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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Connected Kitchen

How Wellness Is Redefining the Way We Use Our Home Kitchens

Excepting some appliance upgrades, the kitchen in 2019 is largely the same as it was in 1959. Our cabinets and pantries are still dark, enclosed spaces meant to hold food with a shelf-life of months or even years. Large refrigerators hide food that once forgotten goes bad, and countertops are cluttered by microwaves, toasters, and other gadgets. But as living spaces get smaller and consumer behavior shifts more towards healthy eating, fresh ingredients, and curbing food waste, the kitchen is desperately in need of a makeover.

At SKS 2019 this week, architect Veronica Schreibeis Smith, of wellness-focused kitchen company Vera Iconica, gave us a hint as to how the kitchen can evolve to meet those needs.

One of her biggest takeaways onstage was that what is old is new again. In other words, humans are moving away from the hyper-processed food bought in cans and boxes at the store and back towards homemade or homegrown meals and ingredients.

But most people aren’t moving back to a self-sustained farm to do those things, and her company’s vision for the kitchen shows how to accommodate the demand for healthy, local eating in your average household.

For example, Vera Iconica makes space in its kitchen design for a small hydroponic grow system built into the cabinetry. The cabinets themselves are climate controlled to better store fresh ingredients and ensure both a longer shelf life and better nutrient preservation in items.

Preserving food is one element of this newly designed kitchen concept. The other is making the actual space more efficient. For example, Vera Iconica’s kitchen includes a center island where users can prep food directly on its surface instead of juggling multiple cutting boards.

At SKS, Smith was joined onstage by architect Suleiman Alhadidi, who is reimagining the kitchen via MIT Media Labs’ City Science Group project. As he demonstrated onstage at SKS this week, this version of the kitchen is extremely modular, with things like robotically controlled cabinets and pantry storage that can automatically reveal or hide itself based on whether you need it.

How soon will this vision for the kitchen become a reality, not just for early adopters and those with disposable income, but any homeowner? When, for example, will a person be able to stroll into an IKEA and find an option to build an affordable hydroponic system into their cabinets? When does climate-controlled storage become built-in feature of rental apartments?

Not right away, as affordability remains an issue. That said, Smith suggested we’re moving closer to being able to incorporate some of the elements she and Alhadidi discussed this week. Most likely, modularity will rule, with users being able to pick, choose, and customize based on how much they’re willing to spend to reinvent their kitchens.

Fridge Eye is a Cheap Connected Camera to Smarten Up Your Fridge or Cupboard

While we cover smart appliances extensively here on The Spoon, we’re pretty hesitant about getting a smart fridge. They are pretty expensive, and since they are basically connected computers that also keep your food cold, there’s a greater chance that they will become obsolete. My “dumb” fridge may not have many bells and whistles, but a software upgrade will never brick it.

With its Fridge Eye, Munich-based brezzl.GmbH is looking to bring at least one feature of modern smart fridges to the one you already have — a connected camera. The Fridge Eye can be attached to the inside of a fridge, freezer or cupboard, and it takes a photo of whatever’s inside every time the door is closed. That image is beamed over WiFi to an app the Fridge Eye app on your mobile phone, so when you’re out grocery shopping, you know what you already have and don’t waste money or food with redundant purchases.

The camera battery is rechargeable, and brezzl. says that it is working on image recognition and recipe suggestion based on what you have in future releases.

Brezzl. is currently in the midst of a Fridge Eye crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo, where it hopes to raise $25,000 to bring its product to market. Interested backers can get a Fridge Eye for $79. The apps are already available for download on iOS, iPadOS and Android and have shopping list creation and sharing features.

Fridge Eye comes at the same time that Smarter has announced its FridgeCam PLUS, launched in partnership with AEG/Electrolux. As we wrote last month, this upgraded FridgeCam features:

“…wider and higher-resolution image, as well as SmarterAssist, so it can recognize items in your fridge. The accompanying app, which is new, gives users an inventory of their fridge, an expiration date tracker, shopping lists and automated links for item re-stocking through Tesco and Amazon Fresh in the UK.”

