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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Connected Kitchen

Spinn Extracts $20M from Investors for its Connected Coffee Machine and Marketplace

Spinn, the makers of the connected coffee machine that uses centrifugal force when making a morning cup of joe, has raised $20 million in new funding. TechCrunch was first to report the news this morning, writing that the new round was led by Spark Capital with participation from Amazon’s Alexa Fund, Bar 9 Ventures and other existing investors. This brings the total amount raised by Spinn to $37 million.

The Spinn is perhaps best known for its looooooong journey to market. Spoon Founder Mike Wolf pre-ordered a Spinn back in 2016, and after years of delays, Mike finally got his machine in July of last year. Based on the Spinn website, new machines can be pre-ordered for delivery this Fall, and cost between $479 and $779, depending the accessories included.

The hook with Spinn is that it uses centrifugal force to, well, spin the coffee grounds for extraction rather than pressing. The machine spins the grounds more slowly for regular coffee, and higher for espessso-based drinks. The result, according to the company, is a more nuanced and flavorful cup of coffee.

In addition to its hardware, Spinn also has an online marketplace selling more than 700 different types of whole beans. During an interview at our Food Tech Live event in 2020, Spinn CEO Roderick de Rode told us that when users order coffee from Spinn, they can scan the bag with their phone and precise extraction instructions are sent to the machine.

We actually haven’t seen a ton of coffee-related news so far this year. The similar superautomatic Terra Kaffe coffee machine raised $4 million in November of last year. And Trade raised $9 million for its online coffee marketplace last September.

De Rode told TechCrunch that his company will use the new funding to further develop its brewing technology and scale up production to fulfill outstanding orders for the machine.

Video: See Kitchen Robotics’ Beastro Ghost Kitchen Robot in Action

It’s one thing to write about food making robots — but it’s so much better when you can see food-making robots in action. Which is why it’s cool to see the video Kitchen Robotics released this week of its awesomely named Beastro robot making meals.

Kitchen Robotics is in the business of automating ghost kitchens with hardware and software tools. Beastro is its all-in-one standalone kiosk. Similar to RoboEatz, Gastronomous and Karakuri, the Beastro stores all the ingredients, then dispenses them into a bowl where they are mixed and heated into a meal. Beastro is approximately 12 ft. long by 6 ft. wide and 7 ft. tall, and weighs 1,790 lbs. It can make 45 dishes an hour including Italian and Asian cuisines, as well as soups, salads and more.

We got a glimpse at the Beastro just about a year ago with a teaser video, but that didn’t show the robot working with actual food. This time around you get to see Beastro’s robotic grippers holding the bowl, sliding it around as it adds ingredients, and using the spinning induction cooker to prepare the dish.

Beastro™ a Robotic Kitchen by Kitchen Robotics

Adding robots to a ghost kitchen can make a lot of sense. Robots can work odd (or all) hours, and churn out meals in minutes. They can also be tied in to ordering systems so meals can automatically (and algorithmically) be coordinated, cooked and queued based on when a delivery driver will arrive to pick up the food.

As such, we are starting to see robots creep into ghost kitchen operations. In February of this year, DoorDash acquired food robot company, Chowbotics. At the time of the acquisition, we wrote that DoorDash could use Chowbotics’ robots to assemble its own brand of fresh food for delivery from the DashMart convenience stores. This prediction seems to have borne out as earlier this month, HNGRY reported that DoorDash was indeed creating its own line of private label salad bowls and microwaveable meals with Chowbotics tech.

If DoorDash can make a go of its new robotics program, it’s probably safe to assume that other delivery services will follow suit. Gopuff, for instance, is adding ghost kitchens to its delivery network and has reportedly raised an additional billion dollars. That could buy a few Beastros, for sure.

Samsung Debuts the 6th Generation of its Family Hub Smart Fridge

Looking for a new smart fridge? Samsung’s got you covered and this time they’re bring Alexa with them.

