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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Sous Vide

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.

Mellow Teases New Product as It Clears Out First Gen Sous Vide Appliance

The Mellow sous vide appliance has travelled an interesting road over the past couple years, one that has apparently reached an end.

But hey, don’t be sad. While Mellow’s original sous vide appliance may be nearing the end, the company is apparently alive and well and working on a new product.

The news came in the form of an email sent this week with the subject line “Mellow V1 $99 Blowout Special – V2 is Coming!” which told the reader that the company is clearing out the remaining inventory of first-gen Mellows with a $99 fire sale this weekend because, yes, Mellow 2.0 is coming.

Before we get to that second generation product, let’s first review Mellow’s journey with a brief chronology:

2014: FNV Labs announces the Mellow in 2014. The new appliance gets lots of press  as a unique sous vide cooking appliance with its built-in refrigeration unit that will keep food cool until scheduled cook time.

2015: Mellow misses first ship date but still getting lots of press.

2016: Mellow founder and pitchman Zé Pinto Ferreira announces a partnership with Flex for manufacturing the Mellow. Ferreira says the Mellow will ship in May 2017.

2017: Mellow switches CEOs as Ferreira abruptly departs the company. The company’s former advisor and COO Gary Itenson takes over. The Mellow ships in the fall of 2017.

2018: Mellow sous vide appliance gets reviewed by Joe Ray of Wired. The score? 1/10. This devastatingly low score was not because the appliance didn’t sous vide the food, but instead because Ray found it couldn’t bring the food’s temperature low enough and hold it there to keep it out of the “danger zone” where bacteria can grow.

2018: Mellow works to correct the above issue and dispatches a software update to “keep food safely chilled all day long.”

2018: Mellow changes hands as it’s acquired by Zalmi Duchman, a founder of meal delivery service The Fresh Diet and food tech investor.

2019: Mellow announces Gen 2 and end-of-lifes Gen One.

So what features will the next generation Mellow have? When asked, the company wouldn’t say much, but Vanessa Domingues, the lead industrial designer for the Mellow (and the only remaining employee from the company’s early days in 2014) told me via email that the future Mellow will have both a “High-end and Multi-Purpose Mellow with a dual container” and will be “available outside US and Canada.”

Most interestingly, Domingues also told me the new product will have a meal delivery component called “Mellow Meals.” Given Duchman’s background in this market and the trend towards this direction by other connected cookers, adding meal delivery for recurring revenue isn’t all that surprising.

The real test will come when the new appliance arrives on market next year. What early buzz the company had has long since faded due to late shipments and the Wired review, but the product always looked interesting and made sense (if it worked).

That said, it’s hard to tell what the new appliance will look like (or even if it will have built-in refrigeration). The reality is other products are starting to come to market with built-in cooling, so that feature’s not nearly as big a differentiator as it once was.

So when will the next Mellow ship? While the company wouldn’t give a specific date, Mellow CEO Duchman did tell me they were “shooting for early 2020.”

I Tried ChefStep’s JouleReady Bags: How a Sous Vide Virgin Became a Convert

I have a confession: I am a full-time writer about food technology and the smart kitchen, and I’ve never tried my hand at sous vide. Maybe it’s because I don’t eat much meat, or because I have a pint-sized kitchen, or because — gasp! — I actually gravitate towards old-fashioned cooking techniques. Half the time I don’t even use a recipe.

But a few weeks ago Mike and I went by ChefSteps HQ to learn about their new Joule Ready sauces, a line of sous-vide-ready bags filled with sauce, which CEO Chris Young told us they’d developed in part to “help first time sous vide users.” So I decided to shed my Luddite culinary ways and give the Joule a spin. Here’s how it stacked up:

ChefSteps launched the initial 12 flavors of Joule Ready with 8,000 of their community members this month, ranging from Sauce au Poivre to Roasted Red Pepper Walnut Muhammara. I decided to try Thai Green Curry, which I thought would go best with the salmon in my fridge.

