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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Smart Kitchen Summit

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.

Cuisinart Teams up with Buzzfeed’s Tasty One Top Cooktop

It looks like Cuisinart has partnered with BuzzFeed for a branded version of the Tasty cooktop. We don’t have all the details at this point, but an advertisement in the program for our Smart Kitchen Summit highlighted the collaboration.

From the ad:

“…Cuisinart is proud to partner with BuzzFeed’s Tasty to bring you the Tasty by Cuisinart One Top and the One Top App.”

It goes on to say:

“The next and most exciting era of at-home kitchen prep is here, brought to you by Cuisinart.”

The move is interesting because a little more than a year ago, BuzzFeed CEO, Jonah Peretti sent out a memo to his staff emphasizing the importance of Tasty, saying:

“…we are expanding our Product Labs business, which exceeded our expectations in its first full year of operations, into BuzzFeed Commerce which has a strong lineup of new licensing and commerce partnerships, and new products for 2018. BuzzFeed Commerce will work closely with our new BuzzFeed Media Brands team to create new opportunities for our brands in the way it has with Tasty.”

Right now, we have more questions than answers. Does this mean BuzzFeed is getting out of manufacturing business and moving into more of a licensing model for the Tasty One Top? Are there other manufacturers in the pipeline? Is it just focusing on content? Does this impact the Tasty line of cookware it launched with Walmart?

We reached out to both Cuisinart and BuzzFeed and will update this post as we hear more.

Smart Kitchen Summit 2018 Kicks Off Today!

After stops in Europe and Japan, and months and months (and months) of planning, Smart Kitchen Summit 2018 returns home today to Seattle!

We have a ton of great sessions happening throughout the day and tomorrow with a host of fantastic speakers (and at least one robot).

The Spoon will also be breaking news both on and backstage, so be sure to check here throughout today and tomorrow for the latest foodtech info you’ll want to know.

You can also follow along for a steady stream of updates on our Twitter and Instagram feeds, to make it feel like you’re there.

If you are there, be sure to say hi! Mike, Catherine, Jenn and myself will all be milling about in between sessions, so introduce yourself!

MyFavorEats Lets You Customize Recipes to Your Likes and Your Kitchen

One of the biggest themes we hear about in the future of recipes is the ability to fully customize recipes to accommodate allergies, dietary needs, and plain old dislikes. (Sorry, olives!)

MyFavorEats, one of the 13 companies pitching at the Startup Showcase for the Smart Kitchen Summit (SKS) next week, is working to make recipes modular, so home cooks can easily swap out ingredients or customize them to their particular appliances. Read our Q&A with co-founder Orly Rapaport to learn a little more about how MyFavorEats is leveraging AI to transform the way we interact with recipes forever, then get your tickets to see her pitch live at SKS next week!

The Spoon: First thing’s first: give us your 15-second elevator pitch.
MyFavorEats: We use AI to transform online linear text recipes into a machine-readable, easily customizable format. Users can easily swap ingredients and personalize meals to their particular dietary preferences, and adapt recipes to their new kitchen appliances.

What inspired you to create Myfavoreats?
I am a home cook and a software engineer. I like to cook and to experiment with innovative gadgets in the kitchen. I realized the need for a tool that would help me tweak recipes to meet various dietary needs and to easily adapt recipes to my new kitchen appliances.

What’s the most challenging part of getting a food tech startup off the ground?
Food and kitchen digitization opens up a new world of cooking experience. This is a new domain that is still under development, being pushed by startups as well as big enterprises. With various stakeholders’ involvement, it is quite clear that standardization and technological alignment are needed to ensure a holistic scalable user experience.

How will Myfavoreats change the day-to-day life of its users?
MyFavorEats will give home-cooks the flexibility to personalize their favorite recipes. It would help recipe publishers to automatically upgrade their linear text recipe sites into a smart, revenue-generating format. It would provide kitchen appliance manufacturers a tool for automated scalable recipe generator.

