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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Sous Vide

Eat Figo Launches Crowdfunding Campaign for All-In-One Sous Vide Device

Eat Figo launched a crowdfunding campaign today for it’s (almost) eponymous countertop Figo sous vide device.

In addition to being a connected sous vide machine you can control with your phone, the Figo is also offers vacuum sealing and cold storage capabilities. The company is looking to raise $20,000 on Indiegogo, with the base model costing super-early backers $139 and the deluxe model (which comes with the vacuum sealer attachment) costing $149. Both models are supposed to ship in March of 2021.

Avid Spoon readers may be thinking to themselves a sous vide machine that keeps food cold until its time to cook? That sounds familiar. That’s because Mellow promised to do much the same thing a while back. But as WIRED found out, the Mellow did not keep food cold enough to keep it safe and that product (and the subsequent attempt at a sequel) died.

What’s different about the Figo, however, is that the food is kept in dry cold storage (as low as 37 degrees) instead of a cold water bath. When it’s time to cook, water is added from a built-in tank and heated. When the cooking is done the water is evacuated from the heating cavity and back into the tank. I don’t know if, scientifically, this makes it easier to keep food at safe temperatures, but that’s certainly different from the Mellow.

The bigger question is whether Figo is two years to late to the sous vide party. While enjoying a bit of a mini-boom back in the 2015 – 2018 timeframe, the consumer sous vide market has subsequently crashed. After layoffs and cuts, ChefSteps sold to Breville, Nomiku shut down, and the aforementioned Mellow is all but gone. Anova is still truckin’, but it too has moved on to its combi steam oven that promises sous vide-like cooking.

Perhaps there still is a market for consumer sous vide machines. As of this writing, Eat Figo has already raised more than $7,000. But even if you love sous vide and you think that this might be the device for you (though you may want to make sure the cooling part works as promised), remember that crowdfunded hardware projects have a spotty record, at best. You don’t want to take a bath by backing a sous vide machine that doesn’t make it through manufacturing.

Firstchop Abandons D2C Sous Vide Proteins for B2B Microwavable Meals

When Firstchop first launched towards the end of 2017, it was at the center of a couple of different trends then sweeping the food tech world. It was a direct to consumer mail order meal kit, kinda, it only provided vacuum-sealed frozen proteins (that were actually quite tasty). Those proteins were meant to be reheated at home with a sous vide machine wand, the hot kitchen device at the time, which Firstchop gave away as part of a customer’s subscription.

My oh my, how a couple of years can change an industry. Meal kits are still around but most of the growth is at retail, not mail order. And the consumer sous vide market has basically collapsed. Chef Steps laid off a bunch of staff before being acquired by Breville, Nomiku shut down, and Anova is expanding beyond sous vide wands and into a new steam oven.

Ajay Narain, Co-Founder of Firstchop told me by phone this week that he saw the the big sous vide collapse coming. “We knew by the end of 2018 that the D2C was dead and the luster of sous vide was gone,” Narain said.

“Sous vide really caught fire and then collapsed,” Narain said. “Unrealistic expecations were built around what sous vide could do. People thought it would be great for all of these different use cases, but it has a lot of limitations.”

So in January of 2019, Firstchop decided to abandon almost everything it started out doing. It was getting out of the direct to consumer business and out of the consumer sous vide game. Firstchop pivoted into refrigerated prepared meals sold through office vending machines. The company added veggies and carbs to its proteins and each meal is re-heated with a microwave.

Narain said that during an initial customer pilot of its new meals at the beginning of 2019, Firstchop sold three times as much product in the first month than it had the entire previous year of selling D2C.

Since that initial test, Firstchop has been developing its products and the company officially launched its menu of meals today, which include Chicken Tikka Masala, Korean Barbecue Beef, Grilled Chicken Breast, and Chicken Chili Verde. The company is in talks to sell its meals through different large foodservice companies that operate vending services for various companies.

Firstchop hasn’t completely abandoned its sous vide roots however. Narain said that the sous vide cooking just moved from the consumer to the back end, and that’s how all of its meals are prepared. “At a manufacturing level, sous vide cooking process on the backend is essential,” Narain said. “It delivers moistnenss and tenderness, and the microwave is like magic.”