Today the company announced the sixth generation of their flagship smart fridge, the Family Hub. The first of the big changes with the latest version of Family Hub is the addition of Amazon’s voice assistant Alexa. Samsung, which has long pushed its own voice assistant in Bixby, looks like it’s finally recognizing that the dust has settled in the voice assistant battle and Alexa is the dominant platform. That said, it looks like the company hasn’t given up on Bixby just yet, as it is giving users the choice of using Alexa or Bixby.

The other addition of what they are calling the SmartThings Cooking service. Many of the meal-planning features in the cooking service had been made available in the previous versions of the Family Hub, but in January at virtual CES the company had announced an expanded set of capabilities such as guided cooking and the ability to send cooking instructions to synced cooking appliances like the company’s Slide-In range. With the new upgrade, users of the Family Hub will be able to access all of these features from the Family Hub screen. The SmartThings Cooking service is powered by the Whisk platform.

If you’re a chicken lover, we’ve also got some good news in the Family Hub’s newest food shopping partner: Perdue Farms. In the announcement Samsung said they have added the chicken and premium meats-by-mail provider to their integration partner list.

You got to give Samsung credit: Despite early reviews mocking what some called a Frankenfridge, the company has stuck to its vision of building a smart fridge platform and updating it every year. Six generations in, one would assume that the Family Hub line of fridges is selling well, but the reality is we don’t know since the company doesn’t make sales numbers available. We can make some assumptions, though, based on looking at the number of reviews for SKUs like the 27″ French door edition, which is garnering enough reviews at Home Depot (1664 reviews) and Best Buy (433 reviews) that make it look as if it’s selling as well as other Samsung top models.

Owners of previous generation Family Hubs may be wondering if they will be able to get in on the Alexa and upgraded Smart Things cooking capabilities. According to a Samsung spokesperson, any Samsung Family Hub with generation 2 software or higher can be upgraded to generation 6 software.

The announcement didn’t say when the models will be in stores, but if the past rollouts of the Smart Hub are any indication, I’d expect them in stores this fall.

CookingPal’s Multo Now Available for Commercial Sale for $999

CookingPal announced today that its Multo multi-function countertop cooking device is now available for purchase.

Similar to a Thermomix, the Multo is a standalone unit capable of performing a number of different cooking related tasks. The Multo is a scale, it blends, kneads, cooks, steams, stirs and more. It’s comprised of two main parts, the actual hardware device and an accompanying tablet computer that guides the user through a recipe and controls the device.

CookingPal sent me a review unit to test out, and it’s a pretty slick device. The hardware is attractive, solidly built and easy to set up. The tablet offers up a number of recipes users can choose from, and once selected, it tells you how to prep your ingredients based on the number of servings you want and then walks you through each step of making that meal.

As you work your way through the recipe, the Multo acts like a scale, so you weigh ingredients as you add them, and turns on the necessary function needed at the time. So when I made mac-and-cheese, for example, after I added water and pasta (and secured the lid for safety), I would hit start on the tablet and the Multo would stir and heat the pasta for the proper amount of time. It also told me when to affix the steam tray to cook the chicken, and mixed the sauce ingredients. At each step of the way, I just tapped a button and the Multo would do its thing.

I also used the Multo to make almond milk, and knead bread dough. And while the bread required that I still proof the dough and cook it in an oven, the Multo lived up to its promise. I could do just about everything with the device itself — no extra pots or pans needed. Clean up was also easy as the mixing bowl comes apart easily for hand washing.

The Multo seems best suited for people who live in small spaces with less kitchen space. While the device takes up less room than a large microwave, it really can replace a number of different appliances that could take up precious counter and cabinet space (cooktop, blender, food processor, steamer, etc.). The Multo’s software is also, thankfully, easy to connect to WiFi and pair with the device, and the UI is straightforward enough to where you don’t get lost.

All that functionality doesn’t come cheap, however. The Multo sells for an MSRP of $999, and will come with 100 recipes built-in right out of the gate (5 recipes will be added each week). For those in the market for such a multi-function device, the Multo could be a multo bene purchase.

GE Profile Debuts Range Oven With Connected Pizza Oven Built In

Last Fourth of July, my neighbor invited me over to show off his new outdoor portable pizza oven. I was both impressed and a little bit envious as he dished up scorching hot, leopard-spotted pies in just minutes.