What’s next for Myfavoreats?
We are now focused on launching pilots together with recipe publishers and appliance manufacturers.

Thanks, Orly! See her pitch live onstage at the Smart Kitchen Summit next week — tickets still available. 

Hestan to Announce its Smart Cooktop Solution at Smart Kitchen Summit Next Week

Hestan Smart Cooking will publicly announce the availability of its guided cooking system for appliance manufacturers at the Smart Kitchen Summit (SKS) in Seattle next week.

Until this year, using the Hestan Cue guided cooking system required a standalone induction burner with accompanying sensor-embedded smart pans. With this move, Hestan Cue’s smart cooking technology to be built directly into cooktops from other companies.

Christoph Milz, Managing Director of Hestan Smart Cooking said during an interview with The Spoon that the Hestan Cue smart cooking system requires appliance makers to integrate a smart board into their cooktop, and will require the consumer to use Hestan Cue smart cookware as well as the accompanying app. At first, Hestan Cue’s technology will work with induction cooktops, with other modalities (gas, etc.) available later on.

The Hestan Cue system’s three parts work in harmony to help guide cooks through the cooking process. For example, if you want to cook salmon with a nice sear on the outside, but medium rare on the inside, the pan “talks” to the cooktop to say when it reaches the right temperature, and as the person goes through each step of the recipe, the app “tells” the smart board to adjust the heat accordingly, and so on.

Earlier this year, Hestan’s sister company (Hestan Residential), debuted a Cue-powered smart cooktop at the Kitchen and Bath Show in Miami. Hestan Smart Cooking has also signed on GE Appliances in the U.S. and Oranier in Germany as Cue cooktop partners. Hestan’s smart cooking technology will be available in GE’s Cafe line of appliances and will ship before the end of the year. Oranier’s Cue-enabled cooktops will ship in Germany in 2019.

Strategically, this is a smart move for parent company, Hestan Smart Cooking and its Cue platform. If the company can make its technology easy enough to implement without coming at too much of a price premium, Hestan sets itself up as a full-stack guided cooking solution. Because it will be in both the appliance and the cookware, it can offer more precise guidance than competitors offering integration into just the appliance side.

In addition to the cooktop news, Milz said that Hestan Smart Cooking would also be API integrations for smart ovens and be releasing oven recipes this fall.

If you want to see a Hestan Cue-powered cooktop in person, grab your ticket for our Smart Kicthen Summit, which is mere days away.

DoorDash Wants to do Last-Mile Logistics for Everything, Not Just Food

To say that the food delivery market is heating up would be an understatement. It’s already red-hot, and competitors are using every tool in their toolbox — self-driving robots, drones, cloud kitchens, and beyond — to stake their claim in the growing market.

One such company is DoorDash. The food delivery startup has been on fire lately: they recently raised another $250 million, have been experimenting with “moonshot” initiatives (such as drones and robots), and even expanded into grocery delivery.

Next week, DoorDash’s COO Christopher Payne will take the Smart Kitchen Summit stage to speak about how delivery is reshaping the meal journey — and how he’s leveraging tech to help DoorDash stay competitive. Until then, we’re delivering you this piping-hot Q&A, in which Payne discusses the convenience economy, the last-mile logistics problem, and DoorDash’s plans for the future.

Read the full Q&A below.

The Spoon: Food delivery is drastically changing the way that people discover, source, and consume food. How do you see DoorDash, and other food delivery players, disrupting the meal-planning journey?

DoorDash: The convenience economy has already transformed how we consume food, which will in turn affect the food supply chain, merchants’ brick-and-mortar strategy, and restaurants’ operational demands. According to UBS, by 2030 online delivery could make up to 10 percent of the total food market, commanding $365 billion in market share.