What’s almost more impressive is that Firstchop has held on this long just by bootstrapping. While it survived the consumer sous vide implosion, we’ll have to see if this latest pivot will be Firstchop’s last.

Watch the ‘Seattle Food Geek’ Explain How the New Anova Steam Oven Works

If you’re a sous vide or precision cooking nerd, chances are you’ve heard of Scott Heimendinger.

Not only did Heimendinger basically invent the consumer sous vide circulator back in 2010 and eventually turn that invention into a company and a successful Kickstarter campaign, but the culinary experimenter known as the ‘Seattle Food Geek’ also spent much of the past decade working at Modernist Cuisine, ground zero for high end culinary experimentation.

So naturally when I heard last year Heimendinger was lending a hand to Anova to help bring their steam oven to market, I became excited to see whether the pairing of these two sous vide pioneers would finally create a steam oven that might break through in the consumer market.

With the Anova steam oven shipping this year we should find out soon enough. In the meantime, you can check out this video I filmed this past week at CES of Heimendinger walking us through a demo version of the oven Anova with product designer Harry Lees.

CES 2020: A Look at the Anova Precision Steam Oven

Podcast: What Does Nomiku’s Demise Mean For Consumer Sous Vide?

Last Friday, Nomiku announced it was closing its doors.

Alongside Anova and Sansaire, the San Francisco based startup founded by Lisa and Abe Fetterman was part of an early class of consumer sous vide startups looking to democratize the high-end cooking technique through technology. Now, nearly a decade after the publication of Modernist Cuisine, only Anova is left standing (after being acquired by Electrolux) while Nomiku and Sansaire are no more. So what does it all mean?

No spoilers here! You’ll have to listen to The Spoon editor podcast to find out.

In addition to discussing the end of Nomiku and the broader meaning of it all, the Spoon editor team also discuss the following stories:

As always, you can listen to this episode of the Food Tech Show on Apple podcasts or Spotify, download directly to your device, or just click play below.

Consumer Sous Vide Pioneer Nomiku is Shutting Down

Nomiku, a pioneering kitchen tech startup that helped bring sous vide to the consumer market, is shutting down operations effective immediately.

In an email sent to customers this morning, Lisa Fetterman, Nomiku founder and CEO, wrote that the company will be shutting down all operations, including both its sous vide appliance business and its sous vide ready meal business, Nomiku Meals.

In an interview with The Spoon, Fetterman said that while the company saw strong growth in their meal delivery business after the company pivoted one year ago – she said they doubled revenue since the launch of the food business – it just wasn’t enough.

“We just couldn’t get the company to a sustainable place,” said Fetterman.

Fetterman indicated that for long term survival, the company would need to raise capital and that that was going to be challenging in today’s environment. She said that while being a hardware company made it hard to raise additional capital, it was going to be even tougher as a “food tech” startup focused on food delivery.

The demise of meal kit companies “have put a chill on the market when it came to raising funds,” said Fetterman.

The exit of Nomiku from the market marks the end of what has been a fairly rough of couple years for the first wave of startups in the connected cooking market. Sansaire, which started around the same time as Nomiku, shut down in February of 2018. Hestan Cue, maker of a guided cooking system, downsized its team in April, and just a few weeks later ChefSteps, another sous vide startup, had to layoff a significant portion of its team before it got acquired by Breville.

According to Fetterman, the company has been in discussions with potential acquirers, and while she hasn’t ruled out a potential deal, nothing has evolved to the point where she could move in that direction yet.

So for now, at least, Nomiku is no more.

I asked her what that means for existing customers, both for owners of the Nomiku sous vide circulator and of the meal delivery service, and this is what she told me: For food delivery, anyone who has been charged will receive their food. For any new orders in the last week or so that haven’t been charged, those will be cancelled. For those with a circulator, they will continue to support those still under a year warranty “as long as supplies last.”

Fetterman said that those with the circulator can reach out via email to info@nomiku.com for updates and continuing support.

For me, the news of Nomiku’s demise is a real bummer. Fetterman has been one of the industry’s most outspoken and innovative entrepreneurs, and her absence will leave the space just a little less interesting.