Smarter didn’t release pricing information for the new Fridge Cam PLUS, but the previous version sells for £149.99.

As with any crowdfunded hardware campaign — buyer beware. History has shown that making hardware is hard and many products don’t make it to market (just ask the backers of Rite Press). But if you are looking for a smart fridge solution without spending thousands of dollars on a whole new appliance, getting a connected camera may not be a dumb idea.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Anova Reveals New Connected Steam Oven

Anova, a company best known for making sous vide wands, showed off online yesterday the new product it’s been working on: a connected steam oven.

That the company is branching out from wands into ovens isn’t new. Anova first announced its precision oven at our Smart Kitchen Summit in October of 2016. But it looks like things have changed since that initial inception, and the product has been on a bit of a journey. In a corporate blog post yesterday providing an update on the steam oven, Anova CEO Stephen Svajian wrote:

In 2017, we were acquired by Electrolux and our work on the oven temporarily ceased. We started working on the oven last year and this year got approval to push it forward.

Anova’s original Precision Oven announcement was highlighted it’s multi-function cooking, with the ability to sous vide, sear, broil, bake and steam. For the new oven, Anova is still keeping all of that functionality, but yesterday’s blog post focuses on steam cooking:

Steam is a much better conductor of heat. Steam, combined with heating algorithms written in the age of endless computing power, can maintain temperature with levels of precision would make your old-school oven blush. Yet, we were unsatisfied with the levels of precision in crazy expensive, state-of-the-art ovens. You see, ovens have two temperatures. The temperature of the air inside the cavity and the temperature that the food experiences. The temperature of the air is referred to as the “dry bulb temperature.” The temperature that the food experiences is lower because water evaporating off the food cools it off. This temperature is called “wet bulb.” To achieve the best results, the oven needs to understand both. In addition, most current steam ovens don’t allow users to control relative humidity.

The company didn’t provide any other details about the oven (size, power, price, availability, etc.), though Anova says it still plans on debuting the new oven at CES in 2020. In a bit of a surprise to us here at The Spoon, Anova revealed that Scott Heimendinger is working with the company to develop the oven. Heimendinger is also Technical Director of Modernist Cuisine.

When it does come to market, Anova’s won’t be the only connected steam oven. Tovala is on the second generation of its connected oven, which also uses steam to cook and costs $299.

Anova has been on a bit of a roll this year. In May it launched a new Pro version of its sous vide cooker, and in August the company launched a smaller, lighter version of its main sous vide Precision Cooker. Last week, Anova also launched its own vacuum sealer for sealing food for sous vide cooking.

Anova’s new oven is something we will surely be talking about with Svajian, who will be speaking at our Smart Kitchen Summit next week. Get your tickets now!

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this blog post incorrectly inferred that the new oven did not have the same multi-functionality as previously announced. That was incorrect and the post has been updated.

Bluetooth Connected SmartyPans Has Started Shipping

SmartyPans, a Bluetooth connected smart pan, is finally shipping.

The product, developed by the sister/brother team of Prachi and Rahul Baxi, has been in development since 2015. The founder tandem first showed off their concept at SXSW in 2015 and pitched it at the first Smart Kitchen Summit later that year. They also appeared on stage at Techcrunch’s Hardware Battlefield at CES in 2017. And now the product is available for sale on the startup’s website for $229.

While the company apparently did ship some early batches to preorder backers, it appears that as of early this year, not all backers had received their pan and the company never entered high-volume production…until now.

So what does the product do? Pretty much what the company promised about four years ago when it started pitching it to backers. It has built-in weight and heat sensors and, according to the company’s website, provides guided cooking instructions from a paired app.  It also allows you to save recipes you cook with a “record recipe” function, as well as calculate the nutrition of recipes.

