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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Connected Kitchen

The Zega is A Pot That Keeps Cooking Even After You Turn Off the Stove

Do we really need another cooking pot for our food?

If you had asked me a week ago, I would have said we’re good. After all, there’s the Instant Pot, which has become my weeknight workhorse during the pandemic for cooking everything from stew to rice to dumplings. Then there’s the hero of the potluck, the slow cooker, still making us happy with meatballs and party dips after all these years.

But then I saw the Zega on Indiegogo and it had me wondering if I could fit another cooking pot into my life. Zega makes what it terms “walkaway cookware,” which is pretty much just what it describes: cookware you can start a meal in and leave it (or even take it with you).

The Zega uses a design similar to that of a Yeti mug or a Thermos — double-walled thermal insulation — which allows it to maintain a high temperature for a long period of time even after you take the device off the stove. You put your food in, heat it up, turn off the heat, and the food continues to cook.

Hence the “walkaway” label.

While my Instant Pot and crockpots cover me for pretty much any pot-based meal I want to cook, I was considering adding the Zega to the repertoire for a couple of reasons. First, it saves energy. Not having to have an appliance plugged in for a few hours while I cook just seems more efficient.

I also like the walkaway aspect. Whether you’re an adult with young kids or you just want to run errands while the evening meal is cooking, this idea makes sense to me.

The Zega comes in two styles: connected and analog. The actual Zega pot is the same cookware, and it’s the knob that determines if you have a connected or analog version. You can see how each looks below.

The Zega app asks you whether you have a connected or analog version and gives you specific instructions tailored for each. If you have an analog version, you’re instructed to cook food to a certain temperature using the analog knob (“cook over high heat until the temperature gauge reaches the red zone”). The connected version remotely monitors the cooking and will send you notifications when a meal is done.

Now of course, this is a product that is available via Indiegogo and, as with any crowdfund campaign, deserves all the usual caveats. But from what I can see, the product seems well on its way towards shipping.

Before they had sent the product to Indiegogo, the team raised $550,000 on equity crowdfunding platform Venturecrowd. In my view, raising money from investors to build out manufacturing capabilities and funding the initial production run is the right order of things. Hardware campaigns often go wrong when founders raise funds from backers who want a product and then realize they don’t have enough money to actually build out their manufacturing line.

The company’s Indiegogo campaign, which has raised $69,000 as of this writing, says the products will be manufactured in July and delivered to backers in August, all of which sounds right if you assume the company used its equity funding to lock in manufacturing and has it ready to go.

Will “walkaway cookware” become its own new category? Too soon to tell, but the founders hope so. In their investment prospectus on Venturecrowd, the company forecasts the Zega could hit $3 million in sales this year and $12 million by 2022.

We’ll see. For now, I just hope they ship since I ended up backing the product, which is saying a lot from a guy who’s gotten pretty jaded at this point with hardware crowdfunding (hello, Spinn).

You can watch the Zega intro reel below:

Zega Intelligent Cookware

Johnny Grey on the Post-COVID Kitchen: No Cabinets, Bigger Pantries, More Pleasure

With COVID keeping many of us at home, kitchens are taking on a bigger role than ever before. They’re not just the place we cook meals; they’re also our offices, a place to teach kids homework, the background of our Zoom video calls as we cook along with family.

Considering we’ve long considered the kitchen the heart of the home, it’s no surprise that they’re shifting as we spend more and more time homebound. But how will the kitchen transform to better suit our new needs during quarantine?

To answer that question we turned to Johnny Grey, a British design leader specializing in — you guessed it — kitchens. Today Grey (and a few surprise guests) joined us for our latest Spoon Virtual Event, titled The Future of Kitchen Design in a Post-COVID19 World. He talked about some of the constants of kitchen design, how to embrace the DIY, and how the kitchen is a sort of “3D timepiece.” Here are a few of the highlights:

Fewer cabinets, more pantries
If there’s one part of conventional kitchen design that Grey absolutely hates, it’s cabinets. He thinks they take up too much space in the core of the kitchen itself, which should be a more social space.

