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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Connected Kitchen

The Food Tech Show: An Almost All Coffee Pod: Spinn, Coffee Robots & Atomo

The Spoon team has a heavily caffeinated conversation for this week’s podcast. Here are the stories we discuss:

I also suggest new names for both Chris and Jenn (let us know what you think of Jenny Donuts).

As always, you can find The Food Tech Show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen. You can also download direct to your device or just click play below.

StoreBound’s Evan Dash Wants to Create a Housewares Brand for a New Generation

“Breville was doing incredibly well,” said Dash. “They were still fairly new. And a lot of brands were chasing them to the high end. And then you had this whole like lower end, that was just in shambles, fighting over price, price price.”

While Dash didn’t want to necessarily compete with Breville or fight over tiny margins in a brutal price competition, he saw an opportunity in between the two.

“It really left this beautiful gap in the middle that we felt like we could step into with great design, great quality, great value, and a social media strategy.”

Ten years later, he and his wife sold the company they had built after growing their revenue to $100 million by focusing on that neglected middle space with their flagship namesake brand, Dash.

While the terms of the sale to French consumer goods conglomerate Groupe SEB were not announced, a conservative revenue multiple of 3-5 times sales would easily put the acquisition within the half a billion dollar territory, which would put the deal possibly higher valuation than that of the Anova acquisition by Electrolux (but well below the Instant Brands $2 billion estimated deal size).

So how did Dash go from an idea to $100 million company in a decade? According to Evan Dash, it was in large part thanks to their focus on young consumers who didn’t feel any loyalty to the brands their parents had brought into the home.

“While everybody talks about how the ‘millennials are up and coming, but they really don’t have the money to spend,’ they absolutely do”, said Dash. “And they are so influential, they’re influencing their parents generation, even their grandparents generation and a lot of cases.”

A big part of attracting the attention of those customers was through the use of social media, primarily Instagram. According to Dash, that early emphasis on Instagram was influenced by his own kids.

“They were showing the way that they could build momentum,” said Dash. “And one of them had a sports page, and he was editing jerseys of doing jersey swaps of players. And he had 10,000 followers.”

Beyond speaking to younger consumers through social media, much of the focus by Dash was creating products that not only looked different than those he and Rachel had grown up with, but were designed to be more user-centric.

“We tended to look at products with fresh eyes,” said Dash. “For example, we launched a two slice toaster early on and my head designer for toasters came to me and they said, ‘Hey, Cuisinart has one through six on their control, and KitchenAid has one through seven on their control. Can we just say light, medium, dark, defrost and keep warm?’

Armed with the resources of a company like Groupe SEB, Dash doesn’t have any plans to slow down. The company will expand into products that focus on circular economy, and Dash also hinted at plans for bigger products like refrigerators.

Spoon Plus subscribers can read the full transcript of my interview with Dash or watch the full interview below. If you’d like to learn more about Spoon Plus, you can do so here.

Update to June Oven App Let’s You Check Cook Programs Remotely

June, makers of the eponymous connected countertop oven, released some new features to its mobile app last week that add remote functionality, including one to help you shop for June-ready food.

The new app features access to all of the June automated cook programs. So if you’re at the store and wondering if the June has an automated cook program for asparagus and/or frozen waffle fries, you can quickly check your phone (the answers are yes and no, respectively).

For a June owner (like myself), this is actually pretty useful. I’m not a great cook and am pretty reliant on the June for meal prep. For example, knowing what type of fish the June automatically cooks would definitely influence my buying decisions while standing in the seafood section of my store.

The other remote feature that June released that makes less sense to me is the ability to remotely start a cook program. The new functionality allows you to start a cook program from your phone, but it doesn’t work unless the food is in the June. This raises the question, why do you need to use your phone to start a cook program when you are standing in front of the oven putting your food in it? And why would I even want to start up my oven when I’m not around? I’m sure there are edge cases, but it still seems odd.