For her part, Fetterman is still sorting through how to feel as she shuts down the company she spent the last ten years building with her husband, Abe Fetterman.

“I started the company when I was 22,” said Fetterman. “I’m 32 now. I’ve grown up as an entrepreneur and a person, publicly. It is very easy to feel a huge of sense of defeat failing publicly as well. That’s par for the course.”

When Fetterman started her company a decade ago, she was among the first to see the opportunity in bringing sous vide to the masses. Over time, others entered the market and the competition wasn’t always friendly. At times, the elbow throwing between Nomiku and competitors even spilled into public view.

“When I started Nomiku, I always knew the tremendous risk it held to invent a category and then fight against really cut throat competitors,” said Fetterman.

Despite the outcome, Fetterman said she’s still very proud of what she and the team have accomplished, including centering the company’s manufacturing in the US.

“There were things I couldn’t control, but I feel proud of the way we have run the company, that we always tried to do the right thing and not cut corners. I feel proud that we moved the manufacturing back to the States.”

Fetterman doesn’t know what’s next for her and is planning to take a little time off after ten years of running a startup. When I asked her if she plans on starting another company in the food space, she said it’s too soon to say, but she did think there is still lots of opportunity for innovation in cooking.

“People will always need a simple solution for dinner. That is obvious to everybody. I think the next great food tech company is out there, even in the next year, but it’s hard to say what that looks like right now.”

Mellow Unveils the Mellow Duo, Their Second Generation Sous Vide Appliance

Earlier this year, Mellow teased their second generation appliance even as it was putting the remaining inventory of their troubled gen 1 on fire sale. And now, in advance of a Kickstarter campaign to be launched next week, the company has unveiled details of the new product which will be called the Mellow Duo.

The most noticeable difference between the original and the Duo is the second generation has not one but two cooking vats to drop food into (hence the name, Duo). According to the company, this will allow a Duo to prepare up a sizeable 10 portions in a cooking session.

Not surprisingly, the new version also has a built-in refrigeration system like the original.  As many will remember, it was this feature that both set the appliance apart early on and got it into some hot (or not quite cold enough) water. WIRED’s Joe Ray gave it a 1 out of 10 in his review of the product, finding that the first Mellow didn’t bring the food’s temperature low enough or hold it there to keep food out of the “danger zone” where bacteria can grow.

Mellow worked quickly to fix the issue and deployed a new app, and now with the Duo the company say they’ve gone even further, improving the cooling technology by “shortening the time between setting the machine up and when ingredients can be added and remain safely refrigerated.” According to the new product’s specs, the refrigerator cools the food to 39 degrees.

The Mellow Duo in action

Will Mellow be able to course correct after a troubled first generation and succeed with the launch of the Duo? Possibly. Despite its issues, the original Mellow does have a fairly active user base, mostly likely because its ability to chill and cook is something that appeals to some. While others are beginning to introduce products like the Suvie, for the time being the Mellow remains the only dedicated sous vide appliance with built-in refrigeration.

Interestingly, unlike its predecessor, the Mellow Duo will debut on Kickstarter. Crowdfunding always carries certain risk for a company, and success often depends on whether the campaign can get quickly out of the gate in its first 48 hours, so we’ll be watching closely next week to see how the Duo performs.

The new product will retail for $399, but backers will have a chance to pick one up for $299 when the Kickstarter campaign begins next week.

See specs for the new Mellow Duo below:

Appliance Size:

Height: 16.1 inches (410 mm)

Width: 7.5 inches (190 mm)

Depth: 14.1 inches (360 mm)

Water Bath Size:

Vat Large:

Height: 11.6 inches (294 mm)

Width: 7.5 inches (190 mm)

Depth: 6.9 inches (360 mm)

Vat Small:

Height: 11.6 inches (294 mm)

Width: 7.5 inches (190 mm)

Depth: 14.1 inches (176 mm)

Maximum Cooking Capacity:

8.5 Liters

About 10 regular portions

Heating Power:

1000 Watt

Cooling Power:

178 Watt

System Requirements:

Wi-Fi connection

iOS 9 or later or Android 4.4 or later device

Temperature Stability:

+/- 1°F at 140°F

Temperature Range:

39°F (at 84°F room temp.) to 194°F

(Updated): ChefSteps Reenters The Paid Content Business With Studio Pass as Chris Young Exits the Company

Update: The Spoon has confirmed that Chris Young, former CEO of ChefSteps, has left the company. 