At DoorDash, we empower our merchant partners to expand their reach, revenue streams and off-premise dining offerings as consumers continue to shift to the convenience of digital ordering. For customers, we’re focused on offering the best selection and introducing new services to connect them with their favorite restaurants. For example, earlier this year, we debuted DashPass subscription service — offering unlimited access to hundreds of restaurants with free delivery — and Pickup, which allows customers to choose a convenient delivery option at no cost. Both of these services were designed to generate even greater value for our merchant partners, while driving stronger customer loyalty with lower prices.

Through offerings like these, plus expansion into areas such as grocery delivery (which DooDash launched with Walmart this spring) we’re introducing new levels of convenience and are transforming how customers dine and shop for their food.

How does DoorDash distinguish themselves from other services in the extremely competitive and crowded food delivery market?

We offer the best selection of restaurants at the highest quality of service.

In five years, we’ve partnered with 90 percent of the top 100 restaurants that offer delivery including brands like The Cheesecake Factory, Wendy’s, and Chipotle. Across our 1200+ cities in the US and Canada, customers can order from more than 100,000 merchants.

DoorDash has always led with a merchant-first approach, offering a suite of products to our restaurant partners, ensuring the highest quality delivery, every single time. With our products and integrations for merchants, we ensure faster and more accurate deliveries, and our in-house support system offers best-in-class service that solves customer problems in real-time.

We also built DoorDash Drive, a platform that helps merchants run their own private label delivery service through DoorDash, tapping our operational expertise and fleet of more than 200,000 Dashers across the US and Canada. By leveraging DoorDash insights and experience, these efforts have enabled businesses to grow their off-premise platforms and increase delivery sales by up to 300 percent.

Tech plays a huge role in food delivery, and some companies are experimenting with technology like automation in dark kitchens and delivery drones. How do you think that tech will shape the future of food delivery, specifically for DoorDash?

The last mile of delivery is the most expensive and time-consuming part of fulfillment for merchants and their logistics partners. The technology behind food delivery is the reason it has come so far today and it will only continue to grow as we continue to see a shift from in-store to digital ordering — a shift that’s expected to reach $200 billion.

At DoorDash, we look at on-demand delivery as operating at the intersection of a math problem and a human problem. The company was founded to solve the logistics problems of a three-sided marketplace — merchants, customers and Dashers — through technology.

In addition to using AI and machine learning (ML) technologies to improve last-mile delivery, we are always seeking to continue experimenting with innovative tech to make the food delivery supply chain a better experience our marketplace. For example, we’ve announced pilot programs with Starship Technologies and Marble to deliver food using robots. Robots bring a new option to the table for efficient delivery; tackling smaller, shorter distance orders that Dashers often avoid, but also freeing up Dashers to fulfill the bigger and more complex deliveries.

For DoorDash, the innovations we roll out will be focused on empowering merchants and providing an even better experience for both our Dashers and customers. It’s too soon to say if that will come from drones or self-driving vehicles, but building the entire ecosystem of products and working closely with city regulators to deploy a reliable and safe system will take some time.

Do you see DoorDash diversifying beyond food to become more of a general e-commerce company?

DoorDash was founded with the goal of being the last-mile logistics layer that empowers businesses to thrive in the digital and convenience economy. This spring, through the DoorDash Drive platform, we expanded beyond restaurant delivery with the launch of our first national grocery partnership with Walmart. Since announcing our partnership in Atlanta, we’ve scaled to more than 300 stores across 20 states in the United States, and will continue to roll out this proven model to power deliveries in new areas in retail and beyond.

As merchants look to meet consumer demand for convenience, DoorDash will support these businesses as they look to broaden their on-demand delivery offerings and update commerce strategies. We’re excited about enabling local businesses to compete.

How do you see the food delivery space evolving over the next 5 to 10 years?

If you think forward, the digital and convenience economy is only going to keep accelerating. We’re just at the beginning. DoorDash is at the forefront of becoming the technology and logistics partner to each of these businesses in every city to make this happen.

The democratization of convenience is more important than ever — people living away from urban hubs want the same advantages as people in major cities. This demand inevitably affects the supply chain, and food delivery companies are logistics agents that will see more and more shifts.

