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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Connected Kitchen

Amazon Issued Patent For System That Coordinates Microwave Oven With Wi-Fi Network Traffic

Back when the government first set aside radio spectrum real estate for home and industrial use in 1947, one of the very first applications they had in mind was the microwave oven. Only the then nascent cooking technology, which operates within the 2.4 GHz radio band, wouldn’t be using the newly reserved spectrum to send communication signals over the air, but would instead be creating electromagnetic radiation to heat food.

Three quarters of a century later microwave ovens are still heating our food, only nowadays their widespread use congests the same ISM bands (Industrial, Scientific and Medical) that are now widely used for digital communication networks such as those based on Wi-Fi. Most of the time it’s not a problem, at least until someone gets hungry and zaps a snack in the microwave. When that happens, the device’s electromagnetic radiation can disrupt the quality of a Wi-Fi network operating in the 2.4 GHz frequency band.*

In other words, heating up Hot Pockets usually results in dropped data packets.

Most of us tolerate the problem because we don’t really think about it. Not Amazon. This week the company was issued US patent number 10,477,585 for a system that coordinates the heating element of the microwave (the magnetron) with the home’s Wi-Fi network.

How does it work? Basically by employing a system where the microwave oven and Wi-Fi network coordinate network traffic around the magnetron’s on-off cycle.

From the patent:  the “wireless communication device (e.g., the microwave oven itself, a speech interface device in the environment of the microwave oven, etc.) may determine if the magnetron of the microwave oven is operating, and, if the magnetron is operating, a coordination mechanism can be implemented to send data wirelessly in the environment during the magnetron’s off period, and to cease sending the data in the environment during the magnetron’s on period.”

So why would Amazon care about coordinating our microwave ovens with local digital communication traffic? Maybe in part to make sure the company’s tens of millions of Wi-Fi devices in our homes in the form of Alexa-powered Echos and Ring doorbells work well together. The company also has its own microwave oven product (as well as a new multifunction smart oven), so it’s not too much of a stretch to see the company implementing this technology in its own products as a potential differentiator.

In the end, it’s hard to say whether Amazon will ever even put this patent to use. The company is a prolific researcher and patent filer, and while the bulk of its patents have to do with things like cloud computing, drones and artificial intelligence, every now and then one of their patents is of a more domestic nature. But, like with the Seattle giant’s other patents like the electronic nose in a refrigerator or a smart garden, it sure is fun to speculate.

*Sure, network nerds will note that many Wi-Fi networks nowadays operate in a higher, less-cluttered frequency in the 5GHz radio band, but most Wi-Fi gear is dual-mode and still operate periodically in the 2.4 GHz band. 

Barsys’ New Connected Coaster Can Help You Make Better Cocktails

It’s the holiday season, which, for the Albrechts, typically means some kind of holiday soirée complete with a signature cocktail. Though that cocktail typically involves large pitchers, eyeballing ingredients (followed by many adjustments) and generous overpours.

Perhaps the new connected coaster from Barsys could help us better moderate our mixology. Yesterday Barsys, the company behind the sleek, eponymous $1,000 cocktail robot, announced a new product called, appropriately enough, the Coaster. Simply put, the Coaster is a connected drink scale that pairs with the Barsys app to guide your pours.

Users input their available ingredients into the app, which then tells you what drinks you can make. Then set a glass or pitcher (or the Barsys Mixer) on the coaster and start making your drink. The lighted coaster changes color to indicate when to start and stop pouring each ingredient. The result, according to the company’s website, is “drinks taste exactly as they would at a cocktail bar in Manhattan.” Which, I assume, also means you can charge your guests $20 a pop.

Barsys is taking pre-orders for the Coaster now at $95 before it goes out to retail in December for $149.

The Coaster comes at a time when all manner of technologies are connecting your cocktail experience. The Perfect Drink cocktail scale doesn’t have a fancy light show, but it only costs $40 for the basic version and $100 for the Pro. And of course if pouring your own cocktail is too much work, you can always get a Bartesian countertop drink machine to make your drinks using flavor pods. Or if you really want to take it up a notch, wait for SirMixABot to show up for your party.

Could it Be? Long Delayed Spinn Coffee Machine To Start Shipping This Month

Every month, the folks behind the Spinn grind & brew coffee maker post highly detailed updates on the progress they are making towards getting the long-delayed machine into the hands of backers.