That the company is shipping at all is a testament to the founders’ persistence.  Another smart pan startup, Pantelligent, first started shipping the product in 2016 but has since gone out of business. Other guided cooking startups such as Hestan Cue and Ztove are also smart cookware that adjust the temperature of the induction burner/heating source.

The startup’s last publicly announced funding was a seed round of $1.1 million in early 2017.

Amazon Announces its Own Alexa Enabled Smart Oven

Amidst the many, many (manymanymanymany) announcements Amazon threw out at its special event here in Seattle today was its brand new Alexa enabled smart oven.

The Amazon Smart Oven is actually a four-in-one device that is a microwave, convection oven, air fryer and food warmer. The Smart Oven features voice control, so you can tell it to “cook one chicken breast,” as well as a scan-to-cook feature to automatically cook packaged foods. The Amazon Smart Oven is available for pre-order (bundled with an Echo Dot) for $249 with delivery starting in November.

The new smart oven is similar to the Alexa powered microwave Amazon announced at its event last year in that they are both what the company calls “reference models.” This is shorthand for saying that even though they are for sale, Amazon made these devices more to demonstrate what an Alexa powered device is capable of and how easy it is to build Alexa into hardware.

But there are a few drawbacks with Amazon’s Smart Oven. The voice control and scan-to-cook capabilities, while neat, also show off some of the shortcomings of the appliance. Just like the Amazon microwave, the smart oven must be paired with an Alexa device in order to make voice control work, so you can’t just use it out of the box on its own (hence the bundled Dot). And the oven does not have a built-in camera, so you have to use your phone or some other camera-equipped Echo device to read the barcode for scan-to-cook.

The most obvious comparison for the Amazon Smart Oven is the June oven. Both are multiple cooking devices in one, both feature cloud-based automated cook programs specific to different types of food, and both have temperature probes that plug into the device itself to monitor the internal cooking temperature of your food. Oh, and by the way, Amazon’s Alexa fund invested in June.

But the June costs $700, more than twice the amount of the Amazon smart oven. Sure, the June has more cook types (dehydrator, roast, etc.) and computer vision to automatically identify your food, but how much of that will consumers think they actually need when compared to the Amazon Smart Oven? Especially since Amazon’s device is not only a convection oven, but also sports a microwave, which the June does not. And more importantly, what happens when Amazon features its own oven on the front page of its massive retail site?

With the holidays approaching, we’ll soon find out.

Discovery Announces Food Network Kitchen, a New Content, Recipe, and Grocery Platform

Have you ever watched Alton Brown or Ina Garten on Food Network and thought, “Wouldn’t it be great if these chefs were in my kitchen, walking me through the cooking process themselves, preferably over a glass of Chardonnay?”

You’re in luck, minus the Chardonnay. At today’s Amazon event in Seattle, Discovery, Inc., which owns Food Network, announced the impending launch of the Food Network Kitchen. The multi-faceted platform will offer 25 weekly live interactive cooking videos featuring celebrity Food Network chefs, as well as over 800 cooking classes and 3,000 instructional videos. It’s a separate, additional service from Food Network itself, which requires a cable subscription to watch.

Food Network Kitchen will launch in late October 2019 in select (unnamed) U.S. cities. The service will cost $7 per month. Subscribers will be able to access the content through voice control with Amazon Alexa and Echo devices, Amazon Fire TV, and iOS and Android mobile devices, with more device integrations to come in 2020. The platform also offers grocery delivery through Amazon Fresh.

In a press release sent to the Spoon, David Zaslav, President and CEO of Discover, Inc. called the Food Network Kitchen “not just another entertainment service” but something closer to “the ‘Peloton of Food.'” Like the fitness company’s streaming service, Food Network Kitchen will give users access not only to pre-recorded videos but also live instructional classes.

A lot of folks, myself included, watch Food Network not for actual cooking instruction but purely for entertainment. So I’m not sure how many people will want to cook along to Guy Fieri making chicken wings at 6 p.m. in their kitchen. However, the live aspect certainly has potential, especially if the Food Network includes a way for users to ask questions and have them answered via the chef in real time.