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Thanks, Chris! If you want to see him speak more about the competitive world of food delivery, snag your tickets to the Smart Kitchen Summit on October 8-9th in Seattle.

Google’s Geoff Barnes on the Complexity and Potential of Voice Assistants

In the past few years, voice assistants have been playing an increasing role in the meal journey. Take Google, for example; its voice assistant has developed a guided cooking platform, made integration partnerships with big appliance brands, and even added the ability to make eerily realistic-sounding restaurant reservations.

As a Senior Interaction Designer for Google, Geoff Barnes works to constantly improve the user experience with the Google Assistant. Next week he’ll take the stage at the Smart Kitchen Summit (SKS) to speak about how voice can play a helpful role in the connected kitchen. To warm up, we asked him about the uncanny valley, the future of voice technology, and the task he uses his Google Assistant for every single day.

The Q&A has been edited for clarity.

The Spoon: As voice recognition and AI become more and more realistic, how will you develop user experience (UX) to avoid the uncanny valley?
Geoff Barnes: The problem with the uncanny valley as Masahiro Mori described it was in people’s discomfort with the artificial trying to imitate the real and getting uncannily close. But he was dealing with physical robots, and the chasm between an obvious robot and a human being is both hugely multidimensional compared to a voice assistant, and broader than I think most people imagine when they conceptualize the uncanny valley in terms of the ubiquitous chart.

In voice user interface (VUI) — especially in the age of autotune and after decades of AI voices in entertainment and interactive voice response (IVR) in everyday life — I think we’ve both narrowed and made shallow the uncanny valley. The result is that Siri, Alexa, and the Google Assistant sit perched to its left. At this point in history, I think the salient question is less about how to avoid getting stuck in the uncanny valley and more about deciding on which side of it your product can better serve your users.

What are some unexpected things you think about when designing UX for Google Assistant?
What comes to mind first is I do all sorts of things to keep from focusing on how a sample dialog looks in writing. When you’re designing for voice, what matters is how things sound spoken. In school, we all learn not to write the way that we talk. Yet that’s exactly what we want of the Assistant: conversationality. We want to make computers talk like humans — not the other way around. So I read all dialog aloud. I’ll pull colleagues aside to do table-reads with me. We have text-to-speech (TTS) simulators that can play our text in the Assistant’s voice.

Another: I try to think about all the possible ways in which normal use might break the experience. For instance, Google Home has pretty great beam-forming [Ed note: beam-forming is technology which allows it to pick up your voice amid extraneous noise], but the mic still picks up cross-talk and ambient sounds. If something the user says is polluted by stray words, the Assistant needs to be able to help with conversation repair. The same goes for users responding in snippets, sentence fragments, and other partial structures where their intent might not be fully revealed, and thus might not be recognized. Part of human conversation is natural repair in situations like these, so we spend a lot of time designing to emulate that in the Google Assistant.

What role do you envision voice assistants playing in the homes — and kitchens — of the future?
Right now, a lot of what we see people using virtual assistants for is task completion, and I think that will continue. As virtual assistants evolve, though, we’ll see the complexity of tasks they can handle increase, and people will put them to more complicated and valuable use. Imagine virtual assistants that can interpret and address really complex requests, can carry on multiple conversational threads at once without losing track of contexts, and can work with you on a range of time-scales. Suddenly, you’re not talking about a fact-checking timer in the kitchen with you; you’re talking about a presence that can be a communications hub, keep you company while guiding you through complex recipes and routines, and do things like plan your date night — from booking dinner reservations, to hiring the babysitter, to ordering flowers.

What’s something you use your Google Assistant for every single day?
I like to drink good coffee in the morning, and for nearly 10 years, that meant I’d get up and make a Chemex. Friends thought I was a little crazy for not having a pre-set automatic coffee maker, but every automatic coffee maker I’d tried had two problems: First, it made coffee that smelled and tasted like burning plastic, and second, most burners are so hot that they scald the coffee within a few minutes of it being brewed. So you have to make sure you’re awake right when you told the coffee maker you would be, or else your plastic-flavored coffee would be even further burnt by the time you got to it.

