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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Connected Kitchen

This Startup Is Making A Food Container That Detects How Much Time is Left Before Your Food Spoils

What if food labels could tell you in real time if your food has gone bad?

That’s the vision of a UK-based startup that has developed a set of smart food labels to determine food freshness. The labels do this via an embedded sensor that detects the ammonia levels being produced by the food.

As described by packaging trade publication Packaging World, the smart labeling developed by BlakBear has “two electrodes printed on it as well as an embedded RFID chip.” As food spoils, ammonia is released and the gas is “absorbed into the paper’s cellulose fibers and then dissociates into ions. The electrodes sense and measure the ionic conductivity present in the layer of water that is already naturally present in the paper’s fibers to determine the shelf life of the product.”

Most of us can detect food spoilage by smelling the ammonia emitted as food decomposes, but by the time that happens, it’s usually too late to save the item. According to one of the company’s founders, BlakBear’s sensors are up to 100 times more sensitive than the human nose when it comes to detecting spoilage.

Smart labeling that can detect food freshness is not new. I wrote about a group of researchers from China’s Nanjing University and the University of Texas at Austin in 2018 that were developing a similar technology that would detect biogenic amines (BAs) and communicate spoilage using an embedded NFC chip.

Amazon has also been looking at technology that could detect food spoilage. Back in 2017, I wrote about a patent the company had filed for similar technology that could go into refrigerators and detect the gas emitted as food decomposed.

BlakBear is also interested in bringing this type of technology into the home, only instead of building into an appliance, they are working on a smart food container. The company is creating a system called HoneyBox that incorporates the freshness sensor and then communicates with an app via Bluetooth. The device will send reminders and act as a countdown clock on long the food will be edible.

While BlakBear isn’t saying when the product will be into market, the company is currently evaluating consumer attitudes around potential features and pricing for HoneyBox.

And from the looks of it, HoneyBox isn’t the only product the company has in the works. According to BlakBear’s CEO Max Grell, the company is also working on another bear-themed piece of hardware called BearCub that they are trialing with retailers. BearCub, according to Grell, would also be available to use in consumer homes.

Hopefully, both will be available soon, as I think there’s a huge opportunity for better food management systems that can help us reduce food waste. I’ve long wondered why home food storage has been stuck in time and why the incumbents don’t bring those cheap plastic containers into the future (not that they aren’t trying). Sure, there’s been some small progress by some startups (I’m still waiting for my Silo), but not nearly as much as there should be.

New Fees are Just One Issue for Mellow as the Sous-Vide Maker Tries to Stay Afloat

It began with a comment over the weekend, when a Spoon reader told us that Mellow, the connected sous-vide appliance company, had started charging a monthly subscription. Companies charging a fee with their connected gadget is nothing new, but Mellow is now charging $5.99 to its existing owners in order for them to access formerly free features like pre-set cook programs.

But it turns out when you pulled on this thread, new fees were symptomatic of much bigger ongoing issues with Mellow.

In reporting about the new subscription fee, The Verge wrote (emphasis ours):

Late Monday evening, Mellow released a statement on Instagram explaining the justifications for its “premium” plan, citing financial hardships in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic and claiming that many potential investors and acquirers interested in the company walked away, and arguing that the servers responsible for the cooker’s smart features cost too much to operate.

The Mellow statement was via an Instagram story, so it disappeared after 24 hours, but The Verge grabbed a screenshot of the post, which described the cost of running the connected service, how the company lost money, how COVID impacted its ability to get investors or be acquired and basically how the subscription was the only way to keep itself going.

The Spoon spoke with a source that has an intimate business relationship with Mellow. This person told us that while people are angered over the new fee, it is the only way to keep the Mellow functioning at all. AWS bills continue to pile up and if they can’t be paid, instead of limited functionality, the Mellow device will be completely bricked.

According to our source, the problem lies in a third-party chip and the way the original Mellow was designed. This chip prevents the company from doing something like releasing the code as open source and letting the community build a workaround. Additionally our source said that there is just one person left at the company, so there aren’t any resources to even do such a technical project.

But this new fee is just part of a larger set of problems that have plagued Mellow. According to our source, the company previously raised $3 million in funding. Crunchbase doesn’t list a specific amount raised, and only lists three undisclosed Seed rounds from Springboard, Techstars, and Hard Gamma Ventures, and a convertible note from Highway1. All of that money is gone, according to our source.