Last month was was no different. On October 30, the company posted a meticulous update that went into detail on everything from the product’s real-time recipe generator to its mobile app development and user guide. However, unlike previous updates, this one had a little sentence near the end providing an actual timeline for initial deliveries:

Next month, Spinn will begin with its very first roll-out of machines to its earliest backers in California. Soon thereafter, we will begin with the fulfillment of other preorders.

Talk about burying the lede.

In reality, the announcement of initial shipments to early backers shouldn’t be a huge surprise for anyone who’s been following Spinn’s updates in recent months, which explain the slow-motion process of pushing the coffee machine into manufacturing.

For example, in September Spinn detailed the first engineering builds coming off the line of its contract manufacturer and getting delivered for final testing at the company headquarters in Amsterdam.

And with October’s update, it does appear Spinn is putting a bow on final preparations around delivering a working product, including building out the instruction manual and exploring the different chemicals consumers can use to perform descaling on the machine.

Spinn Coffee instruction manual excerpt

While I am cautiously skeptical, there’s no doubt that the company shipping product is good news for anyone who, like me, has been waiting literally years to get their Spinn.

A glance at the comments in Spinn’s forum shows that other early customers are, for the most part, excited that the company is starting to ship.

The only remaining question for me is when will other early backers see their Spinn. I was in the first wave of customers and expected to see the Spinn pretty soon after first shipments but, for some reason, the company is shipping to what looks like a small subsegment of backers in California first. My guess is they are looking to test the product in the field first before ramping up to full production.

Let’s hope that goes quickly and I’ll see my Spinn before Christmas.

SideChef Launches Guided Cooking Integration With Bixby, Samsung’s AI Assistant

This week, SideChef announced an integration with Samsung’s intelligent voice assistant Bixby. The partnership centers around the launch of a voice-activated guided cooking capsule (capsules are Samsung’s equivalent to Amazon Alexa skills) which will give users of Bixby-powered mobile phones access to approximately 15 thousand recipes, most with step-by-step video-powered cooking instructions.

From the news release:

“Users can hone in on the exact recipe they would like by adding natural language constraints, such as dietary restriction, cuisine type, and even specific ingredients. Once a recipe is selected, SideChef provides video instruction through Bixby to guide home cooks through the entire recipe preparation process, from start to finish.”

While Samsung’s voice assistant doesn’t quite have the same degree of loyal usership as, say, Google Assistant on mobile phones or Amazon Alexa in the home, it is installed on a whole lot of Samsung products. Last year Samsung CEO D.J. Koh declared that the company’s AI assistant could reach a total of 500 million devices if it were to be installed on every Samsung device.

Of course, to reach that massive audience, SideChef’s new capsule would then have to be installed by the consumer, who will be able to find it on the Bixby Marketplace (Samsung’s “app store” for Bixby Capsules). Samsung launched the marketplace in mid-2019, and the newness of the store may actually play to SideChef’s advantage as theirs is probably one of the few recipe-centric voice apps and most likely the only guided cooking capsule on the still relatively bare shelves of the Bixby marketplace.

This move comes a year after SideChef launched on Amazon’s video-enabled Alexa devices, the Alexa Echo Show and Echo Spot, and just a couple months after the smart kitchen software startup announced an integration with Haier’s smart fridges at IFA 2019. While it isn’t immediately clear if the Bixby integration will put SideChef on Samsung Family Hub refrigerators, I would expect that will happen sooner rather than later.

Finally, while SideChef continues to rack up appliance partnerships, the company is also beginning to explore partnerships with big CPG brands. Last month the startup partnered with Bacardi through its Alexa integration to enable step-by-step drink mixing.  This trend of food brands integrating with smart kitchen software platforms isn’t limited to SideChef, as SideChef competitor Innit announced a partnership in September with Mars through a Google Lens integration that will enable both guided cooking and personalized meal and nutrition recommendations.

BRÜ Promises to Make Perfect Tea Every Time (and Lower Your Energy Bill)

If you make tea every morning, there’s a good chance you’re wasting energy by either filling your kettle with more water than you need, or making the water too hot for your particular tea.

That’s part of the pitch from BRÜ, a dedicated tea-making appliance currently nearing the end of its Kickstarter campaign. The BRÜ is a countertop device that brews tea at the temperature you want and steeps it for as long as you want before dispensing it directly into your cup. It works with both loose leaf and tea bags, so there are no pods or any special equipment required.

