Close Ad

The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Next-Gen Cooking

Combustion Acquires Recipe App Crouton

Combustion, the smart thermometer startup founded by ChefSteps cofounder Chris Young, has acquired popular recipe app Crouton.

Crouton, developed by New Zealand-based software engineer Devin Davies, is a highly rated app that lets users organize all their recipes in one place. After launch, Crouton soon began gaining traction and critical attention (Apple awarded the app its 2024 Design Award for Interaction). Like many independent developers who experience success, Davies soon found himself having to manage the business side of running a startup—something he realized wasn’t aligned with his strengths.

“One thing I’ve come to realise about myself over the last wee while, is that what I care about most is designing interfaces that make it as easy as possible to get things done. User experience and what not,” wrote Davies in a blog post announcing the acquisition. “I’m not an entrepreneur or keen business leader. Stepping into full time indie and really trying to steer the ship highlighted to me just how much that jazz isn’t me. I actually really enjoy being just a part of the puzzle, not the whole puzzle.”

Davies had discovered Combustion’s open-source developer tools and had integrated the thermometer with Crouton. That work caught the attention of Young and the Combustion team.

“A year or so earlier, I had added support to Crouton to quickly set up the thermometer and also display its information as a Live Activity alongside your recipe. I jumped at the opportunity to collaborate and spent a few weeks working with Combustion to bring Live Activity support to their app like I had with Crouton.”

Before long, Young and Davies realized it made sense to join forces.

For Young, it’s clear that moves he’s made since starting Combustion – including acquiring Crouton – are based on insights he learned the hard way after building ChefSteps. At his previous company, Young spent millions of dollars creating expensive media-rich recipes for the ChefSteps website and the Joule sous vide app, only to eventually realize most consumers preferred finding recipes on the open web. With Crouton now in the fold, Young’s is now letting organic consumer usage behavior guide his product rather than trying to force behavior change on the consumer.

Young also learned his lesson with the ChefSteps Joule, where any software integration required resource-draining custom work. From the get-go with Combustion, he opened up access to the device’s real-time Bluetooth, which allowed developers, like Davies, to build cool software experiences around the Combustion thermometer.

Post-acquisition, Crouton will remain a standalone site, and Davies will lead both the development of Crouton and the Combustion app. For Davies, it seems like the perfect fit.

“So what is changing? Well, kind of nothing. I’m still very dedicated to Crouton and its future just got a lot brighter! I’ll still be the lead developer but now Crouton is backed by a whole team. A team with a deep knowledge of cooking and technology, that will help Crouton do even more! “

Smart Tea Infuser Teforia Comes Back From the Dead Seven Years After Shutting Down

When it comes to zombies, you never know when they’ll spring back to life.

As we learned this past month, the same goes for zombie products. Teforia, the eponymous smart tea infuser that vanished when the company abruptly shut down in the fall of 2017, is back after nearly a decade. A New Jersey-based tea company named Adagio Teas has apparently acquired the assets and is now selling Teforia tea infusers on its website.

In its announcement, Adagio referenced the financial problems that led to Teforia’s closure but mistakenly got the timeline wrong. The release states that Teforia originally launched in 2018, when it actually shut down the year before:

“Originally launched in 2018 to widespread acclaim, Teforia was discontinued due to financial constraints, leaving a devoted community of tea drinkers longing for its return. Now, Adagio Teas is bringing this beloved innovation back, combining cutting-edge technology with the artistry of fine tea.”

“We recognized the deep passion that tea drinkers had for Teforia and its ability to elevate the tea experience,” said Michael Cramer, CEO of Adagio Teas. “As a company dedicated to providing the highest-quality loose-leaf teas, we saw an incredible opportunity to bring Teforia back and reintroduce a smarter, more intuitive way to enjoy tea.”

At the time of its original release, Teforia attracted attention because its creators claimed it could personalize each brew with precise amounts of caffeine, antioxidants, and other elements. Additionally, the hardware had a distinctive and appealing design that stood out in the tea world.

Unfortunately, the product never gained widespread popularity, likely due to its initial $1,500 price tag. While the newly re-released version is significantly more affordable at $500, many potential buyers might still question why they would invest in what remains a premium-priced tea brewer, especially when established brands like Breville offer comparable “smart” tea brewers for roughly half that price.

I’m curious to see if Teforia can succeed on its second attempt. The tea and technology landscape in 2025 is vastly different from a decade ago, with many tech-powered tea infusers available. However, backed by a reputable tea company, perhaps Teforia stands a better chance this time around.

FirstBuild’s Latest Funky Kitchen Gadget is a Device Which Feeds & Manages Your Sourdough Starter

In a world where many kitchen appliance brands have downsized or eliminated their innovation arms, FirstBuild, the device innovation and incubation for GE Appliances, is generating (and building) more ideas than ever.