It wasn’t long before I wondered how I could get my own pizza oven, only without going outside to cook. I could go the Breville counterop route, but I wanted something built-in so I could pretend I was like like our friends over at Modernist Cuisine.

Turns out unless I wanted to spend ten thousand bucks or more, there weren’t any options. Until now. That’s because GE Profile has debuted a new range that has an integrated pizza oven built into the combo appliance for $3,499 called the Trattoria Pizza Oven.

The oven, which features a full pizza oven inside a dual oven range appliance, was the brain child of long-time Louisville-based GE Appliances’ engineer Eric Johnson. Johnson had seen how GE Appliances had created a purpose-built high-temperature pizza oven for its high-end Monogram brand and wondered if a pizza oven could be built into a conventional oven. He created a prototype and showed it to leaders who liked what they saw. As a result, the product was the first to be commercialized through the GE Profile Innovation Studio, which the company launched in February of this year.

While the Monogram pizza oven is a high-tech wonder in itself in with its ability to cook pizza in just a couple minutes without any extra ventilation, Johnson had to work within the confines of what could be done within a more traditional range. While the new pizza oven uses traditional range heating elements (which reaches 550 degrees, compared to the 1300 degrees in the Monogram oven), it has some extra features built in to cook a nice pie including an aluminum alloy cooking surface that heats quickly and maintains temperature, a built-in precision surface temperature sensor to monitor and adjust temperature, and a broil amplifier to distribute heating throughout the cooking chamber.

GE Appliances positions the Profile Innovation studio as a place where new product concepts are launched with an eye towards early adopters. Unlike FirstBuild, which is also located in Louisville, the Profile Innovation Studio seems less about crowdsourced product prototype concepts and more focused on building new appliance concepts for GE Profile that could be commercialized fairly rapidly in fairly small production runs.

You can watch the hero reel intro for in GE Profile’s video below.

GE Profile Trattoria Pizza Oven

Editor note: This article originally had the new product as GE. It has been changed to reflect this new product is from GE Appliances and the company’s Profile brand.

FirstBuild is Making a Smart Mushroom Fruiting Chamber for the Home

One of my wife and I’s inside jokes is the reason we fell in love was our mutual dislike of mushrooms. When we first met, we both thought most forms of fungi that crossed our plates were gross. A few gray hairs (on my head, not hers) and years of marriage later, we can both be adult enough nowadays to eat the occasional mushroom when offered, even if we both would still prefer to hold the mold.

That said, I have come to marvel at the power of fungi in recent years and am all for people (except me) eating more mushrooms, so I was excited when I saw that FirstBuild is working on taking its mushroom fruiting chamber from prototype to product.

You can catch a glimpse of the new Mella Smart Mushroom Fruiting Chamber in action below in the video from FirstBuild.

Introducing Mella: The Smart Mushroom Fruiting Chamber

With sensors for humidity and temperature monitoring, the ability to monitor the mushrooms via a web dashboard and email alerts, closed-loop humidity control with a small refillable water basin, and air filter with duel inlet fans, the appliance has all the bells and whistles to help the aspiring fungiculurist create a high-tech fruiting chamber on their kitchen countertop. Plus it looks cool. The fruiting chamber is surrounded by glass, which lets you check out the your growing fungi.

So why is FirstBuild creating a mushroom growing appliance? The main reason is probably because weird and interesting new appliance concepts are largely the reason the organization exists. FirstBuild, which became somewhat well known with product concepts like its precision cooking Paragon cooktop and Opal ice maker, essentially acts as a product innovation engine for GE Appliances. The group crowdsources new ideas, builds prototypes, and occasionally – like with the Opal – will take the prototypes to full production.

FirstBuild has a microfactory that can do small batch manufacturing, so oftentimes the group will make small one-off manufacturing runs of products like the Forge clear ice system. Other times, the product never gets out of prototype, like it looks like happened with the Arden in-home smoker (bummer) or the Saucemaster 3000.