I’m also skeptical about whether kitchen purists who love watching chefs cook meals from scratch would also embrace next-gen technologies in the kitchen, like using Alexa to access recipes or ordering groceries online. Then again, kitchens are getting more and more connected as things like voice integration and grocery delivery grow more commonplace. As these connected tools become more frictionless, it’s likely that more traditionalist home chefs will embrace them, too.

Really though, this new platform demonstrates that Food Network is trying to evolve from just a television network and recipe hub to a more interactive, connected platform that meets consumers not on their couch but in their kitchen. Food Network Kitchen is the food and cooking brand’s first big push to go beyond the static screen and interact with consumers in this dynamic way — and I doubt it’ll be their last.

SKS 2019 Is In Two Weeks And We Couldn’t Be More Excited

With Smart Kitchen Summit just two weeks away, we’re getting really pumped to share with you what we’ve been working on for the last few months.

We had the first SKS in 2015 in an old cannery, and every year we’ve grown to include more speakers, sponsors and attendees, and this year we are really outdoing ourselves with our biggest summit year.

I wanted to share with you some of the things we’ve been working on and why we’re so excited.

Welcome to the Waterfront

When you go to Seattle, the one place you usually want to be is on the waterfront, and that’s where we’ll be for two full days at Bell Harbor Conference Center.

But great views isn’t the only reason we moved to a new venue. Moving to our new home  allows us to really expand our content, and we have more fantastic sessions than ever. This year we explore themes like the future kitchen, next-generation interfaces, the changing eater, new sources of protein, the impact of robotics and AI on the food system, the reinvented restaurants and much much more. Heck, we’ll even be talking about space food.

Networking Goes Next Level

One reason SKS has become indispensable is because it’s where those in the world of food tech and smart kitchen come to meet new partners, find innovative startups and, in general, do deals.

And in 2019 we’re taking this next level with our first-ever networking app. We are partnering with Brella to create a customized networking experience called SKS Connect that will allow attendees to find others schedule one on one meetings at the show. Once you buy your ticket, we will email you details to sign up for Brella SKS Connect!

Our Amazing Speakers

Every year the Spoon team searches for those who doing the most interesting work in the future of food and cooking and tells their stories. SKS is where we invite them to have a conversation with our community tell their stories live and in person.  This year we have an amazing group of founders, makers and visionaries, ranging from IBM Watson’s lead researcher to someone creating protein from thin air to the creator of Europe’s most successful connected recipe platform in the Cookidoo to India’s equivalent to Martha Stewart. We’ve got investors, hackers, inventors and makers, all coming together to help us take stock of the future of food and set the course for the next year.

Plus, the whole Spoon team will be here and who doesn’t want to meet us?

So Many Great Startups

Each year at SKS we bring together some of the most innovative new startups in the world of food tech with our Startup Showcase. This year we’ve doubled the innovation, not only bringing together amazing food tech startups but also we’ve launched a new Future Food showcase where you can see what some of today’s most innovative food startups are working on.

Touch and Taste The Future

SKS isn’t just about great content and networking, it’s where you come to touch and taste the future. Our startups, sponsors and partners will have all sorts of innovative products, food and innovations on display, including some product launches that will make news at the show. You’ll be able to taste plant-based sea food and chicken nuggets, edible cutlery, cricket protein and so much more. You’ll see new cooking robots, new types of cooktops, countertop chocolate appliances to just name a few.

So if you just attend one event of the year to help you understand where the future of food and cooking is going, make it this year’s SKS.  Whether you’re looking for a new partner, an investor, a new employee or just want to figure out your food tech strategy, SKS 2019 is where you should do it.

There are only two weeks left (and just one week left to buy double pack tickets), so hurry up and get your tickets today! Use the discount code SPOON for 15% off your ticket.