For those who haven’t used the Joule app before, it’s a piece of cake. The app has tips and tricks for sous vide newbies, and also offers a myriad of recipes organized by protein type. My only qualm is that their “beginner guide” only has four options, all of which are meat. I’m a pescetarian, and I know that most people get sous vide to perfect their carnivorous cooking — but I’d appreciate at least one fish, egg, or vegetable dish on there.

The Thai Green Curry featured recipe.
Selecting how I’d like my salmon cooked.

When it comes to the Joule Ready, however, it’s even easier. You just scan the QR code on the bag and the app prompts you to select your protein, pick how done you like it, and note its thickness. You can also choose to follow the Featured Recipe for that particular sauce, which will show you how to make a full meal out of your protein. For the Thai Green Curry the featured recipe is chicken over rice with grilled eggplant and a sweet pepper and herb salad, but I went with salmon instead.

Once you’ve entered in your protein info the app then tells you to put the sous vide in your water vessel, plug it in (not the other way around!), and connect it via bluetooth so it can start heating the water to the exact specifications for perfect cooking. Once it reaches the right temperature, the Joule app alerts you that it’s time to put your protein into its saucy bath, pop it in your water, and start the timer. I didn’t even use a clip to affix the bag, and yet the salmon stayed perfectly submerged.

My sous vide setup.

After 40 minutes my app alerted me that my protein was ready, though I kept it in the water for a few minutes more while I finished my brown rice (doesn’t it always take longer than you think?) and sweet potatoes. One of the benefits of sous vide: your food will never dry out!

After I messily extracted my (perfectly cooked, perfectly tender) salmon from its saucy bath, I was left with the sticky problem of how to get the tasty green curry sauce out of the bag and onto my plate. ChefSteps is clear that the sauces are meant not only as a marinade/cooking accompaniment to your protein, but also as a finishing sauce.

Spooning it out worked, but not without plenty of it getting all over my hands. I realized after the fact that I could have snipped one of the corners of the bag and squeezed the sauce out like I was piping icing — I’ll try that next time.

My completed Joule Ready meal of Thai Green Curry salmon with rice and kale.

A few thoughts:

  • Yes, yes, I’m a sous vide n00b — but I didn’t realize that you were supposed to sear your protein before putting it into the bag, lest it the sugars in the sauce burn. My Joule app didn’t instruct me to pre-sear after I scanned my Joule Ready. Luckily the salmon worked well tender and didn’t need a caramelized exterior, but for some proteins I imagine you’d really need that sear.
  • Eventually, it would be nice to have multiple recipes for each Joule Ready sauce. The more customizable the recipe, the more people would use it; after all, people want the sauce so that they have to think less about what to make for dinner, not brainstorm a whole extra side dish or starch just because they don’t eat/want the particular meat recommended by the recipe.

In the end, Joule Ready delivered on its promise: it made sous vide cooking simple, even for someone who’d never tried it before. Forty minutes isn’t a quick meal by any account — and it would take even longer with, say, steak — but with a little planning ahead it was simple to pop in some protein, put on a pot of rice, and have a way above-average meal for a Tuesday. Bonus: if you get distracted doing laundry or watching TV while you wait for your food to cook, you don’t have to worry about returning to a smoky kitchen and charred dinner.

I haven’t (yet) tried out other devices from Anova or Nomiku, but with Joule Ready, ChefSteps did the hard work of getting me — a sous vide skeptic — to actually give this kitchen technology a whirl. Plus, I love how the sauces are shelf-stable, so I can make a fancy-pants sous vide entrée anytime the mood strikes, without having to order pre-made meals ahead of time or plan out a recipe.

Good thing I have six more sauces in my cabinet to try out.

With Joule Ready, ChefSteps Establishes Sous Vide Food Delivery Business

This week Mike and I got invited to the ChefSteps headquarters for that most elusive meal: a free lunch. What we got was free lunches, plural, plus a sneak peek at the newest product from ChefSteps. No, it’s not a new update on the Joule, their sous vide machine. It’s much saucier.