Even if you aren’t a tea snob who insists that their oolong is brewed at precisely 190 degrees for flavor, an advantage to the BRÜ seems to be the aforementioned reduction in energy usage. Because you tell the BRÜ exactly how much tea to create and what temperature, you won’t overfill a kettle, thereby heating excess water, and you won’t use a brute force boil water when a slightly lower temperature is needed for more delicate teas. Multiply those tiny bits of savings for daily tea drinkers over the year and that could have a real impact.

We’ve been down the precision tea brewing road before, though, with the Teforia, which promised granular levels of control for tea heads. But with a whopping $1,499 price tag, the Teforia never caught on with the masses and shut down after two years. BRÜ doesn’t have that champagne budget problem however, as Kickstarter backers can pick up a standard BRÜ machine for $96, or the BRÜ Plus, which has a self-cleaning feature, for $115.

The BRÜ has just four days to go in its campaign and has already zoomed past its goal of $30,128 to raise more than $420,000. But savvy crowdfunders know that raising a ton of money isn’t the same as getting to market. Making the leap from prototype to mass production has foiled other crowdfunded hardware projects like the Rite Press and iGulu, leaving those backers high and dry.

As with any Kickstarter project, it is buyer beware. But if you’re a big tea drinker looking for a small way to help the planet, the BRÜ might be for you.

SKS 2019: The Kitchen Evolution is In a State of “Good Chaos”

What’s next for the smart kitchen? What sort of new appliances will be gracing the countertops of the future, and what sort of technologies will power them? In short: What will it look like to cook at home in the future?

That’s exactly the question one of our panels tackled at SKS 2019. The discussion was led by The Spoon’s Chris Albrecht, who spoke with Lisa McManus of America’s Test Kitchen, Matt Van Horn of June and Steve Svajian of Anova about what’s coming down the pipelines for kitchen tech. The full video is below, but if you want a few quick highlights read on:

The future of the kitchen is software
Svajian argued that the smart kitchen space started out more hardware-driven, but has recently been shifting to focus more on software. Van Horn agreed. He said that in the early days of the company, people used what he called the “primitive” settings of the smart oven: bake, broil, etc. But now they’re using the automatic cook programs more and more. “That said, the hardware [still] has to be great,” added Svajian.

All tech aside, it has to work
McManus drove home the point that high-tech appliance are great, but they have to actually help people cook better — not just look cool. “We look at things that will make [cooking] easier and more accessible to everyone,” she said. “Things that are practical, that are functional.”

The smart kitchen space right now? “Good chaos.”
McManus summed up the evolution of the food tech ecosystem pretty neatly during the panel. “It feels like a really exciting brainstorm,” she said. “It’s good chaos.” Svajian agreed, equating the space to the evolution of the Web in the late 90’s. ‘The law of entropy is real.’

If you want to hear more about where these three insiders see the fast-paced evolution of the kitchen heading, make sure to watch the full video below.

SKS 2019: Kitchen Tech Futures: A Look At What's Next

SKS 2019: Security in the Connected Kitchen is a Process, Not an Endpoint

You’re only as strong as your weakest point, and this is especially true for cybersecurity, where automated brute force attacks can barrage your network. As more devices in your home get connected to the internet (hello, smart oven!), they represent more opportunities for hackers to gain access to your home network to use your connected devices for botnet attacks or worse.

The growing importance of security is the reason we held the Hacking the Oven, Cybersecurity and the Connected Kitchen panel at our 2019 Smart Kitchen Summit this month. It was led by The Internet of Things Podcast host Stacey Higginbotham and featured Gonda Lamberink, Cybersecurity Senior Business Development Manager at UL, and Steve Nackers, Manager, Electronic Controls at Sub-Zero Group, Inc.

You should watch the full video of the panel below, but for the TL;DR crowd, here are three big takeaways:

Proper security comes from having a corporate culture that values it. Security isn’t something that you just tack onto a product as near its final release. It needs to be baked in as a core component from the very beginning.

Both manufacturers and consumers have a role to play. Manufacturers need to make sure they are building secure devices (no chips directly on boards) and that over-the-air updates are easy to install. Consumers too need to take responsibility for their role in owning a connected device (change those passwords!).

Security is a process, not an endpoint. There is no secure today = secure tomorrow in cybersecurity. Connected kitchen appliance manufacturers need to stay up to date on vulnerabilities and have a plan to address them as they come up.

As the panelists agreed, just as we see an Energy Star rating sticker on appliances that are more electricity efficient today, it won’t be long until we something similar that touts a device’s security. As more consumers become aware of cybersecurity, the more they will demand it.