In fact, Grey’s overarching goal with kitchen design seems to be to make it a more pleasant space for gathering. To that end, he’s a big fan of kitchen islands (or peninsulas), ideally ones with adjustable heights that can go from a bar space to a dining table.

When asked what he thought we could learn from the past, Grey answered in one word: pantries. He likes a walk-in pantry because you can see things in front of you — like all those bulk bags of dry goods you bought — and you don’t have to rely on dreaded cabinets to store everything.

Where does smart tech fit in?
For Grey, smart tech does have a role to play in kitchens of the future. Specifically when it comes to two things: precision and safety. Grey also emphasized that kitchen technology can help generations age in place. If individuals can cook for themselves, he theorizes that they won’t have to move to assisted living facilities as quickly — thus keeping them home for longer.

Photo: Innit and Sharp

The kitchen as a timepiece
During the virtual event Grey unveiled a new concept he’s been working on. Called the Evening Kitchen, he explained that the kitchen has multiple different lives during each 24-hour cycle. During the day it may be an area for quick meal prep, but in the evening it morphs into a bistro, a nightclub, or even a quiet living room, depending on the circumstances. Grey calls the kitchen a sort of “3D timepiece.”

For that reason, the evening kitchen must look different than the kitchen of daytime. Grey talks about the power of lighting, which gives intimacy, as well as smell and music to transform the space. If you’re curious you can watch his video explaining the concept here.

Especially now, embrace joy
Especially now, kitchens should be a place of joy. “It should be a pleasure to use your kitchen,” Grey said. To make it pleasurable, designers should think about touch, ease of movement, and even color. They could set up places to set a chair in the sun. Consumers themselves can do a lot to improve their kitchen. “Embrace the DIY,” Grey told the audience.

Grey also urged listeners not to put too much pressure on themselves to de-clutter, especially now that the kitchen table is also a coworking space and/or classroom. “It’s not really how people can live,” he said.

Overall, it was a fascinating conversation and — bonus — you get to enjoy Grey’s soothing British accent. You can watch the full video below.

Kitchen Design in a Post-COVID World: A Conversation with Kitchen Designer Johnny Grey

Finally, don’t forget to mark your calendar for our next event on May 21st 10am PT, when Gingko Bioworks program director Sudeep Agarwala will talk about fermentation as a food tech platform.

Here’s How People Are Using Their Instant Pots During Quarantine

By now we’ve all read about how people have changed their eating and cooking habits during the quarantine. But how exactly are they using their Instant Pots, arguably the runaway countertop cooking success story of the last few years, and the first cooking gadget many millennials ever purchased on their own?

To find out, I decided to check in with the maker of the Instant Pot appliance and they shared some data on exactly how people are using their multicookers ever since the pandemic forced the entire world to stay home and start cooking.

One of the big things that changed is the cyclicality of the normal cooking week. In a typical non-pandemic week, Sunday is the biggest day for Instant Pot by a substantial margin, with 25% off all cooking activity occurring on the day of rest.

During quarantine, cooking days have become more evenly distributed as people are home pretty much all the time and Sunday only accounts for 17% of cooking activity. Conversely, Friday, which normally represents the weekly cooking activity nadir, has jumped from 9% of all cooking activity to 13% during the quarantine.

Apparently you can make bread with your Instant Pot (who knew?), and just like with pretty much every other cooking device, the multifunction cooker has seen a sharp increase in loavemaking. The chart above shows how total searches for bread recipes jumped 700% right as the US went into social distancing in early March. Interestingly, this increase is almost identical to the 800% jump in breadmaker sales that happened at the same time.

The search for comfort has also been well-documented. That embrace of more carb-centric food has meant a significant drop in vegan and vegetarian diets, where searches dropped 82% by the week after social distancing had been announced.

And it wasn’t just plant-forward diets that took a hit during coronavirus, as Keto-centric recipes saw a 70% drop in the searches in the same time period.