Enslaving myself to a timer for a bad cup of coffee didn’t sound that great. With the advent of smart switches and Google Assistant integrations, though, I found a great solution: I got a Technivorm Moccamaster (which makes delicious coffee) and plugged it into a Wemo switch that I named “the coffee maker”. Now, every morning when I wake up — no matter whether I’m up early or I’ve overslept — I tell my Google Home, “Hey Google, start the coffee maker,” and in 5 minutes I have a perfect pot of coffee waiting for me two floors away. It’s a real first-world life-changer, but it’s a life-changer nonetheless.

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Thanks, Geoff! If you want to see him speak more about Google’s work on connected kitchen platforms, snag your tickets to the Smart Kitchen Summit on October 8-9th in Seattle.

Dizzconcept Makes Folding Kitchens for Cramped Spaces

In our urbanized world of tiny spaces, finding room for a kitchen can be tricky. That’s the problem that Dizzconcept, one of the 13 companies pitching at the Startup Showcase for the Smart Kitchen Summit (SKS) this October, is trying to solve. They create super compact pop-up kitchens that fold, so they can fit into small apartments, cramped offices, and more.

Read our Q&A with CEO Darko Špiljarić to learn a little more about how Dizzconcept hopes to bring kitchens to all sorts of spaces, no matter how tiny. Then get your tickets to see him pitch live at SKS!

This interview has been translated by Karlo Krnić and edited for clarity. 

The Spoon: First thing’s first: give us your 15-second elevator pitch.
Dizzconcept: PIA kitchens are dedicated to solving a number of issues that mainly impact young people in urban areas. PIA kitchens save valuable space and have low rental cost, energy requirements and impact on the environment. We have a fully functional kitchen that only takes up 1 to 1.6 square meters (depending on the model) and each comes with a support for a 40″ TV.

What inspired you to start Dizzconcept?
I was inspired by a personal need to find work that was creative. I was especially drawn to create innovative products which improve people’s lives.

What’s the most challenging part of getting a food tech startup off the ground?
The most challenging part of our kitchen startup is introducing our idea to the architects, interior designers and developers. It can be tricky to make them open to a new way of designing small spaces.

How will Dizzconcept change the day-to-day life of its users?
The buyers of our products enjoy using them. When designing a product such as PIA, users get numerous other benefits in addition to good design: better organization space, lower rental cost, lower heating and cooling costs, lower energy and material cost. Besides, they feel good because they’re contributing to protecting the environment.

What’s next for Dizzconcept?
Currently we are perfecting our outdoor kitchen set (Nota) that will introduce significant innovations and improvements over the typical outdoor kitchen. We are also developing a new space-saving program called MOVI.

Thanks, Darko!  Get your tickets to SKS to hear him pitch alongside 12 emerging food tech companies at our Startup Showcase this October in Seattle.

Pizzametry Delivers Made-to-Order Pies from a Vending Machine

Have you ever perused the selection in a vending machine and wished for… more? You might be glad to hear about Pizzametry, the vending machine which bakes up hot, fresh personal pizzas on demand. We were certainly intrigued, which is why we chose Pizzametry as one of the 13 finalists to pitch at the Smart Kitchen Summit Startup Showcase on October 8-9th.

Check out our Q&A with Jim Benjamin, President of Pizzametry maker APM Partners, to learn more about the piping hot world of pizza tech — and the inspiration behind their pizza vending machine. Then get your tickets to see him pitch live at SKS!

The Q&A has been edited for clarity. 

The Spoon: First thing’s first: give us your 15-second elevator pitch.
Pizzametry: Pizzametry is a first of its kind, on demand 24/7 automated pizza-service for consumers.