In a somewhat counter intuitive manner, the June has actually become more useful during this pandemic. You’d think being stuck at home would mean I have more time for cooking, but between working from home (i.e., office hours are kind of all hours) and nice weather, I don’t really want to spend a lot of time in the kitchen. This will probably be doubly so once school and remote-learning for my son start up again next month and there are even fewer hours in the day.

Given all that, one feature request I would like June to fulfill is for the oven to automatically and frequently clean itself thoroughly.

As Buffets and Hot Bars Close Down, LeanPath Launches New Mobile Solution

LeanPath today announced a new mobile version of its product that helps fight food waste in commercial kitchens. The new LeanPath Go is an item-based mobile tracking system that the company claims was specifically designed for the changes COVID-19 has brought to food operators, namely the shutting down of buffets and hot bars.

Typically, LeanPath’s product offerings use a combination of food scale, camera and cloud computing to help combat waste in high-volume food operations like cafeterias. Kitchen staff puts pre-consumer (i.e., to be served) food on the scale. The camera then snaps a picture of that food and sends the photo to LeanPath for analysis. LeantPath categorizes the reason for the waste (food was burnt, or spoiled, etc.) so that kicthens can better understand why food is getting thrown out and from that information train their staff to reduce waste.

All that, however, was before COVID-19.

Now, the global pandemic has shut down high-volume food operations like cafeterias and even hot bars in grocery stores. Instead of leaving big trays of food out all day long for hundreds of people to interact with, restaurants and grocers are turning more towards pre-packaged to-go items. To adapt, the new LeanPath Go system has ditched the food scale in favor of a mobile device.

From the LeanPath blog post announcing the new system:

Leanpath Go measures waste on an “each” basis when the unit and unit cost are distinct. A pre-packaged turkey sandwich with chips and a pickle spear, for example, is a single unit with a cost-of-goods already assigned to it. Leanpath Go’s picture-based interface allows the user to tap to track one item, or tap-and-hold for fast, multi-item tracking.

LeanPath’s new system then can help identify which items are selling (or not), and the costs associated with making that item so operators can better manage their inventory.

LeanPath isn’t the only company offering high-tech tools to fight food waste. Winnow and Phood both offer similar AI-enabled systems that use a scale and camera to automatically identify food waste in large food service operations.

In today’s crazy, unpredictable world, getting a handle on food waste and by extension the food budget, is something restaurants and other foodservice companies can actually control. And given the thin margins restaurants operate on in good times, being able to control food costs during this downturn could certainly help keep the lights on longer.

Connected Compost: Vitamix Launches an At-Home Device to Turn Food Scraps Into Soil Nutrients

Vitamix is the latest appliance-maker to address the issue of food waste in the consumer kitchen. The company today announced the launch of its Vitamix FoodCycler FC-50, a device that turns food scraps into additives for soil consumers can then use in their gardens. 

The device itself is compact enough to fit on a kitchen countertop. As the explainer video below shows, food scraps go into a portable bucket, which, when full, goes into the FoodCycler device. The user then simply attached the lid and hits the power button, and the device agitates the scraps into a compound that can be used as soil additive:  

Introducing the Vitamix Foodcycler FC-50!

Vitamix says the entire process can be done in four to eight hours, and works on not just produce but also meat and dairy items. A carbon filter built into the device gets rid of methane gases and odors.

The device is available now for $399.95, including a three-year warranty. 

Vitamix is positioning the device as an alternative to composting, which remains challenging to a lot of consumers. At-home compost piles require quite a bit of time and maintenance. They can also attract rodents, and most guides tell you to avoid putting meat and fatty foods in your pile (see: rodents). Some cities provide bins for compost scraps that are picked up on a weekly basis just like trash or recycling, but that’s not yet a widespread practice outside major cities.

U.S. households waste roughly 76 billion pounds of food per year. And with more people now staying home to cook and eat, it wouldn’t be surprising if that number went up in the future.

The key is to help consumer break longstanding behaviors and habits around simply throwing scraps in the garbage bin or down the drain, and the painstaking nature of traditional composting is not likely to do that on a widespread basis. The seeming ease-of-use of Vitamix’s latest device could be instrumental in helping consumers change some of those behaviors.

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.