The big question is will all of these forced changes brought on by the jarring impact of a forced quarantine stick around? My guess is some of the behavior change will have some staying power beyond summer as consumers adjust to lower overall incomes and continue to cook at home more as they head back to work (even at reduced or moderated schedules), but that we will see (and already are seeing) some partial snap-backs to behaviors and routines that were in place before the quarantine.

I Attended a Techstars Virtual Demo Day and It Was Actually Pretty Good

One of the hardest parts for me personally about COVID-19 has been watching my son lose a big part of a senior year in high school. Daily zoom lectures are no replacement for the camaraderie and celebration of wrapping up twelve years of a primary school education, and the cancellation of graduation ceremonies is a particularly difficult pill to swallow for young adults and their families who’ve waited a lifetime to cheer the receiving of a diploma.

I imagine those participating in startup accelerators may be experiencing a similar feeling. While it may not be the same as replacing the culmination of twelve years of primary education, the 12 or so weeks spent in an accelerator are intense and life-changing for all involved and, like with my son’s high school, many of those days and the final “graduation” have been swapped out for virtual facsimiles.

Which is why I decided to attend the recent BSH Appliances/Techstars Future Home Demo Day. I’d had the chance to attend the “graduation” of the first cohort of this same accelerator in person a year ago in Munich, so I figured I’d have the proper context to see how this virtual demo day compared to the real thing.

The accelerator cohort spent the first six weeks together in Munich, but the decision was made in mid-March to send everyone home and conduct the rest of the accelerator time virtually, including this final virtual demo day. Last year, each of the 10 groups of founders packed into a Munich movie theater and, over the course of the next couple hours, gave polished pitches about their companies as friends, mentors and potential investors cheered them on.

Curie London cofounder Dan Tang describes her startup via Zoom

This year, the event was held via (you guessed it) Zoom, where an initial kick off with comments from the accelerator organizers, and from there each founder would give a quick description of their company. The fuller pitches, the ones that essentially replaced the ones given at demo day in Munich, were pre-recorded so they would, as BSH’s accelerator organizer Tibor Kramer explained, “avoid any issues with streaming.”

The inital kickoff in Zoom was pretty fun. Despite presenting from their own homes virtually, I could sense the founders and the accelerator organizers participating really were happy to see each other and they all cheered each other on and fondly called each other by their nicknames when each took over and gave a brief intro to their company.

At last year’s event, many in the audience held a glass of wine or a beer in hand as they cheered along the founders from their seats. This year, many of the founders and accelerator participants cheered each other along with a celebratory beer or glass of wine as they sat in front of their computers.

Attendees file into a Munich movie theater for the Future Home 2019 Demo Day

After the demo day kickoff, attendees were encouraged to spend the next hour watching the pre-recorded pitches and then drop into private web video chats with each founder team to ask questions and congratulate them. BSH invited me to drop into a few of these meetings and ask questions so I did.

In total, I dropped in to meet four of the founder teams individually and each one seemed excited about graduating and the future despite the obvious differences in today’s landscape. Some admitted that there were definitely some challenges with going virtual, with a couple pointing to the time zone differences as the biggest struggle for them as they tried to participate remotely during Munich business hours from places as far-flung as Bangalore.

“One big change was time zone management,” said Saakshi Jain, cofounder of Zelish a kitchen and meal planning app startup. “We are in a very different time zone that everyone else and it was very late for us.”

Another big difference was the loss of some of the exchanges that are only possible in-person.

“When you’re there with the other founders you really build this strength with the cohort that is hard to replicate in a virtual setting,” said Mihai Hogea, cofounder of Pepper, a voice-powered nutrition & diet management startup. Hogea gave an example of how the accelerator organizers took his cofounder (and brother) Andrei to some Munich brewhouses to celebrate his 30th birthday.

Overall, however, I found my first accelerator virtual demo day enjoyable and pretty informative. I was able to spend more time with each founder I wanted to chat with and felt I found out more about their companies than I would have in an in-person setting, in part because I was able to ask them questions and take some notes on my computer which, it goes without saying, would have been somewhat awkward in-person at a Munich movie theater.