Joule Ready is a line of sous vide-ready bags pre-filled with sauces in flavors like Thai Green Curry, Salsa Chamoy and Roasted Red Pepper Walnut Muhammara. Here’s how it works:

You can scan the code on the Joule Ready packaging through the ChefSteps app, which will give you the option to select your protein: chicken, fish, tofu, etc. Once you make your choice and add your meat (or veg) to the Joule Ready bag, the app will automatically start your Joule and instruct you on how to cook the rest of the dish, which may include pan-searing or grilling to finish. (Joule Ready can be used with other sous vide appliances, though obviously the app won’t be able to start and stop cook-time in the same way.) Each sauce also comes with one featured recipe — basically a complete meal of protein + side + garnish — which you can access by scanning the Joule Ready code in the ChefSteps app.

Joule Ready has been in beta since the beginning of 2018, and will launch with 8,000 ChefSteps community members later this month. After that, they’ll aim to hit a 15% week over week growth rate.

The bags are all shelf stable without refrigeration for one year, and each one feeds 2 – 4 people. A key appeal of the Joule Ready packs is their variety of flavors — no cooking ennui here. ChefSteps CEO Chris Young told us that they’ll offer 12 initial Joule Ready flavors at launch, and already have 12 more queued up and ready to go. Options will change weekly: sauces that perform well will stay, while those that don’t, go.

ChefSteps hopes that Joule Ready’s constantly rotating lineup of sauce flavors will push consumers to use their Joule more frequently, and with less forethought. “Customers would get into a rut,” explained Young. They would master sous vide-ing steaks or pork chops, but they would get bored of the same preparation every time. The premade sauces also help save time and energy, so home cooks don’t have to do anything more than plop in some protein and make a side of rice. “We want to help people actually cook on a busy Wednesday night,” he said.

Joule Ready featured recipe with Salsa Chamoy.

For ChefSteps, the beauty of this undertaking — as well as their decision to bring everything but printing and laminating the sous vide bags in-house — is its agility. Young told us that they could produce a new sauce within 3 – 5 weeks. That means they can easily capitalize off of new trends on cooking sites or social media, upcoming holidays, as well as feedback from their consumers.

There are three reasons ChefSteps can do this so quickly. The first is size: by making, say, 500 bags of Truffle Jus Gras instead of 500,000, which are the type of numbers in which Big Food has to deal with, the company can be flexible and take risks with their sauces. It also means they can make holiday or limited-time Joule Ready bags without being stuck with a ton of leftover inventory.

The second reason is their manufacturing practice: namely, that it’s almost all in-house. Everything but printing and laminating the sous vide bags is done by ChefSteps, from recipe testing to production to packaging design. The company ultimately built their own facility in order to build a filling machine that would work at their comparatively low volume. That gives the ability to pivot and develop new sauces super-quickly, and have complete control from end-to-end.

Lastly, there’s ChefSteps’ not-so-secret weapon: its data. Whenever any of its community cook with a Joule Ready bag, the company registers it and can ask them through the app how their experience went. ChefSteps can then leverage all this data to see how their users are liking each sauce, and make adjustments accordingly. “We’re 100% connected to our customers,” said Young.

Though they’re still testing prices, Young said that the Joule Ready bags wouldn’t have across-the-board pricing. For example, a truffle one might be cost in the double-digits, while most other bags would set you back around $6.95. If you buy a four-pack, the price would go down to around $4.95, and the company will eventually add a Subscribe & Save feature.

Young said that Joule Ready would be in retail stores by 2019. However, he was very clear that retail is more of a customer acquisition channel than the end goal — their focus will be on direct sales through the ChefSteps site. Which makes sense: the company can ship sauces cheaply, since the pack flat and don’t require ice or other refrigeration. That gives them a big advantage over direct-ship full and pre-cooked meals.

ChefSteps has been working to diversify into food sales since 2014. Last year the company beta-tested a new line of business selling locally raised meat and fish to Joule users (a move not that different from other Seattle food tech startup Crowd Cow). A few months later, also dabbled with frozen pre-cooked meals and teamed up with PostMates to enable delivery.

