• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer
  • Skip to navigation
Close Ad

The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

  • Home
  • Podcasts
  • Events
  • Newsletter
  • Connect
    • Custom Events
    • Slack
    • RSS
    • Send us a Tip
  • Advertise
  • Consulting
  • About
The Spoon
  • Home
  • Podcasts
  • Newsletter
  • Events
  • Advertise
  • About

Smart Home

August 14, 2018

CNET’s Ashlee Clark Thompson Talks Favorite Smart Kitchen Appliances

When we want candid reviews on smart home appliances — especially in the kitchen — we turn to Ashlee Clark Thompson (that is, when we’re not turning to ourselves). An associate editor at CNET, Thompson covers cooking gadgets and explores how tech will influence the kitchen. Oh, and she’s also a pretty hilarious Twitter poster.

For all these reasons (and more), we’re thrilled to have Ashlee Clark Thompson at the Smart Kitchen Summit in Seattle this October! To prime your palate, we asked her a few questions about her favorite smart kitchen products — and what she looks at when she’s writing a review.

Read the Q&A below:

What’s the number one thing you look out for when reviewing smart home products?
Since most of my work is focused in the kitchen, I look out for how easy it is to use a product with existing recipes. Lots of devices have companion apps that provide a huge catalog of recipes to try, but many home cooks have their go-to meals or recipe cards passed down from grandma. A device should be able to teach me a new recipe, but help me improve upon an old one, too.

Name one connected product you didn’t think you would like, but ended up falling for?
The Pantelligent. It was a $200 smart skillet that connected to your phone to guide you through recipes. I thought it was a kooky concept, but it did exactly what it promised. Plus, it helped me make some great grilled cheese sandwiches during testing. Unfortunately, I think it’s now gone the way of the Juicero.

Envision the smart kitchen of the future. What does it look like? What products does it have in it?
The smart kitchen of the future fits the needs of the person who uses it. Not everyone needs a tricked-out kitchen full of gadgets; folks need tools that will be reliable and meet their needs. For some, that might just mean a wireless digital thermometer and a smart speaker. For others, it might be an entire system that’s connected, from grocery apps to fridge cams to a smart oven.

What are some of your favorite connected products you use in your everyday life?
I use an Echo Dot in the kitchen daily. It’s helpful when my hands are covered in flour or meat, so I can ask Alexa to convert Celsius to Fahrenheit or play some NPR. My Honeywell Lyric thermostat has helped keep my electric bills in check. And my Philips Hue lights have been crucial for reading in bed.

Voice assistants in the kitchen: yay or nay?
See aforementioned flour/meat hands comment.

—

Thanks, Ashlee! If you want to hear more about the tools she think will shape the future of the connected kitchen, snag your tickets to the Smart Kitchen Summit on October 8-9th in Seattle. 

August 13, 2018

Restaurant Kitchens of the Future will be Smarter, AI-Driven and More Competitive

We throw around the term “smart” plenty of times when analyzing kitchen devices. But there’s one man who is truly trying to make the way you cook food — and the devices that help you do it — much smarter: Arvind Pereira. He’s the co-founder and CTO of the Markov Corporation, a startup leveraging AI to create a smarter electronic oven. Sort of like a microwave 2.0 — one that uses computer vision to better apply heat to perfectly cook each food to its optimum temperature.

We’re thrilled to have Pereira at the Smart Kitchen Summit (SKS) in Seattle this October! To prime your palate, we asked Pereira a few questions about the role that AI and machine learning will play in the future of the smart kitchens and restaurants of the future.

This interview has been edited for clarity. 

What motivated you to apply your experience with AI and machine learning to the food and cooking industry?
I have always been very excited about applications of robotics and AI to various industries due to my background in hardware and software. The first time I worked on something related to food was back when I was a newly-married grad student at USC. My wife Svetlana (who is a software engineer) and I began working on a fun side project app that allowed us to manage our food more efficiently: picking out recipes for the week and creating grocery lists out of what we had in the refrigerator. I wanted to use computer vision to detect the contents of the fridge, but never got around to it. I didn’t do anything interesting related to food after that, until the end of my stint at Clover.