For the founders, I think they also found it enjoyable, but I still think they would have preferred to be drinking beer in Munich. All of them told me the first six weeks spent in person really allowed them to bond and helped make the final half of the accelerator more productive and enjoyable, despite being virtual.

For future accelerators, I imagine the same success will depend somewhat on how much in-person time the cohort gets. And, hopefully next year, the third cohort of this accelerator will be able to get together in Munich and pitch their companies in a dark Munich movie theater.

Attention Nana and Pop-Pop: Facebook Portal Adds Recipe App SideChef

Over the past few years, the Amazon Echo Show has become extremely popular as a smart assistant for the kitchen, allowing consumers to quickly access recipes, watch videos, and connect to smart devices.

The Facebook Portal, on the other hand, has largely languished since its release in late 2018 as consumers resisted adding a video-enabled device to their homes from a company that has proven an unreliable steward of their privacy.

However, with the arrival of COVID-19, it seems like the Portal may finally be getting a little traction from its most reliable demographic (seniors) as many of the homebound silver-haired set looks for ways to connect with family during quarantine-times. And now, they can get in on some of that cooking action, too, as Portal added the SideChef smart recipe app to its store last week.

From the SideChef announcement:

SideChef’s signature “smart recipe” format ensures a seamless cooking experience for home cooks of all skill levels with its easy-to-follow guided video recipes, which has been adapted to also fit the screen size for Portal devices.

While the cooking guidance on a kitchen screen is a nice feature to have, I suspect it may be the integration with AmazonFresh that might be a bigger selling point for seniors. My own 70-something mom started using online grocery for the first time during the pandemic, and I’m sure she’d love to add items to her shopping list and order while working in the kitchen.

While the Portal does have Alexa built-in, I’m not sure if the Portal’s Alexa integration connects to Amazon’s delivery service via SideChef (SideChef does work with Alexa on native Amazon devices). If that is the case, it might just the recipe to sell my own Alexa-loving mom on putting a Portal in the kitchen.

For SideChef, Facebook is yet another partner in a long list of integrations for the guided cooking and smart kitchen app over the past few years including Samsung’s Bixby, Amazon Fresh (as mentioned), and GE/Haier to name a few.

According to SideChef, the app is available now for the Portal Mini, Portal, and Portal+.

Amazon to Make Food Network Kitchen’s Video Cooking Classes Free on Fire Devices

If you’ve been stuck in a quarantine meal rut and want to learn how to cook something fresh and exciting, Amazon has some good news for you. Variety reports Amazon announced today that it is giving Food Network Kitchen to all Fire TV and Fire Tablet users in the U.S..

Launched last fall, Food Network Kitchen features live and on-demand cooking classes from its roster of celebrity chefs including Bobby Flay, Rachel Ray and Guy Fieri. A subscription to the service normally runs $4.99 a month or $39.99 a year.

If you’re among the more than 40 million active Fire TV or Tablet users however, Amazon is footing that bill — for a year, anyway. The e-commerce behemoth is paying Discovery, which owns Food Network, for all the subscriptions.

Food Network Kitchen has more than 2,300 on-demand cooking classes, but had to halt production of its live offerings because of the COVID-19 outbreak. Variety writes that the live shows will return at the beginning of May, though they will be shot in the home kitchens of its celebrity chefs, rather than in a studio.

In addition to cooking content, Food Network Kitchen also has shoppable recipes for an e-commerce component and will be launching a meal planning feature soon. Ingredients for meals can be purchased directly through the app via Amazon Fresh, Peapod or Instacart. Though given how sheltering in place has caused a national surge in grocery e-commerce (Amazon now waitlists new Fresh customers and Instacart is adding another 250,000 of its shoppers to keep up with demand), this feature may not be useful to consumers until things settle out.