SKS 2019: Hacking the Oven, Cybersecurity and the Connected Kitchen

Winnow Raises $12M Series B Round to Fight Food Waste in Commercial Kitchens

UK-based tech startup Winnow announced today it has raised a $12 million Series B round for its food waste solution for commercial kitchens. The round is backed by IKEA partner Ingka Group as well as The Ingenious Group, Mustard Seed, Circulatory Capital, and D-Ax. It raised an $8 million loan from The European Investment Bank (EIB), bringing the company’s funding in the last month to $20 million and total funding to $31.6 million. Winnow will use its new funds to improve its technology and product development, including investing in new QA engineers and front-end developers.

Winnow’s approach to fighting food waste focuses on making the actual kitchens “smarter” about tracking and managing food that gets thrown out. Its Winnow Vision product, launched in March of this year, uses a combination of cameras, smart scales, and machine learning to recognize the food being thrown out.

In a Winnow Vision-equipped kitchen, garbage bins sit atop scales that can measure how much food is actually getting thrown away. Meanwhile, the cameras and machine learning can recognize which foods get tossed and report that information back to the kitchen staff. If, for example, large amounts of asparagus get chucked out on a regular basis, the chef can adjust inventory to order less. Cloud-based software records the day’s waste and sends reports to the kitchen staff that show the value of each item being thrown out.

According to the news announcement, companies using Winnow see a 40–70 percent food waste reduction in 6–12 months, which saves them 2–8 percent on food costs. Current customers include IKEA, Club Med, and several major hotel chains.

Part of the goal behind tracking food waste more precisely is to help kitchen staff better understand their behaviors around food waste and, if need be, change them. On that front, Winnow isn’t alone using tech to help. LeanPath, a company that’s been around since 2004, also offers a connected scale and camera system used in high-volume kitchens. Another UK-based company, Tenzo, also uses AI in the kitchen to analyze, among other things, food inventory so kitchen staff can better track what gets used, what doesn’t, and what needs to change.

With 40 percent of food wasted in the United States alone, we’re in need of a major behavioral shift to curb that number in schools, restaurants, cafeterias, and other high-volume locations (not to mention, in the home). AI and other tech isn’t a cure-all for the issue, but more data that can track the magnitude of the problem will hopefully spur kitchen managers into action when it comes to changing behaviors and attitudes around food waste.

Ember Launches Second Generation of Its Connected Temperature Controlled Mugs

Ember announced today the second generation of its connected, precision temperature-controlled mugs. According to a press release sent to The Spoon, the Ember Travel Mug2 and Ember Mug2 feature longer battery life and a redesigned charging coaster.

Before we dive deeper into the news, let’s just get this out of the way: these new Ember mugs ain’t cheap. The 10 oz. Ember Mug2 costs $99.95, the 14 oz version costs $129.95, and the Travel Mug2 is a whopping $179.95.

It’s easy to scoff at the idea of such an expensive “smart” mug, but what the Ember does, it does very well. It consistently keeps your hot beverages at your preferred temperature (between 120°F – 145°F) from first sip to last. No more lukewarm dregs towards the end or re-heating your coffee in the microwave. I bought one for my wife a couple Christmases ago, and she loved it (while admittedly getting a little over-caffeinated).

The new mugs all have a longer battery life than previous versions, so the Travel Mug2 will keep beverages hot for 3 hours, the 10 oz Ember Mug2 lasts 1.5 hours, and the 14 oz. Ember Mug2 goes for 80 minutes. However, if you keep the mugs on the charging coasters, you can keep them at full power all day.

Another new feature for the Travel Mug2 is the touch display that replaces the rotating dial that was at the base of the earlier mug. The controls stay hidden until you tap the Ember logo, at which point the menu lights up, allowing you to control the temperature of your drink by tapping the plus or minus symbols. The new display also let you see the battery life, temperature levels and a personalized name.

While these next-gen mugs are cool and all, I’m a little disappointed that Ember’s news wasn’t the release of the temperature controlled smart plates or baby bottles that the company has been working on. Maybe next year?

In the meantime, those interested in the new Ember Mugs can purchase one directly from Ember as of tonight.

SKS Hot Seat: Lynette MacDonald of Thermomix on the 100 Year Old Company and Food Capsules

When you think of Thermomix, you probably think of the future. It is, after all, one device that can do 20 different meal preparation functions like chopping, stirring, and oh yeah, cooking. But here’s a fun fact: Thermomix is actually more than 100 years old (I’m guessing it had a butter churning feature back then?).