I’d say that my daughter Charlotte and Leonard (the founder of Clover) are probably the biggest motivators in getting me started on my journey of using AI in the food industry. When Charlotte was born, I was badly sleep-deprived, and decided to build an AI-powered baby monitor using various sensors including visual and thermal cameras. My goal there was to have my intelligent monitor take actions like controlling the temperature of the room to keep Charlotte comfortable, in order to potentially obviate the need for us to wake up more often than really needed.

I’d just begun working on this idea in my spare time when I mentioned it to Leonard (who is my Markov co-founder now). It turns out he had been thinking about building a device that cooked food accurately using thermal feedback — and my baby monitor, which was closing the loop around room temperature, reminded him of it. After that I couldn’t stop thinking about how to develop a cooking device that could cook precisely and quickly. While I felt confident that I could design the electronics, software and AI for such an oven, I didn’t know enough about high-power radio frequency (RF) to build a device with the control we would need. When I met our third co-founder Nick through a search in our extended networks though, I knew that we had the core team that could make this happen (assuming it could even be done).

Tell us more about the Level, Markov’s AI-powered oven. What makes it so unique?
Level is designed to be fast like a microwave, but precise like a sous vide machine. It does this through two synergistic technologies: a proprietary heat steering technology and novel AI algorithms, which work together to cook precisely. Level senses the temperature of the food using a thermal camera, and then steers the heat into areas that are not yet hot while keeping heat away from areas that are too hot. We are the first device (to our knowledge) that can cook multiple items of food to different temperatures by using that feedback.

Since Level uses RF to heat food, it is ideal for hot grab-and-go meals prepared in the moment. We use deep learning and specialized adaptive algorithms cook precisely and with control. Not only does Level constantly get better through software updates, and learn to recognize/cook more items through over-the-air-updates, but the AI literally learns to cook better on its own by analyzing every cooking session performed. Over time, each Level benefits from information gleaned by every other Level that has cooked before it. We hope to delight our customers with these improvements, letting them cook food better and faster with much higher consistency.

What role do you see AI playing in the future of food, specifically in the kitchen?
The fastest moving subfield within AI is machine learning, which has made big strides in the fields of computer vision, speech recognition and even natural language processing. It is exciting to see many companies start bringing AI and robotics to the kitchen space by leveraging these advances in perception to automate or simplify cooking. AI is going to be embedded in every appliance we own, and these appliances are going to be networked together to synergistically help us perform our tasks more easily.

Robots and AI are already helping us perform various jobs within the food industry: harvesting vegetables and fruits, processing meat, cooking food, and even delivering it to customers at restaurants. People want to automate these processes to combat shortages of trained labor, increase quality control, and simplifying cooking through automation. AI is going to be at the center of almost all these transformations. Perception and learning are critical pieces in helping build better, more intelligent cooking devices.

Before founding Markov, you worked at Clover — a company which manufactured and provided POS terminals to, among other places, restaurants. How do you see tech changing the restaurant industry?
Yes, Clover is very popular in restaurants and we had customers that ranged from single family-owned restaurants to restaurant chains. What struck me as interesting about restaurants was how difficult it was to make the business work. As a result, when we started Markov, I spent a lot more time thinking about how to solve pain points for this industry. If we can help restaurants serve better food, reduce training time for staff by simplifying the cooking process, and improve the transparency around food quality, this should help make restaurants easier to run.

Clover allowed merchants to get an amazing view of their businesses through the data we could share with them through our own apps, or via third party ones. Quality control is hard to achieve across chains of restaurants. Connected equipment will help in a big way — this is already happening with smart homes, and similarly the restaurants of the future are going to be more connected, more automated, and easier to manage, both within the restaurant and across larger chains.

Automation is clearly becoming a bigger part of the meal journey — how should companies adjust their strategies to embrace this?
Automation in the food industry is inevitable. Over time, as businesses find it harder to employ trained workers at affordable wages, companies that have the technology to manage their operational costs are going to have a competitive advantage over companies that do not.

While traditional kitchens will continue to exist, we expect that it will be more economical to provide good food through the commissary model or with just-in-time delivery, or via grab-and-go sales. Just like Amazon used the internet to disrupt retail, by optimizing food preparation and delivery, companies that can execute on more efficient models which cut costs and deliver superior value are likely to win over more customers and out-maneuver their competition.

As cooking becomes more automated (and simpler) I think businesses will gain from it — and gain new competition. Companies will have to watch where automation is heading and look for opportunities to gain efficiencies through smarter allocation of resources and real estate, and ensure that they are staying up to date with technology that helps them run their businesses better.