One curious bit about today’s news is that reports only mention that the deal covers Fire TV and Fire Tablet users. Food Network Kitchen is also available on Amazon’s Alexa devices that feature a screen, like the Echo Show. Are those devices not included? We reached out to Discover to find out more. UPDATE: A Discovery rep told us that the offer will be extended to Echo Show customers later this year.

A Food Network exec told Variety that its app has been downloaded more than 5 million times since launch, and that both viewtime and subscriptions are up 50 percent each during this coronavirus lockdown. Free access to Food Network’s celebrity chefs combined with Amazon’s massive promotional capabilities should be a huge shot in the arm for the service.

If Discovery wanted to make even more of an impact, it would fast track a show about making bread.

From Arduino to TinkerCAD, a DIY Checklist to Help You (Yes, You!) Build the Next Great Kitchen Gadget

There is something liberating about being forced to shelter in place. I mean, there is a lot of stress that goes along with it too, but there’s no pressure to go out and enjoy the world or socialize when neither of which are allowed.

All of which is to say that if you’ve ever had a great idea for a business, now could be the time to start on it. And if you’ve ever had a great idea for a kitchen gadget (or any piece of hardware, really), then you should definitely check out the “Building The Future Kitchen: Rapid Prototyping Your Way to A Next-Generation Kitchen Product” virtual fireside chat we held this week with Seattle Food Geek, Scott Heimendinger and Larry Jordan Jr.

Seriously, watch the video because not only will it inspire you, but Heimendinger and Jordan also provide super practical advice, highlighting low and no-cost tools available to any budding inventor. Best of all, as the two point out, you don’t need a computer science degree to do it.

Here’s a brief checklist of the tools and materials they talk about that could help you prototype the next amazing kitchen device:

  • Arduino‘s cheap micro controllers, buttons and sensors easily add functionality to your device
  • Raspberry Pi‘s simple single board computers and accompanying “HATs” for computer capabilities
  • TinkerCAD is a browser-based hardware design tool that lets you drag-and-drop pre-made starter circuits, design housings, and download code to run Arduinos
  • EasyEDA is another browser-based design tool to help you design more complex printed circuit boards that you can even have fabricated and shipped to you
  • Shapeways is an online 3D printing service because you shouldn’t buy a 3D printer right away, especially when you don’t know what materials your device will need (plastic vs. aluminum, etc.)
  • The LoRa communication protocol is good for intra-device communication without the need to add WiFi components
  • The Things Network provides tools to create an Internet of Things application
  • Access to a CNC machine to create housing for your hardware
  • If you do want to learn how to code, Jordan likes Python for his devices and there are lots of resources online to help you learn it

Again, watch the full video for more context and information, plus, you get to see the cool things Heimendinger and Jordan are working on (a texture analyzer and big-ass connected meat smoker, respectively).

Building The Future Kitchen: Rapid Prototyping Your Way to A Next-Generation Kitchen Product

And this virtual fireside chat is just the beginning for us. The Spoon is hosting three more talks over the next month:

All of these talks are free to watch, so register for them today and follow us on CrowdCast to catch up on all virtual events we hold in the future.

Sourd.io is the High-Tech Sourdough Starter Monitor All of Us Newbie Bakers Could Use

I think my sourdough starter is on life support. I’ve discarded it, fed it, proofed it, but it still seems… anemic. I think? I dunno, like so many other trapped at home, this is my first sourdough starter so I’m kind flying blind. But maybe I don’t have to, thanks to a high-tech gizmo put together by Christine Sunu (hat tip to The Verge).

Yesteray, Sunu published a pair of posts on the Twilio (where she works) blog about a DIY device she created to check in on your sourdough starter. Dubbed Sourd.io, the device is basically a cap that fits on top of your starter jar and monitors the temperature, humidity, and rise level of your sourdough so you know when it needs to be fed.

But we’re sorry to say that this solution is not for the technological faint of heart. The instructions involve setting up a Twilio Developer Kit for Narrowband IoT (which also means you can only use it in the US), the Arduino IDE, and the use of a 3D printer. But hey, since you’re stuck at home learning new skills, why not add building electronics to your repertoire?