Hey Joe, the Smart Kitchen Isn’t Stupid, It’s Just Getting Started

We have a rule in our house where we try to use the word “and” instead of “but.” So it is in that spirit that I write how I’ve met WIRED’s Joe Ray. I’ve eaten dinner with Joe Ray. I think Joe Ray is a brilliant writer and product reviewer.

And.

I think his recent piece on how “The ‘Smart Kitchen’ Is Very Stupid,” misses the mark and is worth responding to.

You should read the full piece, but the gist of what Ray’s complaint can be summed up in his opening graph:

The app-connected kitchen gadgets, the experimental tiny ovens, the microwaves you can talk to, and the recipe apps? They’ve failed. While our first whack at the connected home kitchen was interesting and occasionally even fun, for the most part, it has flopped like a soufflé.

To be fair, there is a lot Ray gets right: kitchen appliances should have controls on the actual devices, not just controls via an app; the apps themselves have pretty weak content; and don’t even get me started on voice-controlled microwaves.

I think the underlying issue is that Ray likes to cook. Though I haven’t eaten his food, he’s probably a really good cook. I, however, am not. And honestly, I don’t really want to learn all about cooking. Food tech, however, and connected kitchen appliances in particular, have actually helped me become a decent cook.

For example, a few weeks back I made ribs for the first time, thanks to the Traeger WiFi-connected electric smoker. I had never tried making ribs before because they seemed to take such a long time and be so complicated. Who wants to spend that many hours making something that doesn’t work out? Or, my greater fear, makes people sick because it wasn’t cooked properly.

While the Traeger had controls on the device itself, I was also able to follow the in-app recipe and more importantly, monitor the smoker remotely. Rather than going out to the smoker itself, I just pulled out my phone to make sure it was still at the right temperature and check on the timer.

The same goes for my June oven. Sure, with some practice, I could probably learn how to make cod well. But the June does it all for me with the tap of a button, and the fish turns out great. Plus, the June has multi-generational appeal in the Albrecht house. My septuagenarian parents like the fact that the oven shuts off when you’re done so they won’t forget (my dad literally used to touch all the oven burners with his hands before leaving the house to make sure the stove wasn’t left on), and my 9 year old son is able to make pizza and chocolate chip cookies (super healthy eating in the Albrecht house) on his own thanks to the June’s computer vision and automated cook programs.

It’s important to realize as well that food tech is an entirely new category in cooking; there will be some bumps in the road as appliances and consumers figure out the best way to work with one another.

I think Ray is right that if startups and appliance makers are going to disrupt the kitchen, they should spend a lot more time working on creating products that are intuitive and make the act of cooking easier. There needs to be a particular emphasis on not just hardware design, but app UI design as well.

And what I want to remind Ray of is that the needs of cooking experts are not the same as those of the n00bs or the never-want-to-be’s.

Having said all that — see you onstage at SKS in two weeks, Joe!

Steve Nackers on The Evolving Role of Cyber-Security in the Connected Kitchen

Does your blender prefer a specific brand of low-fat yogurt? Is your stovetop eager to share snapshots of last weekend’s epic dinner party? Just how connected are smart kitchens, and more importantly, which appliance knows what (and who are they sharing it with)?

Steve Nackers, corporate Manager of Electronic Controls for Sub-Zero, will be at this year’s Smart Kitchen Summit discussing cybersecurity, the connected kitchen, and the chances of your slow-cooker chili setting off five alarms in all the wrong places.

We sent him a few questions before the October event about how the Sub-Zero team are tackling innovation, performance, and adaptive privacy settings.

This interview has been lighted edited for clarity. 

Tell us more about what you do for Sub-Zero Group, Inc.
I’ve been with Sub-Zero Group, Inc. for over 18 years. During that time, my career has spanned from field support to product launches to innovative research initiatives. I have enjoyed experiencing a wide part of the DNA of this family-owned company and its commitment to its customers — something I’m excited to see even more growth around with the recent breaking ground on our new innovation center that will serve as a hub for research and development.