The move into a grow system for mushrooms isn’t the only sign that FirstBuild has become home-grow curious since earlier this year the company prototyped a smart garden system. It’s also possibly a sign the innovation group is following its parent company’s lead in exploring home grow systems as part of a broader home appliance offering.

If you want to get in on the mushrooom farming fun, stay tuned. FirstBuild says the campaign (which we presume will be on Indieogo) is coming soon.

Verve Motion Hauls in $15M for its Exosuit, Which Ahold Delhaize Piloted

For workers who spend their days moving heavy things, the refrain “lift with your legs and not with your back,” could soon become “lift with your legs while wearing the high-tech exosuit.” Verve Motion, which makes just such an exosuit that assists people when picking up objects, has raised $15 million, TechCrunch was first to report today. This Series A round was led by Construct Capital with participation from existing investors, such as Founder Collective, Pillar VC, Safar Partners and OUP.

Verve Motion’s SafeLift suit sounds like something straight out of a Marvel movie. From the product description on the company’s website:

The technology behind SafeLift has been developed at Harvard over the past decade, and is based on the latest advances in robotics, apparel design, and movement science. The suit applies assistance in parallel with the user’s muscles and responds to their movement in milliseconds. It combines state-of-the-art motion tracking technology with powerful robotic actuators and integrates it all into a lightweight and easily wearable device that doesn’t restrict normal activities.

As The Wall Street Journal reported last month, Verve Motion’s suit was piloted by Ahold Delhaize last year to help warehouse workers who assembled goods for retail outlets and e-commerce orders. The suit doesn’t grant superhuman strength like the power loader from Aliens. Instead, it reduces strain associated with doing the literal heavy lifting at work. Verve Motion says that the SafeLift can reduce strain by 30 percent when performing strenuous tasks, resulting in fewer injuries and lower fatigue rates.

The technology is still new and as the WSJ points out, exosuits like this should be studied for any long-term impacts on workers. But should exosuits prove to be a safe and effective way for workers to move boxes of groceries around in a fulfillment center, we could see increased adoption of the technology. Online grocery sales were $7 billion in May of this year, and e-commerce is expected to a be a pandemic-borne habit that sticks with consumers going forward. As a result, grocery retailers will need ways to fulfill all those orders. Some retailers are adopting robotic fulfillment solutions a la Ocado or Takeoff, but exosuits could prove to be another great fit as well.

Traeger Grills Acquires Connected Thermometer Company MEATER

Traeger Grills, best known for its wood-pellet grills, announced today that it has acquired wireless meat thermometer company MEATER. Terms of the deal were not disclosed, and according to the press announcement, MEATER will continue to operate as a standalone company within Traeger Grills and Joseph Cruz will continue as MEATER’s Chief Executive Officer.

MEATER, which came out of Apption Labs, makes wireless Bluetooth and WiFi connected thermometers ($69 – $269, depending on the model) and an accompanying mobile app to give users continuous monitoring and guided cooking instructions. Stick the MEATER into your protein, select the type of protein that you’re cooking and the thermometer gives you real-time tracking of internal and ambient temperatures. Once the food hits the target internal temperature, the MEATER app sends you an alert to pull your protein out of the heat and tells you how long to let it rest.

Traeger has its WiFIRE connected wood pellet grills also provides users with similar monitoring and target temperature functionality through a mobile app (and Apple Watch!). But unlike with MEATER, you can control the heat of the grill remotely to make adjustments to your cooking wherever you are in your home.

Despite similar features, it’s easy to see why the MEATER acquisition makes sense for Traeger. The MEATER software and user experience is more robust and visually appealing than Traeger’s homegrown app. And with MEATER, Traeger will now be able to expand its market beyond just those who own Traeger grills and beyond grilling season. Traeger can integrate its brand into the MEATER software and play a part in people cooking proteins on any type of grill, as well as their stoves and ovens when the weather turns cold.

Traeger acquiring MEATER can also been seen as a response to Weber buying smart oven maker June at the beginning of this year, as the two companies look to modernize in this connected era. The first line of June-integrated Weber grills announced in February of this year featured real-time temperature monitoring and guidance both on a grill display and on a mobile app. It’s not hard to imagine that future versions of Weber/June grills will feature the ability to automatically or remotely control cooking temperatures as well.