While neither of those products were rolled out beyond their initial beta test phase, Young said the company learned a lot from both efforts which they incorporated when creating the Joule Ready lineup. One obvious lesson was that by focusing on long-shelf life sauces where the consumer adds their own protein, the company is able to sidestep all the logistical expense and complications that go along with shipping meat across the country.

ChefSteps is not the only smart kitchen company getting into the food business. Tovala made food delivery a core part of their offering, paired with their countertop smart cooking device, and First Chop ships frozen proteins in various sauces pre-packed in sous vide bags. Sous vide pioneer Nomiku has also expanded pretty aggressively into food delivery.

Michael Wolf wrote about this phenomenon for the Spoon: Eventually, Fetterman decided to recreate the entire experience for her consumers,  one which included not only a sous vide circulator, but the food itself. She had decided that Nomiku would make the act of creating a meal easier by offering pre-packaged, pre-portioned, and pre-cooked sous vide meals. All the consumer would need to do is scan the RFID tag on each component of a meal – usually a main course and a couple of sides — and drop them into the water. In thirty minutes, food is ready to eat.

Neither Nomiku nor ChefSteps is immune to the challenges of growing an audience for a smart kitchen “luxury” gadget. According to Young, there are three main challenges that face widespread consumer acceptance of sous vide. The first, price, is already being solved with the $99 sous vide wand. The second, convenience, is solved by the Joule Ready sauces. The third, time, has thus been elusive — but Young hinted that it could be solvable with AI.

With a glint in his eye, he said that ChefSteps would be unveiling tech by the end of the year that would enable Joule Ready meals to cook in 30 minutes, making them competitive with Nomiku’s pre-cooked meals — only customizable. “These sauces are meant to help first-time sous vide users,” said Young.

Soon, we’ll put it to the test. Keep an eye out for later this week, when a sous vide virgin (me!) tries her hand at making a Joule Ready meal for the very first time, with her very first sous vide wand. Will it be a tasty success? Tune in to find out.

If you want to hear ChefSteps CEO Chris Young talk about why the company created Joule Ready, make sure to come to the Smart Kitchen Summit where he’ll be discussing new business models in the era of the connected kitchen. 

Whirlpool Patents Induction-Powered Sous Vide Cooking Appliance

Whirlpool has been awarded a patent for a new sous vide appliance that utilizes an induction system to both heat and power a cooking vessel with an internal water circulator. The system described in the patent also has Wi-Fi and a microcontroller to control the cook.

While the description of the system is very detailed (you can read it in all its glory here), below is a brief summary of how it works:

The system includes an induction heating surface that both heats water as well as powers an internal circulator within the vessel. The larger vessel, which sits atop the induction surface, has an internal vessel within it. There is a gap in between the two vessels where water circulates and is heated. The heating system is powered by a magnetic coupling  of two plates.  The internal stirring plate rotates and has heated blades on it, which help circulate and heat the water.

You can see a diagram of the blade-system below:

An internal plate with blades circulates and heats water within the vessel gap

The whole system, which is controlled through a user interface on the induction hob/surface, has a Wi-Fi or Bluetooth temperature probe that sends water temperature information back to the induction surface. The system can also be controlled via Wi-Fi and an embedded microcontroller.

With this patent, it looks like Whirlpool has created an interesting induction-based sous vide system that is differentiated from the sous vide circulators from the likes of Anova and Nomiku and the water bath systems that started appearing over a dozen years ago.

As with all patents, there’s no guarantee that Whirlpool will actually productize their innovation. The company filed the patent in late 2015 and it doesn’t appear at this point that the company has brought the system to market. Personally, I think an induction cooktop with a turnkey sous vide cooking vessel is an intriguing new product, so I’ll be keeping an eye out to see what the appliance giant does with this patent.

How will sous vide fit into into the kitchen of the future? Come to the Smart Kitchen Summit to find out. 

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.