As per the Instagram story, Mellow had been involved in a number of discussions with potential investors, but when COVID hit, all of those discussions evaporated.

We reported in May that Mellow launched an equity crowdfunding campaign to raise $1 million through the SeedInvest platform. The link to that campaign no longer works and Mellow is no longer listed as an offering on the SeedInvest platform. Our source told us that the campaign failed to reach its funding goal.

Mellow had been the beneficiary of crowdfunding its products before. The first generation Mellow ran a successful crowdfunding campaign in 2014, and in November of 2019, the company launched another Kickstarter campaign for the v2 Mellow Duo. The Mellow Duo cost between $149 and $299, depending on the model and when you backed. The Duo campaign was also a success and raised more than $211,000 from 892 backers with an initial ship date of October 2020.

But an update from the company on July 13 on the Duo Kickstarter campaign said that because of pandemic, that ship date has been pushed six months. Though given all the turmoil, who knows if it will make it that long.

Sadly, all of these troubles are nothing new for Mellow. It’s initial v1 product was delayed, it lost its original CEO (and just about everyone else, subsequently), and when the v1 product finally reached the market, a 1 out of 10 review from WIRED labeled the product as “too risky” and all but killed the Mellow before it had a chance to gain any traction. As we reported previously, as part of its equity crowdfunding disclosures, Mellow said that “Over 6,400 Mellow V1 units have been activated, with the average household using it to cook 1.7+ times per week.” Our source said that the number of active users is closer to 2,000.

This whole situation is another stark reminder of the downsides of crowdfunding hardware projects. Making hardware at scale is extremely difficult. It’s also another reminder of the inherent issues when buying a connected gadget. Those gadgets may offer a lot of convenience, but also run the risk of being bricked either by the whim of a company or by its downfall.

Groupe SEB Acquires StoreBound, the Startup Behind Dash and Sobro Brands

French home goods conglomerate Groupe SEB announced yesterday that they had acquired a majority stake in StoreBound, a New York City-based maker of stylish and sometimes tech-forward kitchen gear.

StoreBound, founded by longtime housewares industry exec Evan Dash and his wife Rachel Dash, had built a reputation in recent years as a scrappy, youth-oriented housewares brand. Their DASH product line, which usually features styling reminiscent of SMEG’s popular retro look at a fraction of the price of SMEG, sprinkles Amazon’s the top 100 kitchen category with their low cost air fryers and egg cookers. According to the release, StoreBound had hit $100 million in sales over the past year.

StoreBound also owns Sobro, which started with the company’s Indiegogo campaign for a hybrid fridge/coffee table. A year later the company launched a smart side table and before long they had a standalone brand to sell, well, bro-focused frankenfurniture.

While StoreBound’s tech-forward products were often kinda weird and kitschy (i.e. Sobro), they sometimes released interesting products like their rapid cold brew coffee maker and the PancakeBot, a pancake “printer”.

The acquisition of StoreBound marks the first exit among a new cohort of stylish, youth-focused house and cookware brands to emerge out of the New York startup scene over the past decade, including Chefman and Gourmia as well as newer venture-backed cookware brands Great Jones, Caraway and Pattern Brands.

Pepsico Launches New SodaStream Professional Connected Sparkling Water System for Offices

Looking at the homepage for the new SodaStream Professional is like looking back in time. The page features pictures of the connected sparkling water device in the middle of an office as workers stride by, seemingly without a care in the world, sans facemasks.

I bring that up not to poke fun at Pepsico, but because the world that the company imagines for its new device, is far different from the one we currently live in.

Pepsico announced the new Sodastream Professional over the weekend. It’s a carbonated water dispenser and mobile app system that allows users to choose from different unsweetened flavors, levels of carbonation and track their hydration. It will also tell you how many plastic bottles you saved/avoided using.

Pepsisco didn’t provide many other details for the SodaStream Professional (like pricing), but it seems to be a follow up to a similar product the company announced a little more than a year ago. That device was smaller (countertop instead of freestanding), but had the same capabilities and was going into testing last summer.