I think summits like SKS help provide insights into what the future of food is shaping up to be. The future is definitely exciting in the food industry, and technologies that enable automation like AI and robotics are going to have an increasingly big role to play in shaping it.

—

Thanks, Arvind! If you want to see him speak more about the role AI will play in the future kitchen, at home and in the restaurant, snag your tickets to the Smart Kitchen Summit on October 8-9th in Seattle.

August 10, 2018

Icebox’s Grocery Replenishment Service Wants You to Never Run Out of Eggs

You know that feeling when you wake up craving an omelet only to realize you used the last of your eggs on yesterday’s fried rice? Icebox is a new (very early stage) startup working to make sure you never experience empty fridge disappointment again.

The company uses tech to automate the grocery shopping experience so it can replenish ingredients in your fridge — before you even know you’ll need them. “It’s a pocket-sized smart fridge that uses machine learning for automatic fulfillment,” Icebox co-founder Jazz Singh told me over the phone. The startup was co-founded last October by three Berkeley undergrads who met a Caltech hackathon. Thirty-six hours later, they had made the first version of Icebox.

As of now, Icebox is only a smartphone application. You download the app, then take a picture of your fridge and any recent grocery receipts. Singh told The Spoon that Icebox combines these two pieces of data with an unspecified “couple of other sources,” applies machine learning, and voila — it creates a shopping list. The list is customizable, so you can add extra odds and ends as needed.

As of now, that doesn’t seem super helpful — I can generally remember what i need on my weekly shop off the top of my head. What’s intriguing about Icebox is its potential.

Down the road, Singh told me that Icebox plans to partner with retailers and e-commerce services to offer anticipatory grocery delivery, keeping you stocked on your fridge staples. They’ll also provide users with recipe suggestions based on their grocery haul. “It will be much more streamlined,” said Singh.

There are other companies working in the grocery tracking and replenishment space: Smarter has a fridge cam that allows you to remotely check what groceries you need, Amazon has their Dash button and might be working on a smart fridge, and Pantri (a participant at the SKS Europe Startup Showcase!) is a grocery fulfillment platform. In terms of the recipe component, Chefling takes photos of barcodes and shopping lists to recommend recipes based on the food you have on hand, and Cooklist connects with retailers to generate recipe suggestions based on your recent grocery purchases.

Icebox is still in its very early stages; they’re currently in the midst of preparing for a private beta launch. Singh said they want to make sure that their computer vision is ready for a mass release, and then they’ll focus on partnerships with grocery fulfillment companies like Amazon Prime.

Icebox plans to initially market itself to university campuses as a way for young college-goers to ensure that they, God forbid, never run out of Gatorade or Monster energy drinks.

That seems a bit far-fetched that college kids, who, at least based on my own experience, are far more likely to turn to dining halls, delivery, and fast food for sustenance than actually cook on their illegal dorm room hot plate. But I could see Icebox being a boon to working parents or harried millennials; people who have the motivation to cook but not always the time or headspace to grocery shop.

Singh told me that Icebox plans to position itself as an affordable, modular alternative to smart fridges. Which is, well, smart. Unlike smart fridges, Icebox’s tech isn’t a pricey investment that you’ll have to replace every few years. The company plans to release the shopping list creation service for free, and offer a paid subscription tier which will integrate with e-commerce sites for hands-off grocery delivery. (Once that becomes available, of course.)

Singh didn’t want to disclose exact amounts, but she said that Icebox has funding from campus resources and venture capital funds. The company also recently got accepted to Berkeley Sky Deck: an accelerator fund and incubator which gives funds to early-stage Berkeley startups. We’ll keep you updated on Icebox’s progress — hopefully over spur-of-the-moment omelets.

July 17, 2018

GE Launches New Microwave with Scan-to-Cook Technology

If your store-bought mac-n-cheese always comes out of the microwave molten on the outside but frozen on the inside, you might be interested in GE’s newest appliance, which the company announced today.

The GE Smart Countertop Microwave lets you use your smartphone to scan the barcode on food packaging. Heating instructions are then sent directly to the microwave complete with cooking times and power levels.