Lisa Fetterman Is Reinventing Nomiku As a Sous Vide Powered Food Delivery Business

When Lisa Fetterman started Nomiku, all she wanted to do was get the word out about sous vide cooking.

“When I first saw these machines in Michelin-starred restaurants,” said the CEO, book author, and mother of two, “I was like ‘Woah, this is it.'”

By ‘it,’ Fetterman is referring to the technique employed by the world’s top chefs and how it was responsible for some of the best food she’d ever tasted. She figured if consumers had a way to cook sous vide that didn’t involve expensive equipment made exclusively for professional chefs, they would.

It wasn’t long before Fetterman (then Lisa Qiu) and her soon-to-be-husband Abe Fetterman decided to make a consumer-friendly sous vide appliance themselves. The result was the immersion sous vide circulator, something they would later patent and build a company around after a successful Kickstarter campaign.

Lisa Fetterman in Nomiku’s first Kickstarter video

At first, she thought that would be enough.

“How hard would it be to convince people to put food inside a bag and put it in the water, especially when the results are so amazing?”

They did eventually convince people, but it wasn’t as easy as she’d anticipated.

“They didn’t know the time and temperature, they needed help with recipes,” Fetterman said of her initial customers. “They treated it as a totally new way of cooking.”

Which it was. To help, Nomiku built another sous vide appliance which was smaller and more powerful than the company’s first product. Another difference from the first generation product was this one had Wi-Fi.

“I made the Wi-Fi Nomiku so you can send recipes directly to the machine,” she said.

The result?

“There was still friction,” said Fetterman. “People kept asking me, ‘Hey is this the right bag?’ and ‘Can you make me a vacuum sealer next?'”

Abe Fetterman working on the Nomiku Wi-Fi

The reality was that for a generation who grew up on frozen food and microwave ovens, the idea of vacuum sealing food in a bag, submerging it in water for hours and then searing it seems like a lot of steps. The problem was they need more help, and Nomiku’s CEO now knew that she couldn’t solve it by simply building a new sous vide appliance.

What she did know was that consumers liked the quality of the food cooked with the precision heating technique, but it wasn’t enough to convince them to commit to cooking sous vide. What they wanted, she realized, was more convenience.

So Fetterman started to rethink her company; not just the hardware that heats the food, but the entire experience of cooking sous vide. She knew by now that for most consumers, asking them to bag, sous vide and sear their food was too much. She also knew that while the quality of microwave food wasn’t as good, it did have one major advantage: the experience was super easy. That’s because not only does the microwave heat food up fast, but it also has an entire ecosystem around to deliver a streamlined cooking experience that goes something like this: pop in a frozen meal, zap it, eat.

Eventually, Fetterman decided to recreate the entire experience for her consumers,  one which included not only a sous vide circulator, but the food itself. She had decided that Nomiku would make the act of creating a meal easier by offering pre-packaged, pre-portioned, and pre-cooked sous vide meals. All the consumer would need to do is scan the RFID tag on each component of a meal – usually a main course and a couple of sides — and drop them into the water. In thirty minutes, food is ready to eat.

Nomiku’s new RFID-scanning circulator

The shift was a big one. Not only did Fetterman develop a new Nomiku with an RFID scanner to recognize the meals and set the timer on the circulator, but she also had to set up an entire supply and delivery chain around food.

That do that, Nomiku would not only need more funding (which they got from Samsung) but would also need to start working with copackers and logistics companies to create an end-to-end food delivery business.

She decided to start small, initially shipping products in beta to just 100 customers in May of last year, and expand from there.

So where has this new direction taken Fetterman and Nomiku?

In short, it’s completely changed the company. Nomiku has gone from primarily selling hardware to offering a complete food solution for consumers. All one has to do is go to the company’s website and try to buy a sous vide circulator to see the shift in focus: If you enter in a zip code that’s not within the area where Nomiku sells their meals, you’re told to check back later. In other words, they’ve become a meal-first company — that also sells a sous vide circulator to help make it all possible.