In the press release, Pepsico said it was bringing “customizable beverages to workplaces, college campuses and airports.” But those are three locales that are either shut down or severely diminished, thanks to the global pandemic. There isn’t as much call for a sparkling water dispenser for the masses when there aren’t masses of people in any given location.

At least the SodaStream Professional appears to be contactless, with control via the mobile app.

The SodaStream Professional faces competition for your sparkling water dollars. Bevi makes similar fizzy/still flavored water dispenser for offices (and introduced its own touchless tech in June). And the Rocean was supposed to put its sparkling water dispensers at the Conrad New York hotel this past spring, but who knows how that went.

It should be noted that the SodaStream Professional is a good idea. We need to use fewer plastic bottles and drink less sugary sodas and this device seems like it can help with that. I just would like to hop in a time machine and fast forward to when we can safely go back to the office and use one.

Kickstarter: BeanBon Lets You Roast Coffee Beans on Your Countertop

If the first pandemic-spurred lockdown drove us all to bake bread, perhaps quarantine 2.0 will inspire people to roast their own coffee beans. If so, devices like the BeanBon could become all the rage.

Launching on Kickstarter today, the BeanBon is a countertop home coffee roasting appliance system that can roast up to 120 grams of raw coffee beans at a time. Users can choose from three modes:

  • SmartMode: Select from one of eight pre-set profiles to roast coffee with the push of a button. Adjustments can be made in the accompanying app.
  • Creator Mode: Lets users manually control different roasting parameters such as heat, exhaust levels, roast time, etc. Settings can be saved and shared with the BeanBon community.
  • Guru Mode: Allows users to experiment with the roast profiles created by professional coffee roasters.

Any raw coffee bean can be used, and BeanBon offers a curated selection on its site for purchase. There is even a special “BeanBon X Champs” variety that includes a QR code to use special Guru Mode roasting instructions.

The Kickstarter for the BeanBon launched today, and you can pick one up for $699. Company materials say the device will start shipping in September of this year.

The BeanBon is the creation of a Taiwanese company called avigo, and we reached out to them because there were some details left out of their English-language press materials. Namely, they also didn’t include any information about the availability/cost/shipping of coffee beans to the U.S.

The BeanBon device and raw bean market is very similar to the Kelvin home roaster, which costs just $249 for for pre-orders (though the Kelvin doesn’t have a connected mobile app). The Kelvin is supposed to ship to backers next month, that’s almost a two year delay from the original ship date.

That’s good to know if you are interested in the BeanBon. Backing hardware projects on Kickstarter is definitely buyer beware because there are many risks associated with moving a prototype to production.

But given that this pandemic tragically doesn’t show any signs of slowing, there’s a good chance you’ll still be stuck at home (in the U.S.) whenever the BeanBon ships.

Aspara’s High-Tech At-Home Farm Launches in the U.S.

Hong Kong-based Aspara, which makes high-tech, tabletop-sized farming units for homes, is now shipping devices across the U.S. through retailers like Home Depot, Wayfair, and via its own website.

The Spoon flagged Aspara back in January as a company to watch in the up-and-coming at-home farming space because of the device’s small size, lowish price point, and approach to hydroponics. At the time, the company was selling its system, which can fit easily on a countertop, to customers in Hong Kong and in very, very limited quantities via Amazon to other parts of the world.

This official U.S. launch makes the device available to all U.S. consumers. Speaking on the phone today, Rob Alexander, the Owner of Conducted Sales, the sales agent for Aspara in North American markets, said that Aspara has another eight retailers in the works, though he couldn’t at this point use specific names. 

High-tech, hydroponic farms have historically been the territory of industrial-scale indoor farming companies — the AeroFarms and Plentys of the world. But following this past January’s CES show, both major appliance makers like LG and Miele along with smaller startups began to heavily publicize a new kind of indoor farm, one created for the at-home consumer. These devices are typically quite small and meant to feed a single household, rather than supply a grocery retailer. 

Alexander said Aspara’s homegrown system differs from others on the market in the way it tackles the hydroponic element of the farming. It uses what he calls an “ebb and flow” design, where water for the plant roots is constantly replenished from the side unit (see image above), making the water supply easier to refill than many at-home farms. Aspara’s also has sensors that determine nutrient levels in the water, the current level of humidity in the air, and whether a plant is getting too much light. An accompanying app notifies the user when any of these elements need attention.