As the GE press release rightly points out, the average microwave has 10 power levels, but if you’re like me, you only use one, turning the microwave into a blunt instrument that nukes everything from pizza pockets to re-heated leftovers on full blast, the roof of my mouth be damned.

The GE Smart Countertop Microwave comes with 3,000 different frozen, refrigerated and shelf-stable items pre-programmed, and will be updated as time goes on. If you want to go more manual with GE’s new microwave, it’s also Alexa-enabled, so you can use voice commands to do things like stop the microwave or add more time.

This is the first scan-to-cook appliance for GE, who is playing a little catch up here, since Whirlpool debuted appliances with similar features more than a year ago. GE’s microwave is on sale for for a limited time and is coming bundled with an Echo Dot for $154.98, after that the MSRP is $139.

While limited to pre-packaged items with barcodes right now, scan-to-cook technology is a good example of the guided cooking trend we are following here at The Spoon. Appliance manufactures like Electrolux and LG are partnering with software startups like SideChef and Innit to not just heat your food, but also help you through the entire cooking process.

Even if what you are cooking is simply microwaveable mac-n-cheese.

Update: We were initially given the wrong price for the GE microwave. We have updated this post with the correct pricing.

July 16, 2018

Amazon Prime Day Did Not Go Fine, eh?

Amazon Prime Day, the retail giant’s big, annual sales event, started off with a big snafu, as the site crashed minutes after launching.

As The Verge reported, people experienced Amazon outages differently. Some visitors got full-on error pages, while others could still access the individual item sites. When I tried, I could get to Amazon.com, but whenever I clicked on “Shop All Deals” or tried to Shop a particular category, I wound up in a loop asking me to click on “Shop All Deals” again. You can see a gif of my experience here:

via GIPHY

This is a big embarrassment for Amazon, who has built a business on helping other companies scale their infrastructure to meet heavy demand. But depending on how widepsread the outages are, it can impact the number of units vendors can sell through this special promotion.

Here at The Spoon, we care mostly about kitchen tech and early on, both the Anova and ChefSteps sous vide wands were discounted for Prime Day as well as the Instant Pot. Not only could the outage impact the number of units sold, but it could also have a potential ripple effect. Consumers who may not normally try out new kitchen tech might be enticed by a special Prime deal… but only if they can learn about it and reach it.

Of course, with sites like The Wirecutter providing direct access to sale item pages that seem to be working just fine, this blip could be nothing. We reached out to a smart kitchen vendor with an item on sale today to see if they experienced any impact and will update this story if we hear back.

July 11, 2018

Video: Convenience Is the Future of Food Retail

After Christian Lane‘s first business, which he built at the age of 19, folded, he got the idea to launch a new endeavor in the smart kitchen field. Which, as he’ll tell you, was not always easy going.

Despite the challenges (and his self-described ‘retail rollercoaster’), Lane eventually succeeded in building Smarter: a connected kitchen company which sells WiFi-enabled kettles, coffee makers, and a camera which can identify 80% of what’s in your fridge.

In this TED-style talk at the Smart Kitchen Summit Europe, Lane makes some bold predictions about the future of retail — especially in the kitchen. His presentation had plenty of laughs and didn’t shy away from the real-life issues food startups struggling for a piece of the market will face in the future.

“We are in denial about what is happening, and how our industry is being revolutionized by technology,” said Lane. “We need to fast forward to integration.”

So how do we do that? According to Lane, simplification is the key to success. “It’s convenience that powers retail,” he said.

Watch the video below to see his full talk.

If you want to see more exclusive talks from top food tech innovators, make sure to join us for the Smart Kitchen Summit in Seattle on October 8-9th!

July 10, 2018

Electrolux Partners with SideChef to Connect Cooking Journey in Asian Market

Today Electrolux announced a new partnership with guided cooking company SideChef to create a smart kitchen platform for their Asian Pacific (APAC) market. SideChef’s tech will be used to provide guided cooking abilities (and more) via Electrolux’s consumer-facing app.

This announcement comes a few months after Electrolux partnered with Innit to integrate the company’s smart kitchen platform technology into their appliances in the European market. However, in Europe, users have to download the Innit app to use its software. Under the Asian partnership, the smart kitchen company’s tech will be integrated with the Electrolux app itself; In short, SideChef’s software will be the engine powering Electrolux’s Taste platform in the Asia market. (That is, everything Electrolux does related to cooking and the kitchen.)