ChefSteps, the Seattle based cooking hardware and content startup recently acquired by Breville, today unveiled Studio Pass, a $69 a year paid content subscription service.

The service was announced via email, which described the new service like this:

So, we are now introducing the ChefSteps Studio Pass. This is your virtual key to our kitchen. We are letting you into our cooking studio in the heart of the Pike Place Market—online, at least—to see the creative science in action. ChefSteps Studio Pass gives you access to our chefs through behind-the-scenes videos, exclusive new cooking guides, scientific insights, and online Q&A sessions.

In a way, the service marks a return to the company’s roots, which was that of a high-gloss cooking content startup before it went down the path of getting into the hardware business.

What isn’t clear, however, is how this new service is different from the company’s previous premium offering – called, naturally, “Premium” – which the company still offers on the website for a one-time payment of $39. And, from the looks of the comments in the ChefSteps community forum, subscribers to Premium aren’t sure of the difference either.

One Premium subscriber wondered what exactly what they were getting that was different:

Part of the problem with the company’s original foray into paid content was that they offered a lifetime subscription to Premium with a one-time payment, something I wrote about in my post about ChefSteps’ financial problems:

I do think the company made a strategic error early on by choosing to not ask its ChefSteps Premium customers to renew access annually (it was a pay-once, permanent subscription product), which negated any revenue growth opportunities as the company grew its subscriber base.

With its latest effort, it looks like ChefSteps is trying for a do-over with a new paid offering that would allow for it to capitalize on building a large subscriber base of annualized, renewable revenue. From the looks of it, however, they’ll need to do some explaining to those who plunked down $39 for what they thought was lifetime access to the company’s premium offerings.

The service was announced via an email from ChefSteps cofounder, Grant Crilly.  Crilly starts the email by mentioning the elephant in the room, ChefSteps recent troubles and their acquisition by Breville:

Let’s talk. This last year was the toughest one of my career, but it was also the most clarifying. I took a break from ChefSteps to try out some other creative projects. I drove 12,000 miles through Mexico. And when I came back, our investor wanted to make some changes. We had to lay off most of our staff and ultimately, I had a breakup with my founding business partner. It was a hard time.

Then, after months of negotiations, Breville acquired ChefSteps. And honestly, I cannot think of a better partner. Breville is obsessed with making the best products possible to help their customers have amazing food moments in their kitchens. They see ChefSteps the same way I do.

While the email was largely about the new paid content offering, Crilly made a cryptic reference to what’s perhaps even bigger news: Chris Young, his cofounder, has left ChefSteps. While Crilly doesn’t refer to Young by name, The Spoon has confirmed that the former CEO has indeed left the company he cofounded with Crilly after the acquisition by Breville.

Anova Launches New Smaller, Lighter Sous Vide Precision Cooker

Anova announced a new version of its Precision Cooker sous vide wand via a corporate blog post yesterday.

The new version of the Anova Precision Cooker is two inches smaller and 20 percent lighter than the older version and unlike the Anova Nano, it has wifi connectivity. The company also claims the device is more durable and provides better connectivity than the previous version. The new sous vide wand is available for pre-order right now for $129 (which the company says is $70 less than the retail price).

The first Anova Precision Cooker launched in 2014 and was among the initial wave of devices, along with ChefSteps and Nomiku, that kicked off a sous vide mini-boom. With the advent of a circulating wand that could attach to any pot of water and be controlled via mobile app, a full-fledged countertop sous vide machine was no longer necessary.

But this year that mini-boom has given way to turmoil. ChefSteps went through layoffs and product cancellations before finally being acquired by Breville. A spat between Nomiku CEO founder Lisa Fetterman and Anova CEO Steve Svajian over idea theft went public earlier this summer.