“It’s trying to give you feedback to create the optimum growing environment,” Alexander said.

Another differentiation: the device is repairable. While that might first sound like a weird selling point (no one wants to buy tech that might break), it actually speaks to how seriously Aspara is pursuing the idea of making its high-tech grow system the kind of kitchen appliance that’s on par with a dishwasher or refrigerator. You don’t throw out a dishwater the second something goes wrong. In the same way, Aspara users can replace parts like sensors and light canopies, rather than having to go out and buy a whole new farm.

The company’s approach recently won them the Green Product Audience Award. 

Price-wise, Aspara is on the lower end of the at-home farming spectrum. The device goes for $349 right now at Home Depot online.

Of course these days you can’t have a conversation about at-home food production without brining COVID-19 up. Since Apsara wasn’t available to North Americans at the height of shelter-in-place mandates, the company wasn’t measuring demand for its product in that region. However, Alexander told me they did see a spike in Hong Kong, where the device has been available for some time. 

My guess is that with the product available Stateside, that demand will surface quickly. Other at-home farming systems have seen huge jumps in demand recently as the pandemic, panic-buying sprees, and other factors have made many consumers question their total reliance on the traditional food supply chain.

Next up, Aspara wants to do a widespread launch in Canada, and also broaden the types of plants its system can grow to include other types of plants, including fruits and vegetables. 

Whirlpool’s W Labs Countertop Smart Oven is Now Selling for Half The Original Price

Did you know Whirlpool has a countertop smart oven?

Don’t worry, most people didn’t, in part because Whirlpool never talked much about it after it launched in early 2019.

But now that you do know about it, you might also be interested to know they’re selling it for just $399. That’s half the original sticker price for the smart oven from W Labs, Whirlpool’s innovation hub. From the looks of it, the price reduction looks permanent.

So why is W Labs selling its June clone which debuted in January 2019 so cheap? It might be because the group is looking to clear out the remaining inventory of a product which was, from the beginning, positioned as an experiment. They only made 2000 of them and they only sold the product online and not through traditional Whirlpool appliance showroom sales channels.

Still, the wind down makes me wonder if the big appliance manufacturer is making way for a more permanent replacement. Whirlpool tends to do big refreshes to its product lineup every two years, which means 2021 is a refresh year after a relatively quiet 2020 and a big 2019. As part of a larger refresh, I can see a countertop smart oven as a logical candidate for the lineup.

It also appears Whirlpool is closing out its scan-to-cook smart microwaves and is out of stock on many of its smart ovens or ranges. While some of this could be due to COVID-related supply chain disruptions, this could be another indication that the company might be starting to wind down its current lineup more broadly as it prepares for a new line of smart ovens for 2021.

Thermomix Users Can Now Order Ingredients With Launch of Shoppable Recipes on Cookidoo

Thermomix announced today they have launched ingredient shopping on the Cookidoo, the Thermomix multicooker’s digital recipe and meal planning platform.

The new capability allows Thermomix users to add a recipe’s ingredients to a digital shopping list and order them through the Cookidoo app. Fulfillment of the order (delivery or pickup) is done through a third-party grocery retail partner of the shopper’s choosing.

The new shoppable recipe feature will be available to users of any Cookidoo-compatible Thermomix model (TM5, TM6 and TM31) in the U.S., Germany and the United Kingdom.

You can watch how it works on the video below:

Those using the TM6 can add ingredients from any of the 50,000 or so recipes available through the Cookidoo interface by simply clicking on the “Add to Shopping List” option directly on the appliance’s touchscreen. From there, they head over to the Cookidoo mobile app or website to review the list, remove items they may already have, and add additional items to the list. They can then select a grocery retailer or online grocery service provider like Instacart to fulfill the order.

According to Thermomix’s head of consumer experience, Ramona Wehlig, bringing ingredient shopping and delivery to the users of the Thermomix completes the meal journey for their users.

“We had the weekly planner and curated shopping lists,” Wehlig said by phone, “but we never closed the gap in the meal journey until the ingredients were delivered.”

Wehlig said the company has been developing shoppable recipe functionality for the past year and a half. The company started trialing an early version capability through pilots in Germany. These initial pilots, which used technology developed by Thermomix, helped the company to understand the digital grocery shopping process and to fine-tune the ability to do things such as ingredient matching.