“We are the first — and, I believe, only — company where SideChef’s tech is being integrated seamlessly inside our app,” Jaimohan Thampi, Head of Digital Transformation and IoT at Electrolux Asia Pacific, told us over the phone.

Since this partnership is in APAC, and not Europe or the U.S., Electrolux faces a few challenges. While Australia is similar to Europe or the US, many of Asia’s emerging economies like Vietnam or Thailand do not feature western-style cooking equipment beyond surface cooking (ranges/induction cooktops), which means the company is more limited in what it can do with connectivity. Because of this, the initial approach with the app will be on providing cooking guidance to any cook, no matter the kitchen set-up.

“We’re taking an approach of connected consumer first, then evolving into the connected appliance,” said Thampi, which he hopes will give APAC consumers the confidence to cook new, international dishes.

The app went live in Singapore yesterday and will gradually roll out in other APAC countries. Electrolux is targeting a release in Australia/New Zealand in August, the Philippines in September, and October on for the rest of the region. They’re starting first with English-speaking countries since it’ll, obviously, be a much bigger lift to translate app into new languages and cultures.

Taking a step back, Electrolux is playing the long game with the SideChef integration. By nurturing home cooks in APAC countries that not only want to prepare meals that go beyond basic cooktops but also have the confidence to do so thanks to SideChef’s app, means that they’re essentially creating a new consumer base for their kitchen appliances.

But they’re not stopping there. “We want to be the go-to player in everything around taste,” said Thampi. Especially in the digital realm. In addition to guided cooking, Electrolux is also looking into grocery delivery, meal planning, ingredient substitution, and social sharing, as well as post-meal cleanup and food waste reduction. To do that, they’ll have to rely pretty heavily on collaboration.

They’re not the only ones. SideChef dropped the news at the Smart Kitchen Summit Europe that they’d be providing the smart software behind Swiss company V-ZUG’s connected appliances. This comes after SideChef announced its partnership with Sharp (at the Smart Kitchen Summit Japan) and integrated with Amazon Fresh to provide shoppable recipes in the U.S. Kevin Yu, CEO of SideChef, hinted that they’ll be dropping more partnership announcements over the next few months. (Stay tuned.)

After making moves to partner with Innit in Europe a few months ago, Electrolux is taking large strides to differentiate itself from other appliance makers hoping to make it big with software-enabled cooking. LG has partnered with both Innit and SideChef, Kenwood launched a new multicooker powered by Drop, and Whirpool has its Yummly integration.

According to a job listing we found last month, Electrolux is also working away at something called the ‘Electrolux Connectivity Platform,’ which our own Michael Wolf predicted could be an IoT cloud and linked mobile platform to support future connected products for the company.

All this is to say that Electrolux is trying to get out in front of the connected cooking market and own the at-home meal journey, and they’re trying to do it all over the world. SideChef, for its part, wants to become the go-to “engine” powering the smart kitchen revolution. This move is an important test case for connected appliances and guided cooking apps in the APAC market, but also for the two companies’ partnership overall. Because if it works out, I’m betting they’ll vie for global (smart kitchen appliance) domination.

July 3, 2018

Video: Regional Perspectives on the Connected Kitchen Market

At Smart Kitchen Summit Europe last month, a topic on everyone’s mind was the future of the connected kitchen market.

In fact, we had a whole panel devoted to analyzing the regional perspectives of the smart kitchen marketplace: Chris Albrecht of The Spoon moderated the conversation between Holger Henke of Cuicinale, Robin Liss of Suvie, and Miles Woodroffe of Cookpad, Ltd.

The speakers explored the evolving role of voice assistants, regional perspectives across Europe, Asia and North America on the smart kitchen, and what the consumer really wants (to save time and money).

Watch the full video of the panel below.

If you want to hear more deep-dive analysis on the connected kitchen from people in the business, join us at the Smart Kitchen Summit in Seattle this October!

June 22, 2018

Is Electrolux Creating An IoT Platform For Their Connected Products?

You can learn a lot sometimes by reading a company’s job listings.

And so when I read about an Electrolux opening for a role called the “Connected Consumer Solutions Head” – in particular the part where the role would be responsible for “Development, Maintenance and Operation of the Electrolux Connectivity Platform (ECP) including the ECP mobile SDK and the Electrolux.io development and collaboration platform” – I thought, ‘huh, what the heck is the Electrolux Connectivity Platform?’