But Anova, which was bought by Electolux, carries on. In addition to new hardware, Anova also recently released a new version of its mobile app, which controls its devices.

With the introduction of the new Precision Cooker, Anova is no longer making the older version of its device. The blog post said that the company would still support it, but it was putting remaining inventory on a fire sale. But when we went to check out the price, the devices were already sold out.

Exclusive: The Spoon Talks With ChefSteps CEO Young About Breville Acquisition

Big news today in the world of the connected kitchen. As Chris Albrecht previously reported, Breville has acquired ChefSteps, maker of the Joule sous vide appliance.

I caught up with ChefSteps CEO Chris Young to ask him about the deal. Below is a transcript of our conversation.

Congratulations on the news. Can you tell us a little about how this came together? 

Young: When the bad news broke, Breville quickly reached out. They had been longtime admirers of what we have done. As we met with Breville team in Sydney, as I got to know their CEO Jim Clayton and talked about what we were doing with software, community and content, and we talked about what we accomplished with Joule, they saw a real opportunity to accelerate what Breville was trying to do by putting us together.

How do they plan to integrate the company?

They are keeping the Seattle offices. They are going to be investing more in our software team and capabilities. I can’t talk about future roadmap plans, but I think there will be a lot of opportunity with what we’ve done with Joule and how it might work together with Breville products in the future, and I think you are going to see a lot of investment in content and community from the Chefsteps side. In a lot of ways, this is a great outcome. Everything we want to keep doing is going to continue to happen and our community has a great steward in Breville so there’s continuity of our business and work.

Are you are going to stay on?

Young: Right now [I’m] involved in Breville, having conversations about how my role will evolve. We’re working it out. Grant [Crilly] is staying on, most of the team is staying on, and I expect be involved in Breville in some way going forward.

Can you tell us the acquisition price?

Young: No. Those terms are confidential. But I will say everyone who is involved, though it’s been a very challenging few months, feels very good about the outcome.

Why Breville?

Young: I’ve known Breville for a very long time. I had worked with them back when I was with the Fat Duck.

April was a very tough time. Had to let go a lot of my colleagues, stabilize the business, take time to figure things out. But when I made list of who I think was the right company to go forward with, Breville was at the top of my list. So when they reached out, I was really happy. It made it really easy. We have a shared DNA, how we think about products, how we think about innovation, that we’re fundamentally there to serve our community of cooks. We’re never just about doing a product at a particular price point and a set of features, that’s never how we approached things. I also think it’s real validation [that] what we built, what we shipped, was really one of a kind.

You had been working on a number of other products. Can you tell us what will happen to the ChefSteps product roadmap under Breville?

Young: This is one of the changes for me. Breville has to make a lot of decisions. We’ll absolutely see Joule go forward. There is a lot of eagerness to see our roadmap go forward. Will everything go forward? I have no idea, but I know there are several things we are very close I think we will be able to ship to our community later this year and I am quite excited about that.

You’ll be paired with precision cooking pioneer Polyscience under Breville. Thoughts about that?  

Young: We worked with Polyscience early on. They were a pioneer in the commercial space. With Joule, Breville was not only wanting to have a commercial offering, but also wanted to have the best offering in the consumer space with Joule.

The consumer sous vide market has been really competitive and some companies have struggled. Any thoughts on how it looks going forward?

The sous vide market is growing tremendously. The market is growing very fast, over 40% per year. Prime Day was fantastic for us. [I] think there has been a challenge in the industry. Some of it is a timing question. Some of the obvious strategic buyers that would give startups an exit, they’re maybe not ready yet to transform themselves with technology and they’re struggling out to figure out how they would benefit.

That is sort of the problem: there are not a lot of buyers that yet have the vision they need for the technologies that companies like ChefSteps pioneered. Breville gets it. They were already committing to a connected future and we just provided a great opportunity to accelerate it. I think until you get more companies recognizing they absolutely need this technology as part of their future, you’re going to see these companies struggle. But fundamentally, I think we’ve proven this technology is absolutely worthwhile and the relationships with their customers are invaluable.

Is the Joule Ready sauce business dead?