However, as the company pushed to accelerate its shoppable recipes efforts, it started looking for a partner to help them scale. This brought them to Whisk, a shoppable recipe and digital food platform startup acquired by Samsung Next last year. Whisk powers a number of grocery commerce capabilities in the connected kitchen, including (not surprisingly) on the Samsung Family Hub fridges.

“The core aim [of working with Whisk] was to scale faster,” said Wehlig. “This allows us to connect our users with more grocery stores in a shorter time frame.”

For Whisk, the addition of Thermomix helps cement an already strong position as one of the primary shoppable recipe platforms. While I haven’t seen updated numbers for a while, back in 2018 Whisk told me its platform touched 20 million users each month. With the addition of Thermomix — first in Germany, the U.K. and the U.S., later globally — the company will get millions more.

For Thermomix, the integration of shopping capabilities from the Cookidoo digital recipe platforms opens up potential new revenue streams through various forms of partnerships with CPG brands and any commissions passed on from the third party grocery platforms. For users, it adds another nice feature and could entrench the Cookidoo recipe platform as their primary digital shopping list manager.

Thermomix and Hestan Cue Connect Up With ‘Smart Cooking Bundle’ and Jointly Developed Recipes

Sometimes the smart kitchen doesn’t feel all that connected, especially when it comes to pairing tech-forward cooking systems from different brands. It doesn’t make much sense if you think about it since the beauty of a connected home is, well, connecting things.

Thermomix and Hestan Cue are trying to change that – at least for Father’s Day – by creating what they’re calling the “Smart Cooking Bundle” and “Smart Cooking” recipe collection.

The bundle part includes a pairing of the two systems at a discount – the TM6 multicooker and the Hestan Cue system (pan and induction burner) for $150 off ($1,749) – but the more interesting part to me is the recipe collection the two companies jointly developed.

The Smart Cooking recipe collection features recipes specifically designed to use both with the Thermomix and Hestan Cue systems. Examples include eggplant with seared tomato sauce or pan seared scallops, where the TM6 is used for prep steps like chopping and steaming, and the Cue is used to finish off the meal by frying, searing or braising.

The recipes will be accessible on both the Thermomix Cookidoo recipe platform on the Thermomix TM6 touchscreen and through the Hestan Cue app.

This isn’t the first outside integration for Thermomix, which announced a partnership with Drop last year. With the Hestan pairing, one can see how Thermomix is positioning the TM6 as a sort of central command cooking hub where they orchestrate cooking with other appliances. While Drop isn’t powering the Hestan integration, I can see the Drop’s “kitchen OS” approach helping the TM6 unify multisystem cooking experiences down the road.

If you’d like to try out the new recipe collection, you can get the Smart Cooking bundle through Father’s day.

Bevi Will Socially Distance Its Smart Water Coolers With Touchless Tech

As restaurants reopen and (some) employees go back to the office, ensuring sanitary, socially distanced public spaces is a major topic of discussion, and contactless is fast becoming a requirement for everything from restaurant menus to grocery deliveries to lunch.

Your office water cooler can join that list now, too. Today, Bevi, a tech company that makes smart water coolers for office and commercial spaces, announced a new touchless dispensing feature meant to make it machines feel more sanitized and socially distanced to users.

The Bevi machine dispenses both still and sparkling water in a variety of flavors. The system involves an internet-connected dispenser that hooks up to a tap water source. Up to now, users could set flavors, carbonation levels, and other preferences using a touchscreen built into the machine. But come July 13, both new and existing Bevi machines will offer touchless dispensing that utilizes an individual’s mobile phone, according to a press release sent to The Spoon.

Come July 13, Bevi will send an on-screen animation to all its machines that includes instructions on how to use touchless dispensing. To enable the animation, companies just have to run a simple software update. From there, users can scan a QR code, which will replicate Bevi’s dispensing menu on their own personal screen. The same options for drink customization (carbonation levels, flavor, etc.) will appear on the user’s phone just as they would have on the machine’s touchscreen.

On the surface, the update seems a small one, but actually, these micro innovations from the tech world play an important role in making the world, or at least your office or local restaurant, a more sanitary place. While the scale of germophobism varies from one individual to the next, the pandemic has definitely called into question our use of these screens in public settings.