I’d never heard of anything like it, or its associated mobile SDK, or a developer environment by the name of Electrolux.io. Apparently neither had the Internet, since when I Googled the term ‘Electrolux Connectivity Platform’, the only thing to pop up was this job listing.

So what exactly is the Electrolux Connectivity Platform?

From the sounds of it, it could be an IoT cloud and associated mobile platform that could serve as the underlying software architecture for future Electrolux connected products.

From the listing:

The job will “contribute in a cross functional environment in the development and release of key deliverables to enable successful launch of connected products and solutions to production.”

The listing goes on to describe a role that is responsible for hiring talent, setting strategy, building out an operations team. In short, the job has all the responsibilities you’d expect for a senior person hired to build out a new division.

So what does this mean for Electrolux’s efforts in the world of smart home and connected  kitchen? My guess is that this new ‘platform’ will likely work with vertically focused efforts (such as Electrolux’s work with Innit, which the company calls its “Taste OS”), as well as act as a underlying and unifying technology architecture across all their various product lines. In that sense, it could ultimately look something like BSH Appliances Home Connect platform, an IoT/smart home framework first rolled out by the German appliance conglomerate in 2014.

We’ll keep an eye out for what becomes of the ECP and let you know if we find out any more.

June 20, 2018

BSH Appliances Teams With Techstars To Create Connected Kitchen Accelerator

BSH Home Appliances (BSH Hausgeräte GmbH) announced this week it is teaming up with Techstars to create the “BSH Future Home Accelerator Powered by Techstars”, an accelerator targeted at “early stage companies with innovative digital business models that want to accelerate their ideas around the connected kitchen of the future home.”

The program, which will kick off in February 2019 with an initial cohort of 10 companies, will have a total of three cohort classes over the course of three years (2019-2021) and mentor a total of thirty startups.

While – as the name of the accelerator indicates – much of the focus will be on the kitchen, the company took pains to emphasize that the scope could be much broader than that.

“We didn’t want to be too closed on topic,” Tibor Kramer, the program’s manager, told me in a phone interview. He explained this was in part because they didn’t want to shut out interesting ideas that could help make a consumer’s life better.

But Kramer also made it clear that the main focus will be on the digital kitchen. The kitchen is the “heart of the home,” he said. “We at BSH, as a home appliance manufacturer, are quite focused on the kitchen and on kitchen appliances and cooking is the most creative process.”

The move by BSH into creating its own accelerator is part of a larger trend of established companies in the food, home and retail spaces trying to tap into new ideas and energy through the creation of an accelerator and incubator programs. BSH joins the likes of IKEA, Land O’Lakes and Chobani who have gone down this path, and will likely spur other appliance and houseware products to consider doing the same.

For BSH, the creation of their own accelerator could give them a leg up as appliance companies scramble to find new products and platforms to accelerate digital transformation. These companies are transitioning from a business largely centered around the one-time sale of non-connected, stand-alone products towards a future in which software-powered kitchens open up new opportunities for radically different business models.

“As a company focused on improving our customer’s quality of life, BSH is forging a path to be the leader in digital services for the connected kitchen,” said BSH Appliances CEO Karsten Ottenberg in the announcement.  “To be successful in this rapidly evolving space, it is important to continually expand our digital capabilities and align ourselves with the most innovative startups and technology – which we will achieve together with Techstars through this accelerator program.”

According to Kramer, while Techstars will mentor the cohort companies on how to build and scale a young company, the role of BSH – which owns a number of appliances brands such as Bosch, Siemens, Thermador, Gaggenau – will be as experts in the home appliance business.

“We will handpick our mentors from the Digital Business Unit (the new business unit where the accelerator will reside), as well as executives from BSH corporation that we think will give added value to the startups,” said Kramer. “We want to give them a good mentoring and connect them with the (BSH) network.”

The program will begin taking applications online on July 23rd and will notify those accepted in November.

BSH Appliances CEO Karsten Ottenberg will be at the Smart Kitchen Summit in October. If you’d like to hear him talk about transforming BSH towards the digital future, make sure to get early bird tickets today. 