Nomiku’s website is primarily focused on their meal service

The good news is if you don’t live in one of the eight western states where Nomiku sells their meals, there’s a good chance they’ll get to you soon. According to Fetterman, they plan to hit profitability in their current region over the next two months and to ship nationwide by the end of the year.

While the shift for Nomiku was something Fetterman saw as necessary to expand the addressable market for sous vide cooking, it just so happened to also align well with the current thinking in Silicon Valley, where nowadays a VC’s first piece of advice for hardware startup founders is usually about the necessity of creating a recurring revenue business model.

All you have to do is look at the early returns on Nomiku’s new food efforts to see why: In the company’s early days, they’d make the business work by selling a $300 device and snagging whatever margin they could walk away with after parting with hardware costs, retail margin, and ongoing support expenses. With their new business, Fetterman says the company now has a $144 average food order and a retention rate of 81% for food customers who order their third box of food from Nomiku.

All that adds up to what is perhaps the biggest sign of change for the company: According to Fetterman, just a year after launching the food business, Nomiku now derives the majority of its revenue from food, not hardware.

Nomiku isn’t alone in trying to pair cooking hardware with food delivery. Tovala, a smart kitchen startup from Chicago, sells a smart oven with a food delivery service. Suvie, a Boston-based kitchen startup started by Reviewed.com founder Robin Liss, also plans to offer food delivery with its “kitchen robot.”. Belgium’s Mealhero has created a steamer to go with its frozen food delivery services. Chefsteps, another startup selling a sous vide circulator, has experimented with food delivery in the past and has hinted it will do more in the future.

However, despite Nomiku’s early success in the shift towards food delivery, it’s probably too soon to say how things will shake for them out in the long term. Meal delivery business models are still in the early stages, consumers are notoriously fickle when it comes to committing for the long term, and the big guys like Amazon continue to expand the types of food they’re bringing to consumers.

That said, Lisa Fetterman remains committed to the same goal today that she had when she first started Nomiku.

“We are here to eradicate every obstacle between a person and a delicious plate of food.”

A Nano Review Of The Anova Nano

When Anova named their newest product the Nano, there was no mistaking the message they were trying to get across: that this, the latest in their lineup of sous vide circulators, is their smallest yet.

And so in the spirit of the Anova Nano, I present to you what is an appropriately small review of Anova’s diminutive new steak-maker. A nano-sized review if you will.

I got my hands on a Nano last week when I visited the Anova Kitchen, Anova’s retail spot/event space on the first floor of their new HQ in downtown San Francisco that is open to the public. You don’t have to travel so far to pick up a Nano since you can buy one online for less than $80.

To help you decide whether to pull the trigger, here’s what you should know about the Nano:

Size

The Nano is definitely smaller and lighter weight than its predecessors, weighing in at a svelte 1.6 pounds and, perhaps even more importantly, it’s only 12.8″ tall (vs the nearly 15″ goliath original Anova Wi-Fi unit).

While I do like the previous generation Anova’s heft – if feels super solid and doesn’t take up too much size in the pot – I am appreciative of the Nano’s more economic size. This is especially important since, like many, I find my kitchen drawers increasingly crowded.

More Plastic, Built On Clamp

One way Anova was able to produce a lower-cost product is by making Nano’s body with all plastic vs. the half plastic, half metal bodies of the Wi-Fi and Bluetooth circulators. Aside from the appreciation I have for the solid feel of the metal unit, I don’t really have a problem with going all plastic.

Another major difference in the Nano is the clamp is built onto the device, vs. an external clamp. I have mixed feelings about this change. On the plus side I won’t lose the clamp (something, believe it or not, I’ve done before), but it also gives me less flexibility in how deep I seat the circulator in the water.

Performance

It’s quiet. Real quiet. And as far as speed to heat, it heated the water as fast as my Anova Wi-Fi, Joule or Nomiku circulators.

No Wi-Fi

Previous to the Nano, Anova sold two basic units: a Wi-Fi/Bluetooth unit and a Bluetooth only unit. While Wi-Fi enabled sous vide circulators are a neat idea, my feeling is most people do not use the remote turn on feature (the main benefit of a Wi-Fi circulator).

