerator designed to keep medications, alcohol and even food safely locked away from children.”

Here’s a video that demonstrates the lock in action.

As refrigerators become smarter, packed with more features and the center of our digital kitchen, it’s easy to see this type of drawer lock becoming a common option. Though one can imagine the locking mechanism evolving into something more robust and incorporating a keypad on a fridge touchscreen, or event recognized voice activation through a built-in Alexa. Or on a more enterprise-y level, office fridges with locks so people can’t steal your tuna salad sandwich.

In addition to stowing away booze and meds, there are also less severe uses like keeping sweets away from kids — or, you know, yourself — without having to bolt anything on to your refrigerator door.

Report: Amazon to Release an Alexa Microwave?

According to a CNBC report, Amazon plans on releasing at least eight new Alexa powered devices by the end of year, including a microwave oven.

If true, it would mark a turn in Amazon’s strategy and move the company further up the stack and into creating a more end-to-end hardware solution. In addition to embedding Alexa into everyone else’s appliance, it would start making its own.

CNBC writes that this would be Amazon’s first move into home appliances. While it would be the first one to actually hit the market if true, we know that Amazon has at least been thinking about its own smart refrigerator. So the company making its own microwave isn’t that much of a stretch.

Amazon has made similar vertically-stacked hardware plays over the past year with the acquisition of Blink’s connected cameras and Ring, which makes a smart doorbell.

Without any more information, it’s hard to tell whether an Alexa powered microwave would be a good thing for consumers. GE recently came out with an Alexa-enabled microwave that lets you control it with your voice. But microwaves are pretty surgical appliances. You set the time to cook, usually for short bursts numbering in seconds and minutes, and the device shuts itself off afterwards. I don’t see a lot of need to bark orders at it.

What an Alexa-powered microwave would do, however, is start to shut Google and its voice assistant out of your smart home equation. If Amazon can sell you a cheap enough microwave through its massive retail platform, it gains a foothold into your kitchen that Google can’t get to. And if the Alexa microwave has the same scan-to-cook technology as the GE microwave, Amazon would know what you’re cooking and when, and oh hey! Why don’t we have Whole Foods deliver that frozen meal to you as well. It’s not a big leap in logic to think if an Alexa microwave sold well, it could expand into more Alexa appliances that all talk to each other (and you) but not to Google — denying the search giant all that juicy user data.

In addition to the microwave, Amazon is supposedly working on an amplifier, a receiver, a subwoofer and an “in-car gadget.”

Target Cancels Indiegogo For Smart Home Replenishment Platform

Well that’s disappointing.

Today Target notified backers that the retailer has decided not to move forward with a beta of Fetch, the IoT powered replenishment platform the company introduced via an Indiegogo campaign in April.

While Fetch was similar in concept to Amazon’s Dash platform, Target chose three ordinary looking (but connected) household items in a paper towel holder, a toilet paper spindle and a soap dispenser to act as replenishment sensors . Each device was to come with built-in Bluetooth and would reorder consumables for the user.

Not anymore, at least with this particular Indiegogo campaign. Here’s an excerpt from the cancellation update on the Indiegogo page:

Hi Backers,

We’d like to thank you again for pre-ordering Target Fetch. Your support as early adopters is very much appreciated.

We’re always testing and piloting new products and services for our guests as we work to meet their needs now and into the future.

At this time, we’ve made the decision to not move forward with the Indiegogo beta test for Target Fetch. Our purpose was to learn, and we received great input.

I liked the idea of Target creating its own replenishment ordering platform and had actually backed the campaign out of curiosity. As I wrote in my post from April of this year:

 I do think it makes sense for Target to start to think about ways to allow customers to subscribe to products online as more consumers transition to online shopping. Combine Fetch with Target’s same day delivery service, Shipt, (which is expanding to more cities) and it’s easy to imagine never running out of paper towels or any of the household basics.

If one thing struck me as off about the initiative, it wasn’t the idea of Fetch itself, but instead how the company chose to roll it out.  I had to wonder why a national retailer like Target would use an Indiegogo campaign to introduce the concept to consumers. Not only did using Indiegogo take the buyer away from Target’s home turf (both in the form of its home page and the in-store retail environment), but it also risked the chance of a slow uptake of its online campaign.

And so what happened? The uninspiring campaign accumulated 200 total backers and hit only 86% of its revenue goal (and this after extending the deadline).

What today’s announcement didn’t make clear is whether Target is cancelling the Fetch project in totality or just the Indiegogo beta rollout. According to the timeline on the Indiegogo, the Fetch team been working on the project since early 2016, so it’d be surprising if they gave up on the concept altogether.

We’ve reached out to Target and will provide an update when we hear back.

GE Appliances and Electrolux Expand Google Assistant Capabilities

The big IFA show is set start over in Berlin, and like CES earlier this year, Google is making a big push there for its Google Assistant, working overtime to get its voice assistant embedded into, well, everything. News about Google integrations are rolling in as both GE Appliances and Electrolux today both announced expanded capabilities with Google Assistant.