June 16, 2018

Food Tech News Roundup: Google Groceries, Icelandic Drones, and More “Bleeding” Vegan Burgers

What a week! We just wrapped up our first ever Smart Kitchen Europe event in Dublin. It was a whirlwind few days jam-packed with content and networking as foodtech innovators from across the continent got together to forge the future of food tech. If you’re curious, get to know the winner of our SKS Europe startup showcase, and read up on some smart ktichen news that dropped on the show floor. And of course, if you want to connect with many of the innovators from SKS Europe as well as a whole bunch more in person, make sure you’re at our flagship event in Seattle come October.

But enough about us — here’s a list of the some of the food tech news stories that snagged our interest this week. Perfect for reading over a second cup of coffee while fighting jet lag.

Photo: Naturl’i Foods.

Sainsbury’s to add plant-based “bleeding” burger to meat section
British retail giant Sainsbury’s announced this week that it will debut a “bleeding” plant-based burger in June 27th in 400 locations. In the spirit of the Impossible Burger or Moving Mountains, the patty is meant to look, smell, cook, and taste like a beef burger in an attempt to woo flexitarians who are trying to reduce their meat consumption but don’t want to compromise on flavor. The plant-based burger, made by Danish brand Naturli’ Foods, will be sold alongside its beef counterparts in the meat section. This announcement comes not long after Tesco, another large U.K.-based grocery chain, released the news that it would carry Beyond Burgers in their shops beginning in July of this year.

 

Photographer: Arnaldur Halldorsson/Bloomberg

Iceland amps up drone deliveries in Reykjavik
Aha, Iceland’s largest online marketplace, is slated to expand the number of drones it flies through Reykjavik over the next two years. That’s right, expand — this would be in addition to the limited drone trial they launched last year with Israeli company Flytrex last year.

According to the BBC, the drones could be used to speedily shuttle everything from pizzas to organs destined for transplant — as long as they’re below the maximum weight of 3kg (6lb, 9oz). Their results will no doubt be critical for companies like UberEats, who are also piloting drone delivery programs.

Photo: Clearly Kombucha.

Molson Coors acquires California-based Kombucha brand
Kombucha, a non-alcoholic fermented tea beverage with purported gut health benefits, is not for everyone. But it appears that it’s certainly for Molson Coors, who recently acquired California-based brand Clearly Kombucha. The kombucha brand was founded in 2010 and will become part of Molson Coors’ craft and specialty import division, Tenth and Blake.

According to Grand View Research, the global kombucha market is expected to reach $4.46 billion by 2024. Lately, Molson Coors has been investing in non-alcoholic beverages; last year they purchased a minority stake in Bhakti, a Colorado-based chai tea company.

Photo: MiAlgae

Scottish agtech company raises £500k
MiAlgae, a Scottish company that turns algae into nutrient-dense animal and fish feed, raised £500k ($665k) from backers including Equity Gap, SIB and Edinburgh University’s Old College, reported the U.K. Business Angels Association. The algae is grown using co-products from the Scottish whiskey distillation process (yum), and is high in omega-3 and other nutrients. As it’s made from a byproduct, the feed also has a low environmental footprint, which is critical as our global demand for, and production of, meat and fish continues to grow.

 

Photo: ndb_photo via Flickr.

Google to sell groceries through Home and Assistant platforms in France
Earlier this week Google announced a joint venture with French grocery chain Carrefour. According to Bloomberg, the retailer said that this partnership marks the first time in France that fresh food will be marketed through Google’s platforms. French shoppers will be able to buy grocery products through Google Home and Google Assistant by 2019. This comes a little more than a month after Google unveiled Duplex, which allows Google Assistant to have surprisingly realistic phone conversations to do things like make restaurant reservations. We’ll see if this move can make Google Home/Assistant a competitor with Amazon’s Alexa, who already partnered with U.K. retailers for voice-controlled grocery shopping.

June 2, 2018

Food Tech News Roundup: Ben & Jerry’s, Food Waste Snacks, and Target Takeovers

It may have been a short week (at least for some of us), but it still feels good to reach the weekend finish line. Let’s celebrate with some food tech news, shall we?

We’re still riding a high from the announcement of the FoodTech 25: twenty five companies we think are changing the way we grow, source, cook, eat, and think about food. But lots of other food innovation news popped up around the web as well! Here are a few of our favorite stories, from Ben & Jerry’s new sustainability initiative to BYO homebrewing packs.