Thermomix thrust itself further into the future this year when it announced the new connected TM6 model, which featured a bigger touchscreen display, new cooking functions like sous vide, and guided cooking. The company didn’t stop there. At our Smart Kitchen Summit this past week, Thermomix announced a partnership with Drop to control even more smart appliances and add grocery ordering directly from the TM6.

Since she was showing off Thermomix at SKS this year, we thought it would be fun to put Lynette MacDonald, Culinary Development Manager for Thermomix, in our SKS hot seat to answer a few fun questions about her company and the future of food (spoiler: capsules!).

Check out the video below and be on the lookout for more videos from SKS 2019 to hit The Spoon soon!

SKS Hot Seat Interview: Lynette Macdonald, Thermomix

SKS 2019: The Smart Kitchen Needs to Sell Experiences, Not Products

A recurring topic at this week’s SKS North America event has been around what is and isn’t working right now in the smart kitchen. As more devices come to market and product categories emerge, today’s home cook has seemingly limitless choice around how to make their cooking more connected. But as has been discussed at length this week, not all kitchen devices are actually useful, and the challenge for smart kitchen companies now is to make solutions potential customers would actually find useful for their lives. I use the word “solutions” intentionally, because a major takeaway from this year’s conference is that the smart kitchen is no longer just about devices.

The Spoon’s Mike Wolf discussed just that onstage today with Nick Holzherr, head of Whisk for Samsung, Mario Pieper, Chief Digital Officer for BSH Appliances, and Joe Ray of Wired. One of the major takeaways from the panel was the need for companies, whether they’re making hardware or software, to focus on creating and selling an experience, not a product or service.

BSH has been tackling this issue for a few years now, evolving from a company that sells appliances to one combining hardware and software. Onstage at SKS, Pieper suggested that companies pay particular attention to which appliances tend to bring out a strong emotional response from the user. For example, people are much more likely to be attached to the experience of making coffee versus loading a dishwasher, which is one of the reasons, Pieper said, BHS’s attempts to sell a connected version of a dishwasher didn’t take off.

For Whisk, improving the connected kitchen experience means competing companies need to work together more. In other words, to make the connected kitchen a more seamless experience, the industry players need to be more connected to one another, offering consumers recipes from multiple providers cooked on a mix of devices that are all compatible with one another. This approach, says Holzherr, is what can truly improve the customer journey from recipe to meal and increase the amount of time a user spends with any given device. Hypothetically, that means a Samsung device or recipe platform would be compatible with ones from LG or Whirlpool, creating a completely connected ecosystem. It’s a compelling vision, though the likelihood of major appliance-makers working side-by-side in perfect harmony seems doubtful at the moment.

In the meantime, one issue the smart kitchen continues to battle is too much tech actually making the home-cooking process more complicated, not less. Moving forward, smart kitchen solutions need to be solving actual problems in home cooking — food waste, for example — as opposed to being just tech for the sake of tech. Designing concepts around an experience rather than a gadget is one more step towards making the smart kitchen truly useful for the average consumer.

Thermomix Partners with Drop for Smart Appliance Control and Grocery Ordering

Thermomix is adding Drop’s smart kitchen software to its all-in-one kitchen appliance, the two companies announced from the stage today at the Smart Kitchen Summit (SKS) in Seattle.

Through the partnership the Thermomix TM6 will connect with other smart kitchen appliances and third-party applications through the device itself. According to a press release sent to The Spoon, Thermomix will now soon be able to preheat an oven, order groceries and optimize recipe content with the push of a button. Thermomix said the first integrations will hit the market in 2020.

The TM6 has more than 20 culinary features including chopping, mixing, blending, different types of cooking including sous vide and fermentation. The device also features guided cooking for more than 50,000 recipes. All that functionality ain’t cheap, however, as the device itself costs $1,500.

But that hasn’t been a daunting price tag for people outside of the U.S. where the device is more popular. What’s more, people aren’t just buying the device, but as we also learned at SKS this week, the company has a crazy high subscription conversion rate:

In addition to appliance control, Drop’s software also does recipe discovery and re-sizing, ingredient swapping, and grocery lists. Thermomix is not the first all-in-one cooker to integrate Drop’s software. Last month Drop announced that it would expand its partnership with Kenwood to be on the CookEasy+ multi-function cooking appliance. Today’s press announcement also said that 40 million Drop-enabled appliances from brands such as GE Appliances, Bosch, Electrolux and LG Electronics will ship over the next three years.