Conclusion

If you’re in the market for a new sous vide appliance or have never cooked sous vide but want to start, Anova’s new sub-$100, smaller Nano is a good way to go.

Celebrate a FoodTech Fourth of July

It’s weird when a major holiday falls on a Wenesday, right? Do you take just the day off? The first half of the week? The last half? The whole week? Regardless of how much time you take off, we can help make your time at the grill a great one with these FoodTech finds.

FOOD
The Fourth–and most summertime grillin’–is all about the meat. Normally, we’d suggest you purchase your steaks and burgers through CrowdCow, which meticulously sources all of its meat from small ranches. But your guests will be hungry tomorrow, so here’s a twist, maybe try a meatless option this year?

I know! I know! “Heresy!” you cry! But really, we love the Beyond Meat burger patties available at many local grocers. The company says it wants their plant-based meat that “bleeds” in the supermarket butcher section, but I’ve only ever found it frozen with the other alterna-meats.

Personally, I think the Beyond Meat patty is a delicious replacement for the traditional meat burger, so much so that I stock up on extra when I’m at the store just to have it around when I crave it. Beyond Meat won’t fool any carnivores, but it’s a tasty substitute and perfect if you’re trying to cut back on your red meat intake.

BRING THE (CONTROLLED) HEAT
Everyone has an opinion about the best way to grill, we won’t waste your time with some obscure technique. We will however, recommend a pair of devices that can help make your steaks and other proteins turn out great.

Photo: Anova

Sous vide-ing your steak is a fantastic way to get juicy meat with no overcooking. There are a ton of sous vide wands out there that will turn any pot of water into a precision-heated circulating bath. We like the ChefSteps Joule and the new Anova Nano (review forthcoming). They are small, well built, and work with an accompanying mobile phone app to bring your meat to a desired internal temperature. Sure it takes a little longer, but it also helps remove the risks of over- or undercooking your precious steaks.

Stylish holder/charger.

Regardless of whether you sous vide or not, you can use the Meater thermometer to get just about any type of meat to the proper temperature. The Meater is kinda big (like a beefy nail) that sits in your protein while you cook it. Using the Meater app on your phone, you can keep track of both ambient and internal temperatures, and Meater will even tell you when to pull out and rest your meat to achieve optimal results.

If you’re going camping and want a greener experience, you could grab a GoSun portable grill that cooks food by simply harnessing the power of the sun.

BEER
The good news is, if you live in the right location, you can still run out and buy your own PicoBrew to make homebrewing much easier. The bad news is that even if you bought one today, there isn’t enough time to brew and ferment your beer before tomorrow. (Maybe just pop by Spoon founder Mike Wolf’s house for a bottle of his.)

PLAN FOR NEXT YEAR
It’s never too early to start planning for an epic Independence Day celebration next year. Here are some items to put a pin in and revisit next summer:

  • If it makes its crowdfunding goal, the Ambassador 5-in-1 grill features rotating cooktop that spins through flattop and grate surfaces.
  • The Bartesian cocktail robot (due out by the end of this year) can whip up delicious boozy concoctions on demand.
  • And for the truly adventurous, you can throw a slice of ketchup, yes, a “slice” of ketchup on next year’s burger.

No matter how much time you’re taking off, have a Happy Fourth of July, everybody! Be safe.

Is NYC’s Sous Vide Kitchen the Future of Food Halls?

Last week, Sous Vide Kitchen (SVK) joined NYC’s sprawling food hall scene, where associations with celebrity chefs are the norm and $300 caviar is a thing. Comparatively, SVK’s take on the food hall concept is far more down to earth, focused mostly around technology and how it can streamline and improve the process of ordering and eating in a food hall setting.

Billing itself a “virtual food hall,” SVK combines four trends currently popular in the restaurant industry: self-order kiosks, cashless payments, the sous vide cooking method, and, of course, food halls. And so far as I can tell from my visit earlier this week, the combination works when it comes to delivering a fast, easy dining experience with good food that’s affordable (for NYC).