In other words, with both of these acquisitions, next summer will be definitely be hot for new, smart grills.

Botrista Raises $10M Series A for Its DrinkBot Automated Drink Dispenser

Botrista, the company behind the commercial DrinkBot automated beverage dispenser, announced today that it has raised $10 million in Series A funding. The round was led by Purestone Capital and La Kaffa International with participation from Sony Innovation Fund, Middleby Corporation and PIDC. This brings the total amount of funding raised by Botrista to $16 million.

Meant for restaurants an other foodservice companies, the DrinkBot is a cloud-connected automated drink maker, dispensing mocktails, infused teas and lattes, iced coffees, lemonades and more without the need for a full bar. Drinks are ordered via an on-board touchscreen, so the experience is contactless, and they are mixed and served in less than 20 seconds.

Botrista is taking a vertically integrated approach as it comes to market. The company provides the hardware for free, charging a monthly maintenance fee and selling the drink ingredients, which as of last year were $1.40 – $1.90 per drink. DrinkBots connect to the Botrista CloudBar for drink recipes, automated inventory management, as well as sales and menu performance analytics.

In a press release sent to The Spoon, Botrista said it experienced 10x growth year-over-year, which isn’t that hard to believe. The pandemic is driving demand for more contactless food and beverage preparation, as well as the need for takeout and delivery-related tech. The Botrista can churn out drinks continuously, quickly and at the touch of a button — perfect for high volume establishments like ghost kitchens and restaurants with high off-premises volume.

Automated mocktail and juice dispensing is becoming a hot little sub-sector of the food and beverage robotic space. Over in Switzerland, Smyze’s robot baristas also make a bevy of juice beverages. And last year, SomaBar, which makes a countertop drink dispenser, pivoted away from Soju-based cocktails to have its machine create juices, teas and regular mixed drinks.

It’s worth noting that both Sony and Middleby participated in Botrista’s latest funding. Last year Sony set up an artificial intelligence unit to work on both recipe creation and robotics. It’s easy to see how DrinkBot’s combination of data and automation fits in with that endeavor. And Middleby, a giant in foodservice automation, could open up a large network of customers for Botrista.

Botrista said it will use its new funding to scale up deployment operations to roll out DrinkBot nationally.

Recipe Sharing App Whisk an Early Test Partner for TikTok’s New Jump Program

This week TikTok officially launched its Jump program, a new feature which allows third party apps to integrate with the hugely popular social video app. The new integration allows someone watching a TikTok video to click on a button to access features of apps directly from inside TikTok

Recipe sharing app Whisk is an early integration partner with TikTok, which makes sense since cooking is one of TikTok’s most popular genres. The partnership, which Techcrunch wrote about in February, started as part of an “alpha testing” trial with a small group of TikTok creators that Whisk helped identify. With today’s announcement, the feature is being rolled out to wider group of creators (though not all). TikTok said it will roll out the feature more widely after some testing.

The TikTok-Whisk integration, which you can see in action above, works like this: TikTok users who are watching a cooking video can tap a Save to Whisk button that will allow them to view the recipe in Whisk. Users can also add the recipe to a collection or a meal plan, or have the recipe converted to a shopping list they could have delivered via one of Whisk’s grocery delivery partners (e.g., Walmart, Instacart).

For Whisk’s part, the integration is a no-brainer and could be a huge source of potential traffic for the recipe app. Whisk, which is now part of Samsung, was already growing pretty quickly; connecting its app with TikTok’s hugely popular cooking content will only accelerate that growth.

Looking forward, chances are other food and recipe apps will follow Whisk’s lead as TikTok opens up its program more widely for integration. Social media is where many consumers look for their next meal idea, and the social video app has become a viral recipe kingmaker. With Jump, recipe app makers now can monetize that viral interest in baked feta pasta by converting social video watchers to customers through shoppable recipes.

Loch Electronics Launches Kickstarter Campaign for Its Handy Countertop Dishwasher

Depending on where you live, getting a dishwasher isn’t a given, hence the growing market for tiny dishwashers (like Tetra) that can live on a countertop and are also well-suited to smaller households.