First up, GE Appliances, a Haier company, said today that its suite of appliances will work directly with Google Assistant. Previously, GE Appliances required the use of Geneva Home Action in order to talk to Google, so you’d have to say “Google, ask Geneva Home to preheat the oven.” With the new, deeper integration, users can skip the Geneva step and just say “Google, preheat the oven.”

Elsewhere, Swedish appliance giant, Electrolux announced it is expanding its Google Assistant integration. Elextrolux will be adding Google Assistant voice control to its kitchen products in Europe, starting with a smart oven in 2019. Previously, Electrolux had added Google Assitant integration in the U.S. under its Fridgedaire and Anova lines.

Google is currently locked in a battle with Amazon and its Alexa assistant for dominance in the emerging voice control market. While Alexa had a head start and lined up numerous appliance integrations early on, Google has been making headway over the past year. Earlier this year LG announced that its SmartThinq line of connected appliances would work with both smart assistant platforms.

Google’s expanded presence is good because it gives consumers more flexibility when shopping for a new appliance. People shouldn’t have their choice of smart assistant determine what refrigerator they buy.

No More Lukewarm Coffee: How Heating Tech will Disrupt the Kitchen

The ability to apply precision heat to food and drinks is a quick-evolving — and pretty darn exciting — area of the digital kitchen innovation. And no one is pushing more boundaries in this space than Clay Alexander. He’s the founder and CEO of Ember, a company which makes smart mugs which can exactly control and maintain the temperature of your tea or coffee. And that’s just the beginning; he’s applying his precision heating tech to everything from kitchen plates to baby bottles to medical supplies.

We’ve been fans of Ember for a while and can’t wait to have Alexander speak at the Smart Kitchen Summit (SKS) in Seattle this October! To pique your interest, we asked him a few questions about the future of heating technology in the kitchen — and for Ember.

This interview has been edited for clarity and grammar.

You have an impressive background in entrepreneurship and innovation, specifically in lighting. What inspired you to pivot to heating and create the Ember mug?
I had just sold my LED light bulb to GE which was a major career milestone for me. I was sitting in the kitchen with my wife having breakfast, thinking of what I wanted to do next. I still had my lighting company Radiance (which I still own today) but my wife and I were contemplating if we should take some time off and travel or stay in Los Angeles. It was then that, as usual, my scrambled eggs got cold. I’m a talker and can rarely finish a meal while it’s still warm. I had a spark and wondered why, in this day and age, my plate could not keep my food warm, and my cup could not keep my coffee hot.

It was my ‘ah ha’ moment if you will, and I decided to start developing a prototype to see if I could solve this problem. As an inventor, the drive to always be creating is very strong. It’s innate. So, we put the vacation on hold and I got to work. Seven years later, we launched our first product and Ember was born.

How are you leveraging technology to improve your product?
As a serial inventor, I’m always exploring how we can improve our product. A couple ways we do this is by listening to our customers and reviewing our app data. For example, we heard that many customers wanted a longer battery life on our Travel Mug, so we listened, and we are working on that for the next version, so people can enjoy their tea or coffee even longer.

What’s next for Ember? Are you applying your heating tech to anything beyond mugs?
Absolutely. With temperature control, the possibilities are endless. We’re exploring numerous categories where we can apply our technology across several verticals. Currently we’re developing the world’s first self-heated baby bottle, which we think will be a massive game-changer for new parents.

What advice do you have for food tech entrepreneurs who are just starting out?
This is advice I give all entrepreneurs: If you have an idea for a product, you should first create a prototype and start testing it. Even if you make it from used parts found in your garage and duct tape, you need to get a working model built and start using it. That’s how I started Ember. I built a prototype in my house and tested it over and over again to see how I could improve it. You can’t just read or talk about something, you need to take action. Build, test, improve, rebuild, repeat.

Food and beverage heating is an area that’s spurring a lot of innovation lately. Where do you see the future of heating, as it fits into the realm of food and drink?
This is really an exciting time for innovation in the home and kitchen space. I think we are just scratching the surface as people become more comfortable with technology in the food and beverage area. At Ember, we envision a day in the near future where all your dishware will keep your food at the perfect serving temperature: bowls, plates, serving ware, and so on. Through heating and cooling technology, we want consumers to be able to control the precise temperature for everything they eat and drink. Eventually, it will become second nature.

What’s the biggest thing (be it a trend, piece of technology, idea, consumer behavior, etc.) you see disrupting the future of food and cooking?
I think one of the biggest trends is how technology is disrupting the entire food chain in the home. Whether preparing food or enjoying it, we are going to see a lot more digital tools working to bring more joy and ease into your daily routine in the kitchen. A couple current examples of this are the June oven and the Jura coffee machine. These products take the complications and labor out of food prep: you can press a button and go. Ember does the final step, letting you enjoy your food and drinks without needing to get up and constantly re-heat them. In the kitchen, we’ll have more appliances that just do things for you and enhance your life.

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Thanks, Clay! If you want to see him speak more about how heating and cooling tech will come to shape the way we cook, eat, and enjoy our food (and beverages), snag your tickets to the Smart Kitchen Summit on October 8-9th in Seattle.