Young: I don’t think any final decisions have been made. We’re not putting back into production immediately. These are assets that Breville has acquired. There was a lot of things we were developing behind the scenes our customers absolutely loved. To be candid, I wish that business had a little bit more time to mature because their growth numbers were tremendous. I don’t know if I would say its dead, it might just be a question of priorities before anyone can turn back to it.

Spat Between Nomiku and Anova CEOs Spills Into Public View

A spat between the CEOs of two of the leading sous vide companies spilled into public view over the weekend as Nomiku’s Lisa Fetterman and Anova’s Steve Svajian gave differing interpretations of their early relationship and what followed as Svajian went on to become the CEO of Anova and eventually sold the company to Electrolux.

It all started last Friday when Techcrunch’s premium service Extra Crunch featured a story about an episode of the podcast This is Your Life in Silicon Valley which had Fetterman discussing her early days at Nomiku. During the podcast, hosts Sunil Rajaraman and Jascha Kaykas-Wolff ask Fetterman “to tell us a funding story that will really connect with our audience.” After Fetterman says that she and her husband invented the sous vide circulator category, she starts to talks about Svajian.

The following is transcribed from the podcast (Fetterman starts discussing Svajian at about 9:45 minute mark of the podcast):

“One of my earliest earliest investors when I got rejected from so many people, he was kinda of like a knight in shining armor. He saw me at a conference where I was pitching hard. He was like “You know what, Lisa? I’m going to put in some money. I’m going to put in $10k into your company.” At that time, $10k took us six months. I was like, “Thank you. I’m so happy.” He’s like “I believe in you. I believe in sous vide.”

His name is Stephen Svjajian. He became the CEO of Anova which was my largest rival. Then they sold to Electrolux for $250 million dollars. Before they did, he asked me “You know what? You can buy my stock back if you’d like.” But I didn’t know what was happening.

So I bought the stock back. I was so happy. I was like, You’re a conflict of interest and everything. You’re trying to make it right. I see it. You should’ve just given it back to me.” And then he just sold the company. The first Anova was an exact replica of Nomiku. All their wording was exactly like Nomiku. I was just like, “Wow.”

He’s a white dude. He’s a white dude who’s been in startups for a long time. He saw an opportunity to make a life-changing amount of money. He was like, “Bye, bish.”

As a result of Fetterman’s podcast interview and the subsequent Techcrunch article, there’s been something of a public backlash against Svajian on social media, not all that surprising given the seriousness of the accusations.

So today, Svajian responded to Fetterman’s accusations via a fairly detailed post published on Medium entitled On Lisa Fetterman and the Origins of Anova. In the post, Svajian goes into detail over the timeline and refutes each of Fetterman’s accusations, including arguing that he didn’t arrive at Anova until after the company had finished designing their first consumer product.

He also presents a screen shot of a text message between the two that purportedly shows Fetterman reaching out to Svajian in 2016 (ed note: the text exchange was presented as one image – I’ve split it into two images and presented side by side):

Image: Svajian-Fetterman Text Exchange. Source: Steve Svajian

Near the end of the post, Svajian summarizes his counter-arguments against Fetterman’s accusations, including her contention that the first Anova consumer product was “an exact replica of Nomiku”.

Here are the summary points from Svajian’s Medium post:

Lisa claims I stole her product ideas, but the product category was already established. Polyscience and others were already selling immersion circulators. The market for sous vide startups was heating up. For example, around the time I started working with Anova, another competitor entered the market — Sansaire. They were running a Kickstarter for a less expensive device. Sansaire launched well-ahead of Nomiku and was a legitimate contender.

Lisa claims I stole and copied her design with Anova’s first product. I had no involvement in the design or development of Anova’s first device, which Lisa claims. The first version of Anova’s product was a repurposed lab-grade circulator, which definitely didn’t copy anything Lisa was doing. I had no input into the design of that device. It was already baked by the time I started working with Anova. Like I said, it was a lab-grade device repurposed to consumers. I treated it like an MVP, so we could figure out what to build next.

Lisa claims that theft of her ideas led to our success. In late 2013, I had the idea to make Anova a connected device. This was my idea. Making Anova a connected device really opened the market for sous vide and became a key differentiator for Anova. To my knowledge, Lisa did not want to create a connected device. I’d also point out that it was the execution of this idea that led to our success.