As the Corporate Manager of Electronic Controls for Sub-Zero Group, Inc., my team will be one of the first to move to the new innovation center where we will work alongside teams from across our three great brands on developing and integrating the controls, software, and innovations that deliver on that promise of quality and value that Sub-Zero Group, Inc. is known for.

How have you seen technology transform the way we cook in the kitchen?
Yes — technology is reshaping the kitchen and the home space around us in ways we see, and in ways we don’t. However, it is important to make sure that those technologies are applied in meaningful ways that enable and enhance the consumer experience. From the NASA-inspired air filter technologies that enhance food preservation to precision software and instrumentation that has evolved greatly in the last decade to provide the consumer greater control and more predictable cooking results, these technologies are reshaping the cooking experience. We continue to take really innovative and new technologies and shape them in ways that help our consumers to have an experience in the kitchen that gives them confidence.

Do you envision a future in which all kitchen appliances are connected and controllable via your phone/voice?
The key thing is providing the consumer with choice. Homeowners still really value the ability to interact with their appliances, but are also looking for ways to improve their efficiency in the kitchen. Their data, privacy, and security should be what they have control over, and we need to enable them to interact with their appliances in the ways that are most seamless and comfortable for them. For some people, that will be voice, for others it is mobile, and still others it is a physical knob. Thoughtfully designing the appliances from day one throughout our engineering process to accommodate that choice and respecting the values of our consumers is what drives our vision of the future.

How do you address consumer concerns about privacy with IoT-enabled devices?
We take security very seriously and have worked closely with organizations like UL and Microsoft from the start to ensure proper measures are in place to be proactive about vulnerabilities. Cybersecurity is an ever-changing landscape, and is something we must continuously evolve and update our security measures to stay on top of. The most important thing is to have a mindset and commitment to security as a priority in every step of your design process and throughout the various levels of your organization. That is something we take seriously and continue to cultivate.

We also understand that consumers have concerns about IoT enabled devices. Our customer service teams are dedicated to working with consumers on their questions. Our hope is always that any concerns they might have we address so effectively that they come away with confidence and a greater sense of trust. To that end, we work to be clear, transparent, and effective in communicating what and how data is handled.

What’s the one kitchen appliance you could never live without?
My Wolf induction cooktop, hands down. Induction is finally making inroads in the U.S., and I’ve converted a few family and friends as well. I had used gas and standard electric methods for years previously, but getting my first Wolf induction cooktop was eye-opening. The power, efficiency, and absolute precision was amazing. To be able to drive a pot of water to rolling boil in under a minute, and yet leave chocolate at a soft melt for as long as needed with such precision on the same devices is incredible. There is a lot of exciting innovation to come in this space too which makes me even more eager for future generations of the product!

Come watch Steve speak on Hacking The Oven: Cybersecurity & The Connected Kitchen at SKS next month! Get 25% off your tickets here.

Move Over Virtual Kitchens, Zume Shows Off Mobile Kitchen Model with &Pizza

Sometimes there is a difference between the news and the story. For instance, the news today is Zume, Inc., the parent company of Zume Pizza, announced that its mobile kitchen technology will be used by the &Pizza chain.

Technically, &Pizza has already been using Zume’s mobile kitchen at one location in Washington D.C., but that is just the beginning of the partnership. According to the press release sent to The Spoon, the mobile kitchens will be used to expand &Pizza’s brand in new markets and test new products before adding them to &Pizza’s brick and mortar location menus.

So that’s the news. But the story here is actually how Zume is creating a new category of kitchen, one that exists somewhere between the traditional restaurant, virtual kitchen and food truck.

To recap: Zume’s mobile kitchens are pretty much what you would imagine: big trucks outfitted with appliances that can be parked in neighborhoods, closer to customers, to ideally make food delivery faster. Place a food order and the WiFi enabled devices on board the mobile kitchen guide the cooks, make the meal, coordinate delivery pickup and keeps you up to date the entire time.