The latest comes from Scottish consumer electronics startup Loch Electronics, which today launched a campaign for its Capsule dishwasher on Kickstarter. The project has already far exceeded its pledged goal of $99,254. As of this writing, more than 650 backers have pledged over $270,000. Which just goes to show you, there are still a lot of folks out there in need of dishwashers. 

Loch bills the Capsule as an “all-in-one solution.” First and foremost, the machine functions as a mini-dishwasher that, according to the company, can wash two meals worth of dishes in 15 minutes. The 22-pound device is meant to fit neatly on the average kitchen countertop and not take up too much space. It has a mode for washing fruits and veggies, and a UV light feature that be used to disinfect non-kitchen items, such as a phone case, keys, or a wallet.

Users can either plumb the Capsule into their kitchen or simply place the device near the sink, where it will drain when the wash cycle is finished. The device is also extremely portable — in theory, you could even take it camping if you really wanted to.

Those that pledge £283 (about $402 USD) will get a Capsule unit with all its accompanying accessories. The price tag is about 33 percent off what Capsule will retail for when it eventually hits the market. Those wanting more than one machine can pledge either £488 ($692) for two or £707 ($1,000) for three.

Capsule is expected to ship in February 2022 to anywhere in the world. 

CookingPal’s Multi-Function Home Meal Making Appliance, Multo, Now on Pre-Sale

CookingPal today announced the pre-sale of Multo, the multi-function, autonomous connected countertop cooking appliance, ahead of its commercial availability in July of 2021.

The Multo debuted as a concept back at CES 2020, only then it was called Julia. (Perhaps the name was changed to avoid confusion with the other autonomous countertop cooking robots from Nymble Labs, also dubbed Julia.) With today’s announcement, the Multo has gone from concept to a product you can order pre-order starting today.

There are two parts to the Multo: the appliance base, which weighs, chops, kneads, mixes, cooks and steams food until a meal is ready. But the Multo also comes with a companion Smart Kitchen Hub tablet. The tablet lets users browse recipes and watch guided cooking videos. The Smart Kitchen Hub also talks with and controls the base.

For instance, if the recipe calls for sauteing butter for five minutes, the tablet would say “add 4 tbsp of butter.” After the user adds the butter into the cooking bowl, they would tap a button on the screen and the cooking device would heat and stir the butter for five minutes. Once completed, the Hub would then show the the recipe’s next step. The Hub also features a big jog wheel, so dirty hands don’t smudge up the screen when accessing controls. Much of the functionality can also be performed through CookingPal’s mobile app (iOS only).

The easiest comparison to the Multo is the multi-function Thermomix TM6 cooking device, though the touchscreen on the Thermomix is built in and not separate. There’s also a price difference: The TM6 costs $1,499, while the early bird price on the Multo is $799. (The company did not say what regular pricing will be.)

CookingPal sent us a Multo review unit to try so, so we’ll be putting it through its paces over the next few weeks and will provide a full review. We’ve posted the Multo’s specs down below and those interested in pre-ordering the device can do so via CookingPal’s website.

MULTO COOKING BASE

Design

  • 17.3×12.2x 14.5inches/440x 310 x 370 mm)
  • Stainless steelbowl that has a 3.1QT / 3 L capacity.
  • All-in-one base with scale up to 175 oz / 3 kgs, accurate to 0.25 oz / 5g
  • Powerful motor with 10 speeds up to 5,200 RPM
  • Heating unit that cooks up to 265 °F/ 130 °C.

Connectivity

  • Wi-Fi: 802.11 b/g/n 2.4g
  • Bluetooth BT 4.2

Cleaning and Care

  • Multo’s bowl is dishwasher safe or can self-clean simply by adding dish soap and water to the bowl and setting it to clean mode.

SMART KITCHEN HUB

Design

8.9”touch screen tablet with jog dial and portable stand

Durable features to withstand tough kitchen environments.

Connectivity

  • Wi-Fi: 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac 2.4/5g
  • Bluetooth BT 4.2