–  A top quality pizza prepared from fresh ingredients = GREAT TASTING PIZZA!!

– Prepared food in a vending machine format.

– Just bring power and location.

– Internet connected (wired, wireless or cellular) and monitored.

– Easy to stock (with ingredients 150 pizzas) and to maintain.

– Designed for health and safety.

What inspired you to create Pizzametry?
Many years ago, Pizzametry inventor Puzant Khatchadourian was inspired when he was hungry with a stranded stomach in Manhattan, NY in the wee hours of the morning; everywhere was closed for a hot meal! Puzant and a group of investors did extensive consumer research, including traditional focus group format highlighted the need to create an efficient delivery system for a hot, fresh pizza in minutes to a significantly underserved market.

Then, a group of highly talented industry engineers went to work to develop a machine to automatically MAKE a fresh pizza. With over $14 million invested in the design — and rigorous testing of the machine in the development cycle — the company went through many iterations of the machine to create one with process perfection!

What’s the most challenging part of getting a food tech startup off the ground?Finding the right market placements for Pizzametry product and service, as well as alignment with the food technology and food automation markets.

How will Pizzametry change the day-to-day life of its users?
Consumers will never again be left stranded with an empty stomach; they’ll be able to get a hot, fresh pizza meal anytime and anywhere!

What is next for Pizzametry?
Next up is investment and funding for Phase 2.0 go-to-market. We also plan to build and deploy 30 productions machines into the food tech marketplace.

Thanks, Jim!  Get your tickets to SKS to hear him pitch alongside 12 emerging food tech companies at our Startup Showcase this October in Seattle.

For a Fast-Growing Cannabis Edibles Market, Trust is Key

When you’re curious if a food is organic or non-GMO, you look to see if there’s a label. If so, you know the item’s entire supply chain has been examined, tested, and verified by a reliable organization.

TraceTrust is working create the same sort of third-party certification for an emerging food product: cannabis-infused edibles. Started three years ago by Merril Gilbert and Rhiannon Woo, the California-based company came about right as their state was on the cusp of legalizing marijuana. Originally, they wanted to develop an entirely new type of edible: one targeted not at stoners, but a modern consumer who wanted to experiment with cannabis in a way that was subtle, reliable, and regulated.

Their target consumer group was women who wanted to use marijuana to relax or relieve pain, but didn’t want to smoke it or eat something with a heavy, overwhelming cannabis flavor. The two women got a clear, flavorless oil and gave it to pastry chefs to turn into baked goods, but quickly realized a big problem: when mixed into cookies or candies, it was really difficult to gauge potency.

“Unpredictability is the biggest issue facing the edibles market,” Gilbert told me over the phone. So TraceTrust shifted gears and began focusing on dosing. They now work with manufacturers and labs to test each edible and ensure that its advertised doses of CBD (non-psychoactive) and THC (psychoactive) are accurate and consistent. TraceTrust also examines the product’s packaging and consumption instructions to make sure they’re easy to understand. This is especially important for items which contain multiple servings, like a chocolate bar, where each square contains a prescribed cannabis dose.

If a product checks all the boxes, then TraceTrust will give the product a special seal of approval, called A True Dose. Basically, it signifies that the edible is made with reliable strains of marijuana and that each serving will contain exactly the dose it advertises.

A True Dose is currently in beta and will launch nationwide in January 2019. Starting then, manufacturers in any state where marijuana is legal can pay TraceTrust a fee to get their products certified. If they pass, they’ll earn the A True Dose seal to put on their packaging and marketing materials; if not, the TraceTrust team will work with them to correct any issues. “Overall, it’s very similar to non-GMO or any third party seal,” said Gilbert.

Gilbert predicts that as edibles become more widely legalized and, thus, normalized, labels like this will play a much larger role. “Anything that says, ‘We went further, we did more, we care’ is going to win consumers,” she said. They’re hoping that the A True Dose label will become a point of differentiation for brands, so they can charge more if their product sports the seal.