As a physical space, SVK looks much like any other food hall, with high ceilings and extremely minimal design. When I visited, I was struck by how calm the place felt and how friendly the staff was, even with a good number of customers inside seated at tables or in line waiting to order.

The place offers Latin and Mediterranean items, grain bowls, and banh mi sandwiches. All food is cooked in the same central kitchen at the back of the hall. And using the sous vide method exclusively means it’s easier to train employees on cooking consistently good food, since sous vide allows for more precise cooking temperatures and frees the cook from “the tyranny of the clock.”

Since I’m a cheapskate and quality varies greatly around the city, I’m always a little wary of paying over $14 for a bowl of meat and vegetables. I also have next to no appetite when it’s 90-plus degrees outside, so a dish’s potential to make good leftovers is also key. The Texas BBQ bowl I ordered passed on both counts. The beef was packed with flavor, the dish was wonderfully and ridiculously spicy, and what I didn’t finish at lunch made for a pretty decent quick meal later in the evening.

The big draw of SVK’s approach is that customers can order and pay for all food from the same self-serve kiosk, hence the “virtual” aspect of the business. So, for example, if I wanted a curry bowl, a Paleo bowl, and a Texas BBQ bowl from a traditional food hall, I would have to wait in three different lines to get each dish and make three separate payments. When I visited Sous Vide Kitchen with a couple buddies, we got that same combination of dishes with one quick order.

What struck me most about the kiosks was their simplicity. Touchscreens are becoming more ubiquitous every year, from airports to doctors’ offices, but they’re not always intuitive in terms of UI, and some are downright ugly. Sous Vide Kitchen’s kiosks score points for having an attractive interface that’s as minimal as the physical space’s design, making it easy to use. This will likely cut down on both customer frustration and long lines.

SVK does offsite catering and delivery, too, and there are grab-and-go items for sale at the physical location customers can scan themselves at the kiosks. A coffee and breakfast bar are reportedly in the works. The delivery option, in particular, is key right now, given its popularity not just in NYC but all over the country.

The only real drawback to my experience was the actual physical space which, although calm, was pretty loud and made it difficult to hear everything said at the table. Then again, that might just be Manhattan at lunchtime.

As Eater pointed out, SVK will probably not be a destination for “food-obsessed” customers, since none of the vendors are major names. And while it’s true the place isn’t offering “living walls” and celebrity chefs, that might be a plus. If the many-meals-one-kiosk order and payment concept proves successful, it could easily find a home in all manner of food courts, be they trendy Manhattan spots or suburban cafeterias. Already, some airport restaurants have embraced self-order kiosks, and earlier this year, Costco began testing them in its food court. Wow Bao, meanwhile, is rolling out Eatsa’s kiosk tech. We’ll have to wait and see where the technology fares best, though my guess is that SVK won’t be the only food hall in town offering this concept along with the food.

$99 Anova Nano Sous Vide Circulator Hits Amazon On June 30th

In January of 2017, Anova unveiled the Nano, a $99 sous vide circulator.

The Bluetooth-enabled, smaller form factor appliance gave Anova its first sub-$100 entry in what has become an increasingly price-competitive marketplace over the past couple of years. The Nano, which was announced at the same time as a new higher-end pro edition of the Anova circulator (the Pro 2.0), was expected to ship in October of last year, but the company announced in September that the Nano would not ship in 2017.

While some early preorder customers were understandably bummed, the company offered the early birds a full refund or the option of an exchange for the higher-priced Bluetooth circulator.

Those who chose to wait it out saw their patience rewarded these past couple weeks, as the company started shipping the Nano to preorder customers. The Spoon also learned this week that the Nano will be available via the Anova website and on Amazon.com starting tomorrow, June 30th.

A company spokesperson told The Spoon that there is still no word on when we might see the updated Anova Pro or the Anova Precision Oven, which the company unveiled at the Smart Kitchen Summit in October of 2016.

Editor note: You can read our review of the Nano here.