Various efforts are in place to address those concerns. Restaurants across the world are being urged to adopt contactless menus. My colleague Chris Albrecht makes a good argument for gesture control on kiosks and smart dispensers. Others are releasing facial recognition technology on their machines, so that a user need only have their face scanned to access the customer profiles and past orders. 

But facial recognition systems are expensive and come with a double side of privacy concerns. In lots of cases, it may be that a simple QR code is more feasible for a business to implement, especially if it’s for something simple like dispensing a lime-flavored water.

That seems to be Bevi’s thinking behind its new feature update. Doubtless we’ll see many other device-makers rolling out their own touchless functionality in the near future.

CKBK, the Spotify of Recipes, Launches Guided Cooking with NEFF Partnership

Recipe subscription service ckbk announced this week that its guided cooking features are now integrated with the NEFF Home Connect platform, allowing users to control the NEFF N 90 oven directly from select recipes.

The partnership between ckbk and BSH, NEFF’s parent company, was announced last September. In an press release sent to The Spoon, ckbk said its subscribers can now choose from one of 2,000 Home Connect recipes and send the correct temperature, time and cooking method directly to the NEFF oven directly from the app.

The integration also works in reverse, so users can select a mode from their N 90 oven and be presented with a list of recipes specifically for that mode.

As part of the launch, NEFF is throwing in a three-month trial of ckbk for customers who buy a WiFi-enabled N 90 NEFF oven. That free trial extends up to six months if the oven is synced with the Home Connect app.

While the ckbk/NEFF partnership has been in place for months, the guided cooking space has seen some renewed interest lately in part because of the COVID-19 pandemic. People sheltering in place were cooking more and companies like Hestan made its Hestan Cue Cooking School available for free back in March. And earlier this week, Drop announced $13.3 million in funding for its “kitchen OS” software.

Will interest in home cooking continue as quarantines let up? Studies show that despite re-openings, consumers are still reluctant to go back into restaurants, so we won’t be abandoning our kitchens quite yet. And there are a lot of people out there who would probably still welcome some high-tech guidance with their cooking.

Innohome Strikes Deal With Electrolux To Bring Kitchen Fire Prevention Tech to US

Finnish startup Innohome, a maker of fire prevention technology for kitchens, has announced a supplier agreement with Electrolux to bring the company’s products to North America.

As I’ve written before, cooking equipment is the leading culprit when it comes to home fires. Nearly half (46%) of home fires in the US are started in the kitchen.

And the biggest cause of kitchen fires is unattended cooking, something many of us have done in this era of constant distractions.

Unlike the typical approach in the US that focuses on alerting us about a fire once its already started, InnoHome and similar products focus on preventing the fire before it starts by shutting off the stove when it senses a possible fire.

InnoHome has had significant success in Europe, particularly Finland, where the government encourages installation of fire prevention equipment. To date, the company has sold 400,000 of its fire prevention products into homes.

According to InnoHome’s head of North America, Eero Vartiainen, the first product Electrolux will bring has been optimized for the North American market.

“We have tested and tuned our products to meet the wide-ranging needs of the North American kitchen,” said Vartiainen, “and the first solution will be a smart sensor that alerts when the cooking surface gets too hot too fast or the temperature is unsafe.”

The product will likely be based on similar technology from InnoHome’s flagship product, the SKG5010, which includes a sensor and a control unit. The battery powered sensor is installed in the overhead in the cooker hood, and the control unit, which plugs into a home’s power supply, cuts off the power to the stove if a fire risk is detected.

Vartiainen also hinted that the Electrolux rollout will leverage smart home technology, which makes me wonder if we could eventually see some voice control or alerts through integration with Alexa or another voice assistant.

Back when I interviewed Vartianen in 2017, he hinted this type of integration was on their roadmap:

“Products like Amazon Echo and Google Home are giving every consumer an option to add other products, thus, making our homes more accessible through voice-controlled or other connected technology,” said Vartianen. “Fire prevention systems, such as Innohome’s StoveGuard, will integrate with these platforms and will allow customers to get real-time updates on the status of their cooking equipment.”

Hopefully we’ll know soon. Vartianen said the company will have more announcements in the near future.