Our product looks nothing like Nomiku’s. As stated, I had no input into the design of our first unit. Nevertheless, there are obvious and signifcant differences—They had an adjustable dial around the head of their unit to adjust time and temp. We had an LCD screen.

Regarding the timeline around sous vide circulator intelletual property, it does appear Fetterman did actually have the first patent filing for a sous vide circulator, but others like Scott Heimendinger (the original founder of Sansaire) were writing about the idea in 2012 in 2010. Jeff Wu, the original founder of Anova, filed for (and was eventually issued) a patent for a consumer sous vide circulator in February of 2013, supporting Svajian’s contention that the company had worked on the idea before his arrival at the company.

Bottom line, I would suggest both listening to the podcast interview with Fetterman (you can read about it if you subscribe to Techcrunch’s premium service) and read Svajian’s post and making a judgement for yourself.

Anova Ships Pro Cooker, New App on Deck For Summer

This week, Anova launched a new sous vide cooker targeted towards professionals, the Anova Precision Cooker Pro.

The new $399 circulator, available at Anova’s website or on Amazon, which was designed to withstand the higher demands of professional kitchens, is actually Anova’s second stab at the pro market. In a post on the Anova blog, company CEO Steve Svajian describes the backstory of bringing a pro circulator to market for the second time:

In 2014, we also launched our first device for professionals—The Anova Precision® Cooker Pro. Most pro devices were not built to run nonstop, broke easily, and were big and bulky. We wanted to fix that.

We launched the first Pro early in the company’s history when we had less than ten employees. It was very difficult to support both consumers AND professionals. So, in 2015, we stopped selling the first Pro and began dreaming of a new device from the ground-up.

Anova Pro Models

The 2014 Pro (left) and the 2019 Pro (right). Image credit: Anova.

As can be seen, the 2019 Pro edition looks a lot more like a signature Anova circulator, only built for high-volume demands of a restaurant kitchen.  The new model is designed to run non-stop (Svajian’s post says it could theoretically run for 10,000 hours straight) and can heat a much larger water bath (100 liters) than the home version.

Interestingly, the company decided to deliver the Pro without the ability to connect to the mobile app.The company is working on a complete rebuild of the app and, because it wouldn’t be ready at the time of the launch of the Pro, it apparently didn’t make sense to engineer the new circulator to work with an older gen app that is effectively being phased out. The new app will be out this summer and Pro users will be able to connect after a firmware upgrade.

Svajian describes the decision to push the Pro without app connectivity in the post:

“It was a tough decision to ship Pro before the app was ready, but we didn’t want to deny professionals the chance to start cooking with it immediately.

Our mission is to inspire people to create great food. As part of that, we want our products, both hardware and software, to deliver the best experiences in the world. We’re quite cognizant of the fact that our app has been a source of frustration and we’re committed to making it better. We’ve built a great team that’s working extremely hard on a new app and new infrastructure that will enable us to deliver an unparalleled experience.”

Like many Anova users, I tend to agree that their current app leaves much to be desired and have chosen to simply use the circulator without it. In some ways being to run my Nano without an app is both just easier and also makes sense – complete reliance on an app is one of the major concerns of ChefSteps’ Joule users as that company has had struggles – and I imagine this would be the case for a busy chef cooking steak after steak.

However, there are scenarios where a better app would drastically improve user experience, such as alarms for when the food is done cooking, having the ability to schedule a cook and remotely turn the circulator on or off.  For the pro kitchen, it would also make sense for an app that runs multiple Pros at the same time.

Svajian hints at some features in another post announcing the new app in from April, and also drops a tantalizing tidbit about the app being able connect to more than just Anova circulators:

Software must enable #anovafoodnerds to connect in a meaningful way – We believe that both device connectivity and communication between different devices are increasingly important features of the Anova Kitchen.

Does that mean the Anova app will become more of an uber-smart kitchen app? Will it connect to Electrolux appliances? We’ll have to wait and see.

Svajian also discusses how the new app will enable more personalized content management (recipe collections, personalized recommendations) and also facilitate interactivity between Anova users.