As we’ve written about previously on the Spoon, cannabis is rapidly becoming normalized and de-stigmatized; the same goes for edibles. Gone are the days of stale weed brownies — nowadays, consumers can get their high from a variety of beverages (beer, soda, coffee, even sparkling water), candies, chocolates, and more. Even Big Food and Drink companies are getting in on the game: Molson Coors, Heineken, and even Coca-Cola have all teamed up with cannabis companies to create marijuana-infused beverages.

“We’re beyond the stoner culture now,” said Gilbert. “But what makes people hesitate when it comes to edibles is the unknown.” Hopefully, TraceTrust can help cut through the haze of smoke currently covering cannabis edibles.

Gilbert will be speaking at the Smart Kitchen Summit on a panel entitled “Edible Cannabis: The New Functional Food?” She’ll be joined by Scott Riefler of Tarukino, an innovation group which develops cannabis-infused beverages, and Linda Gilbert of BDS Analytics, who tracks and analyzes the marijuana consumer market. If you’re interested in learning more about the future of edibles, don’t miss it!

Suggestic Brings Personalized Nutrition to Your Fingertips

As we all know, it’s easy to decide to eat healthier — but sticking to your diet plan can be very tricky indeed. That’s where, Suggestic, one of the 13 companies pitching at the Startup Showcase for the Smart Kitchen Summit (SKS) this October, comes in. The young company is leveraging technology to help users outline individualized meal plans, then connects them with recipes, grocery stores, and restaurants to help them stick to it.

Read our Q&A with co-founder Shai Rozen to learn a little more about how Suggestic hopes to make the world healthier through personalization, augmented reality, and some serious focus. Then get your tickets to see him pitch live at SKS!

The Spoon: First thing’s first: give us your 15-second elevator pitch.
Rozen: Our goal at Suggestic is to guide consumers through personalized nutrition journeys towards their individual health goals.

With our unique service, users can forget about reading, counting and memorizing to figure out what is best to eat. They don’t need to sort through the huge amount of misinformation about what foods are “healthy” for them. We provide each person with the ease of mind that they are doing the right thing at all times, delivered conveniently at their fingertips.

Our App is backed by powerful and proprietary AI, which delivers precise recommendations of what to order at a restaurant, what to buy at a grocery store and what to cook at home, and then tracks user progress to adjust each suggestion.

Users can select a free dietary filter, or subscribe to one of our premium programs curated by renowned health and nutrition experts.

What inspired you to start Suggestic?
My co-founder and I have both seen firsthand the devastating effects improper nutrition can have, but we’ve also seen the power of food as a means of health. We both saw our fathers pass away from type 2 diabetes-related complications and we both managed to revert our own pre-diabetes through nutrition.

Our mission is to help shift healthcare from treatment of symptoms to primordial prevention through “precision eating.”

And we don’t just want people to be “healthy”. We want each individual’s health optimized rather than just reduced to an asymptomatic average.

What’s the most challenging part of getting a food tech startup off the ground?
The possibilities! There’s so much that can and needs to be done in the world of food tech that honestly the hardest part is deciding where to invest our efforts, and how to keep focused on what matters most.

Also, when you have a mission that’s also social and positive in nature, it’s pretty amazing how many people just want to help. It’s truly inspiring. But it can easily be a distraction as well, so focus is key.

How will Suggestic change the day-to-day life of its users?
We already do, everyday. By helping our users make the best possible food choices at any moment in time we have a direct impact on their health and wellbeing.

Q: What’s next for Suggestic?
The future looks great. We have scheduled over a dozen new premium program launches with our partner authors and experts for 2019, and also have new integrations coming up with lab tests that will allow our users to further optimize their individual health journeys. And we are also working on an Android version, as well as possible a stand-alone app for our Suggestic Lens (augmented reality) experience.

Thanks, Shai! Get your tickets to SKS to hear him pitch alongside 12 emerging food tech companies at our Startup Showcase this October in Seattle.

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.