While there are countless awful things about this pandemic, one bright spot has been the resourcefulness of people in coming up with innovative solutions to everyday problems. Last week Adrien Hertel released a free, downloadable JavaScript program that alerts you when delivery slots at Amazon and Whole Foods open up.

If you’ve come across other DIY solutions to quarantine-induced issues, drop us a line and let us know!

Join Us and Seattle Food Geek for a Free Virtual Workshop on Building Next-Gen Kitchen Tech

Back when I learned Scott Heimendinger (aka the Seattle Food Geek) was leaving Modernist Cuisine, I immediately wondered what he was going to build next. After all, Scott is the guy who basically invented the consumer sous vide circulator, arguably the biggest kitchen cooking creation the last decade outside of the Instant Pot.

While Scott plans to keep much of what he’s building under wraps for the time being, that won’t stop me from trying to pry as much info as I can from him next week when he welcomes us into his home workshop to show off how he thinks about and prototypes next-generation kitchen technology.

We’ll also be joined by Larry Jordan, a long-time chef and kitchen tech maker who is known for bringing crazy cool ideas like a connected salumi maker to life.

If you’d like to join us for an interactive conversation and get a peek at both Scott and Larry’s workshops as well as into how they innovate and prototype and innovate new kitchen tech, you’ll want to join us next Tuesday April 21st for our live interactive event, Building The Future Kitchen: Rapid Prototyping Your Way to A Next-Generation Kitchen Product.

Come armed with questions and ideas for Scott and Larry to react to because we’re going to set aside plenty of time to take them. And who knows, maybe you can tease a secret or two out of Scott or Larry about their next big idea.

Sign up today!

As It Auctions Assets and Lays Off Employees, It Appears Time May Have Run Out for PicoBrew

When I headed down to PicoBrew headquarters near the University of Washington in early February to talk to Bill Mitchell about his company’s recent entry into receivership, I had already heard of the fast-moving virus that had emerged out of the Wuhan area of China called coronavirus.

And still, despite the fact I was also aware that the first documented person in the US to contract COVID-19 was recovering just miles away from where we met that day, I had no idea just how much the virus would change our lives within the span of just a few weeks.

Fortunately for me, I didn’t have to find a buyer for my company. Mitchell, on the other hand, wasn’t so lucky. He had a company to sell, something I imagine in normal circumstances is probably pretty challenging. Add in a global pandemic, and it’s a task that seems practically impossible.

So now that it’s a couple months later and business has pretty much ground to a halt everywhere, I’ve been wondering just how far Mitchell and PicoBrew had gotten. While the company had announced it had shut down production and fulfillment facilities in the Seattle area due to COVID-19, there’s been no outward signs of an outcome for the company’s financial situation.

Unless, of course, you consider the curious development of one online auction for “surplus equipment no longer needed” by one PicoBrew, a sign of something potentially bigger.

While the auction describes what is up for bid as “surplus equipment”, many of the items look like equipment the company would need to operate their PicoPak production facility. For those of you not familiar with PicoBrew, PicoPaks are the ingredient pods needed to make beer with one of the company’s home beer brewing appliances and, at least originally, a core part of the company’s monetization business plan.

Some of the things included in the auction include two large industrial conveyors, a large industrial ingredient filler, four forklift machines (four!), and a bunch of other industrial gear. Throw in a bunch of actual products that PicoBrew sells to consumers like the Pico beer brewing appliances (over 100 of those), 200 or so PicoPaks and 150 brewing kegs and it looks like a liquidation.

The auction is not the only canary in the coal mine. Starting late last month, the company started to lay off key employees. Annie Johnnson, PicoBrew’s master brewer since the company’s early days, announced on Tuesday evening via Facebook that she had been abruptly laid off.

So what do auctions and abrupt layoffs mean for PicoBrew? While I can’t say with certainty the company is shutting down or just shuttering the PicoPak ingredient business, neither sign seems very encouraging.