Right now, &Pizza is just using the Zume’s mobile kitchens, but Zume also offers a full-stack solution that includes predictive analytics and packaging. In theory, this should bring a new level of efficiency to a restaurant looking to expand its operations. Here’s how:

A mobile kitchen requires less investment than a traditional brick and mortar restaurant because you don’t have to build out and maintain a permanent location. This is also the pitch of virtual kitchen spaces like Kitchen United, which lease out commercial restaurant infrastructure for delivery-only restaurant concepts. But while virtual kitchens remain static in one location, a mobile kitchen can park out in different neighborhoods for closer proximity to a restaurant’s customers. A food truck has the mobility, but they are based around nearby foot traffic, so their potential market size is limited.

Even with all promised flexibility around its mobile kitchens, the main hook with Zume has always been its predictive analytics. As we wrote previously:

Zume takes into consideration hundreds of data points, such as day of the week, weather, school calendars and more to develop predictions around how much pizza and what types of pizza will be ordered in a given location. From there a food delivery vehicle cooks up the pizza on the move and delivers it with precise timing.

Zume Inc. subsidiary, Zume Pizza, knows which neighborhoods will order pizza (and gets the proper permitting to set up camp), what types and how many pizzas will be ordered. From there, it can pre-make those pizzas in a central facility and store them in the mobile kitchen so when the orders come in, they just need to be baked and delivered. The limited space of mobile kitchens can be stocked efficiently, delivery drivers can make more dropoffs because they aren’t driving around town, and the food arrives fresher for the consumer because it hasn’t traveled very far. Zume even offers special compostable packaging that restaurants can use.

And it’s not just pizza. Zume opened up its data platform to all types of cuisine last year so Thai or Chinese restaurants or whatever can be outfitted with custom mobile kitchens with the necessary equipment to do the same.

Zume already got $375 million from SoftBank last year, with another potential $375 million more as part of that deal. So the company has the money to scale out operations to different restaurants and regions. &Pizza and Zume may have made news today, but the story to watch over the coming year is how many other restaurants license Zume’s technology.

SideChef Brings Guided Recipes to Haier Smart Fridge Lineup

Today at IFA in Berlin, SideChef and Haier announced a new partnership which will put SideChef’s guided recipes on all new Haier smart fridges released in the European market. The new feature will offer step-by-step cooking instructions and recommend recipes to owners of Haier smart fridges based on the current content of their fridge.

From the release:

Guided recipes are now at users’ fingertips, ensuring successful meal preparation every time. SideChef’s rich recipe content is curated from chefs and culinary professionals, unlocking unlimited meal potential while taking into consideration cuisine cravings, dietary restrictions, and general preferences.

This deal marks another step in the SideChef-Haier relationship, which has been growing steadily for over a year now. The two companies worked closely on development of the GE Kitchen Hub smart display and this past April they expanded their relationship by building an integration that enabled users to send cooking instructions and parameters to different GE appliances from within the SideChef app.

SideChef has in the past done deals with GE in the U.S. and Electrolux is Asia. Now, with the addition of Haier in Europe, SideChef will continue to expand its geographic-specific relationships in the appliance space as it helps Haier build a strong offering in localized language content (such as French and German).

“As Haier China expands its product line out further geographically, we are working with them to have products that are localized through content,” SideChef CEO Kevin Yu told me over the phone. “Recipes are a huge driver for them and others.”

The SideChef content will make its way to all of Haier Europe’s new smart fridges with displays later this year. While the initial version of these guided recipes won’t have the ability to drive and interact with other Haier appliances (such as with the GE implementation in the U.S.), Yu didn’t rule it out from future versions.

And while today’s news is based on the company’s new partnership with a major appliance brand, Yu told me that it’s not just hardware companies he’s talking to nowadays.  Meetings with big food and appliance brands are taking up as much or more of his calendar space as they all have gotten serious about digitization in the face of an ever-growing threat from Amazon. Yu said it started with the Amazon acquisition of Whole Foods and momentum has only grown since that time.

“We’re seeing a lot of urgency from the food guys,” he said.