Overall, it’s good to see this burst of activity from Anova, which outside of delivering the Nano last year has been fairly quiet since their acquisition by Electrolux. Now, with the Pro shipping out to customers, hopefully the company can now turn their attention to the long overdue Anova Precision oven. The company first announced their smart combi oven in 2016 (at SKS in Seattle) and originally intended to ship in the summer of 2017. As of now, the oven is still nowhere to be seen. Given the product is now a couple years overdue, some probably think the company has all but given up on it, but when I ask they’ve reassured me that their still working on it.  They won’t, however, commit to a ship date.

Finally, it will be interesting to see how the Pro performs in, well, the pro market. Anova has become the biggest name in consumer sous vide, but some chefs have been cooking sous vide for a decade at this point using equipment from the likes of Polyscience and others.  This is where a strong app and upgradable firmware could really differentiate Anova, but for now we’ll just have to wait and see how cooking professionals embrace the company’s push into the pro market sans app (at least until summer).

Newly Downsized ChefSteps Dropping Sauce and Paid Content Businesses

Last week, news broke that ChefSteps had laid off a significant percentage of its staff. At the time,  it was unclear what the future held for the company other than an assurance from company CEO Chris Young that the Seattle startup and its flagship hardware product, the Joule sous vide appliance, would live on.

Now, thanks to a Facebook post from Young, we have a clearer picture of what a downsized ChefSteps will look like. Young’s note, which he wrote to the Cooking With Joule Facebook group, reiterated that ChefSteps and the Joule would live to see another day.

However, as I speculated last week, it looks like the company is getting out of the sauce business.

From the post:

I appreciate your understanding that in the coming days our focus will be on supporting our affected friends and that we may be a bit slower to respond than usual.

This also means that we will be discontinuing certain lines of business, including Joule Ready and any additional content being added to ChefSteps Premium.

I liked the Joule Ready sauce concept, even if the pricing for sauces ($4-$7 depending on the sauce) was a little high. Still, the idea of creating an easy sous vide meal without having to worry about getting the necessary ingredients to make a sauce like Thai curry or or tikka masala made life a little easier, even if it meant supplying your own protein.

From the looks of it, not enough people agreed with me. I have a feeling if the company was turning a profit or saw strong growth ahead for Joule Ready, they wouldn’t have killed the business after only half a year.

The company is also axing its paid content business. ChefSteps Premium, which offered video-centric cooking classes, in-depth how-to’s and exclusive recipes, cost subscribers a one-time fee of $39.  While it’s not clear how successful Premium was, the business clearly either didn’t have enough subscribers to justify the investment of putting new content behind the paywall or the company simply couldn’t afford to keep the team on. I do think the company made a strategic error early on by choosing to not ask its ChefSteps Premium customers to renew access annually (it was a pay-once, permanent subscription product), which negated any revenue growth opportunities as the company grew its subscriber base.

Finally, while Young didn’t go into too many details about how they ran into a cash crunch, he did drop one interesting clue:

As you’ve heard, there have been some changes at ChefSteps in the past week. Our funding situation unexpectedly changed (emphasis mine) and we’ve had to make the incredibly difficult decision to let a significant fraction of our amazing team go. This truly sucks.

While it was always assumed ChefSteps was in a good financial place because of the backing of billionaire Gabe Newell, it’s apparent now that wasn’t necessarily the case. Most interestingly, it looks like the sudden change in the health of the company’s balance sheet was not anticipated, making me wonder if either Newell called in the loan or had changed his position somehow and didn’t want to extend more credit to the company. There’s also the possibility ChefSteps had been seeking other financing and had something fall through at the last minute.

Either way, it looks like the company’s runway was suddenly shortened, which meant the startup no longer had the luxury of experimenting in new lines of business such as food delivery and premium content.

I also wonder if this means ChefSteps will permanently shelve its ongoing development of other hardware products. While the company never disclosed publicly what their next product would be, they’d been signaling for some time that new products were on the horizon.

With last week’s news, chances are any new products (one of which was speculated to be a steam oven) likely won’t see the light of day anytime soon.