I emailed Mitchell to ask about the auction and he responded saying he can’t comment on the record. Not a surprise, since ‘no comment’ seems like something an executive participating in a court-monitored receivership process should say.

So I guess we’ll have to wait and see whether PicoBrew has found a new strategic buyer or the lender has seized control of the company and is selling off parts (or shutting it down altogether). When we talked in February, Mitchell indicated that the lender had no intention at the time of shutting PicoBrew down. At the very least, the auction and departure of Johnson (who helps make the recipes for the PicoPaks) tells me there is a good chance they are getting out of the consumables business or, worse, the lender had a change of heart.

I suspect we should know soon. As for now though, if you own a PicoBrew and want to stock up on PicoPaks, you could always bid on them.

Spark Grill Launches Pre-Order Waitlist, Promises Gas Style Precision with Charcoal

I’m not a huge barbecuer, at least not enough to weigh in on any debate between gas and charcoal fired grills. But you know that gas gives you precise temperature control, charcoal gives you that added depth of flavor.

Well the Spark promises to marry the best of both of those worlds with its new eponymous grill, which was made available for pre-order last week. The stylish grill ditches the lumps of briquets for a single, flat charcoal “Briq,” and uses a series of stoking and cooling fans for precision temperature control.

The Spark is capable of getting temperatures between a low 200 degrees all the way up to a ripping hot 900 degrees. The grill also has an accompanying mobile app that lets you monitor the temperatures of your cooking cavity and the food you’re cooking.

But you can’t get your hands on one just yet. According to its website, you can only get on the waitlist to be notified when it does go on pre-sale (before the general public) some time in May of this year. The Spark will “start” at $799, though we don’t know exactly what that does and doesn’t include.

If it works as promised (and that’s a big if), that price point isn’t too bad. The (excellent) Traeger WiFire connected wood pellet smoker grill is $799, and the connected Weber Smokefire wood pellet grill (powered by the June OS) starts at $999.

BBQ season is just around the corner, and there are more connected grilling options than ever. The only question remaining is whether people will be able to connect in person for cookouts, or have to remain socially distant.

Starship Robots Deliver Food Over Social Distances at Bowling Green

There is probably some grim metaphor in the fact that while people across the US shelter in place to avoid human contact, robots continue to roll out, making deliveries, unaware of the pandemic that surrounds them.

Ever since this outbreak started, we at The Spoon have wondered why autonomous delivery robots aren’t being used more often, especially in cities. As grocery and restaurant deliveries surge, robots could remove at least one human from the delivery equation (and they are a lot easier to scrub down after each use).

Turns out that Bowling Green State University is still using Starship robots for food delivery on campus, according to the Sentinel-Tribune. At least Jon Zachrich, Bowling Green State University Dining Director of Marketing and Communications, thinks that’s a good thing in these end times.

“I personally think it’s a good opportunity for social distancing, just because your only interaction is going to be with the actual robot, once it comes from our facility,” Zachrich told the Sentinel-Tribune.

He also spilled some factoids that I, as someone who follows the robot space, found interesting. The surface of the robot is non-porous, so it’s easy to clean. Zachrich also outlined some of the sanitizing protocols for the robot, saying that each robot is wiped down with disinfectant and anti-bacterial cleaners after each use.

On a more general interest note, Zachrich also gave us a glimpse as to how many orders the robots were running at Bowling Green before the pandemic. The robots debuted on campus on Feb. 20 and “Orders were quickly maxed out at over 750 per day,” the Sentinel-Tribune writes. Each of those came with $1.99 Starship delivery fee if you want to do the math on revenue generation.

That number has obviously dropped off as Bowling Green, like so many other colleges, has shifted to distance learning. Most restaurants on campus have closed, but the restaurants are still delivering to essential staff on campus and students who remained because they don’t have any other place to go.

This outbreak doesn’t seem to be subsiding anytime soon, especially in this country. With social distancing becoming the new norm, at least for the foreseeable future, perhaps more places will be like Bowling Green and get their own robots rolling across the social distance gap.