Chobani incubator to focus on food tech
Lately, quite a few CPG brands have been launching food-related incubators — including Greek yogurt darling Chobani. This week Chobani announced new incubator program which will revolve around our favorite subject: foodtech. The Food Tech Residency will be the company’s fourth incubator initiative, and will run parallel to their original incubator class. They’re currently searching for startups involved in agtech, food safety, innovative packaging, and other areas to improve the food system. Once selected, participating companies will have access to all Chobani Incubator programming, including factory visits, mentorship, opportunities to pilot new products, and a chance to pitch for funding. They have three spots open, so if you’re an emerging food tech or agtech startup, get on it!

 

Tyson Foods rolls out snacks made of food waste
Poultry giant Tyson Foods has created a snack brand which makes “Protein Crisps” out of food waste such as chicken breast trim, spent grain from beer brewing, and excess vegetable purée from juicing. Dubbed “¡Yappah!,” the brand will be used as an umbrella under which Tyson will release other sustainable food products. Each individual 1.25-oz serving has 8+ grams of protein and is packaged in a recyclable aluminum can. The crisps launched on IndieGoGo on May 31st, and are available to back now with a projected ship date of July 2018. Clean meat, food delivery startups, and now food waste snacks? Tyson Foods continues to work to be on the cutting-edge of all emerging food innovation trends.

PicoBrew now offers DIY PicoPaks
Countertop homebrewing startup PicoBrew rolled out DIY PicoPaks this week via Kickstarter, an option that lets Pico users load up their own ingredients to make beer and fusion drinks. The new bring-your-own ingredients option – which will work with the new Pico U as well as the existing Pico Cs and Pico Pros – provides an option for those in the Pico community who have wanted brewing flexibility beyond want preconfigured PicoPaks allow. The reward bundle includes containers for both beer brewing and PicoPak minis to create “fusion drinks” at home such as kombucha or goldenmilk. Post-Kickstarter, it will be interesting to see if PicoBrew offers brewers a variety of DIY container bundles depending on their preferences and brewing frequency.

Three new Targets to open up in Seattle area in 2019 & 2020
Target will add three smaller, grocery-sized stores in the Seattle area over the next two years, according to the Seattle Times. These are in addition to their original urban format store, which opened in Seattle in 2012. Their new stores are designed to fit into dense cityscapes and will stock products tailored to the surrounding neighborhood. This, as well as their recent expansion into same-day delivery, smart home-powered replenishment service, and acquisition of Shipt, is another way that Target is trying to keep up with the shifting grocery game and fight against Amazon.

 

Photo: Ben & Jerry’s.

Ben & Jerry’s works to offset their ice cream’s carbon footprint
Customers at Ben & Jerry’s scoop shop in London’s Soho neighborhood now have an opportunity to counterbalance the carbon footprint of their waffle cone of Cherry Garcia or Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough. For each purchase, Ben & Jerry’s will pay a penny to offset the carbon used to raise the cows, produce the ice cream, and ship it to the shop. Customers then have the option to donate a cent of their own and double the impact.

According to Forbes, the ice cream company is partnering with a not-for-profit who is helping them use blockchain to divide carbon credits — which are typically quite large — into smaller transactions which can link up to each ice cream purchase. They’re even developing an app to help customers keep track of their person carbon offsets.

 

Photo: Anova

Anova finally opens new Anova Kitchen
We’ve been monitoring the retail ambitions of sous vide specialist Anova closely, so we were intrigued to learn this past week that the company will finally open the Anova Kitchen for a sneak peek on June 6th. A company spokesperson told The Spoon that the new space will be used for events and will have some public-facing retail space, but that we shouldn’t expect the Anova Kitchen to be open to the public every day.  This contrasts with Brava, who plan to open a full time retail space early this summer.  Either way, we’re intrigued to check out the Anova’s new retail/event space. If you are too, make sure to RSVP for next week’s event and report back to us!

Did we miss anything? Tweet us @TheSpoonTech to let us know the best food tech news of the week!

Previous
Next

Primary Sidebar

Footer

  • About
  • Sponsor the Spoon
  • The Spoon Events
  • Spoon Plus

© 2016–2025 The Spoon. All rights reserved.

  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • LinkedIn
  • RSS
  • Twitter
  • YouTube
 

Loading Comments...