The group, which celebrated its 10th anniversary last year, has developed 104 products and features, with 37 making their way into the GE Appliances portfolio. Along the way, it has raised over $5.2 million through crowdfunding and built a community of 245,000 builders who submit ideas, vote on projects, and occasionally back them financially.

Unlike traditional corporate R&D departments, FirstBuild invites its community of makers, engineers, and consumers to contribute ideas and test prototypes in its 35,000-square-foot makerspace at the University of Louisville. This approach has led to some viral hits, including the Opal Nugget Ice Maker, which launched on Indiegogo and raised $2.8 million before a prototype was even completed. FirstBuild was also the birthplace of the Arden indoor smoker, a CES 2024 hit that is rapidly gaining a fanbase in the grilling community.

Sourdough Sidekick - Design Reveal (UPDATE)

FirstBuild’s latest project is designed for home bakers who love sourdough but don’t want the hassle of maintaining a starter. Currently in prototype stage, the Sourdough Sidekick automates the feeding process, ensuring the starter stays healthy and ready without the daily commitment. While traditional methods require constant attention, FirstBuild claims the Sidekick can sustain a starter for up to seven days, adapting to the home baker’s schedule. The device features a built-in flour hopper, water tank, and a smart dispensing system that measures and delivers the right amounts to keep the starter thriving. It will also monitor ambient kitchen conditions, making adjustments as needed to optimize fermentation.

Of course, FirstBuild’s Sidekick isn’t the first smart sourdough manager on the market. Fred Benenson, former head of data for Kickstarter, created Breadwinner during the pandemic, a smart sourdough monitoring device that tracks a starter’s growth and notifies bakers when it reaches peak activity, ensuring optimal baking times. Priced at $50, Breadwinner features real-time monitoring and smart notifications, allowing bakers to receive alerts via email, pop-ups, or SMS.

The Sidekick, in contrast, is more of a full-fledged automated feeder and management appliance, offering a more hands-off approach. Given its more advanced functionality, it’s likely to come at a significantly higher price than Breadwinner’s affordable $50 price tag.

While the sourdough craze of the pandemic has certainly cooled, my guess is there are still far more home bakers today than there were five years ago and there’s a good chance rising food prices may even spark a new wave of would-be bread bakers looking to make fresh loaves at home. If that’s the case, FirstBuild’s Sourdough Sidekick could arrive at just the right time to offer enthusiasts an easy way to feed both their baking obsession and their hungry starters.

Sam Calisch Thinks Your Next Stove Should Have a Battery

After earning a PhD from MIT, Sam Calisch spent much of the past decade advocating for electrification and shaping climate policy as a lobbyist. His efforts included helping start Rewiring America, an organization focused on electrifying homes, businesses, and communities, as well as co-writing Electrify, a book about electrification, and a series called Circuit Breakers on the same topic.

But his work as a lobbyist revealed gaps in the market. “We were at a point where we no longer need huge, science project-type ideas,” Sam said. “What we need now are products that help deploy the amazing technologies we already have—solar, wind, batteries—faster and cheaper.”

This realization led him to explore creating a company to address those gaps. In 2020, he co-founded Copper, a company with a mission to transform how we cook and power our homes, starting with its flagship product: an induction stove with a built-in battery.

According to Sam, Copper was born to address a key adoption barrier: the high cost of electrical upgrades required for induction stoves. “People were spending more on rewiring their homes than on the stove itself,” Sam explained in an interview with The Spoon. His solution—a battery-integrated induction stove—allows users to plug into existing outlets, eliminating the need for costly electrical work.

But the battery wasn’t just a workaround—Sam believes it makes for a superior stove. “When you put a battery in a stove, it makes it a much better stove,” he said. “It’s silent, thanks to DC induction, and has enough power to preheat the oven in just four or five minutes. You can cook faster and more precisely than ever before.”

After securing a Department of Energy grant and venture funding, Sam and his co-founders began developing an early prototype. The first versions, however, weren’t exactly polished. “The first one I built, I lovingly call the shopping cart,” Sam said. “It was a set of rolling wire shelves with the components strapped on. I was so proud of it, but when I sent pictures to some folks in the industry, they couldn’t quite see the vision.”

Since then, Copper has come a long way. The company now assembles its stoves in California and primarily sells them in New York and California, with plans to expand. “We’re scaling manufacturing and doing deliveries every day,” Sam said. “It’s inspiring to see people switch to our product and love cooking on it.”

Beyond cooking, Copper’s stoves could play a larger role in energy management. The built-in battery allows users to store renewable energy and use it during peak times, reducing reliance on the grid. “It’s a powerful tool,” Sam explained. “You can charge the battery with solar power during the day and cook with it at night. It’s about giving people agency over how and when they use energy.”

Looking ahead, Copper plans to launch more appliances that bridge the gap between sustainability and performance. “Look around your house—especially at the appliances that use gas today,” Sam said. “We’ve got exciting projects in the works.”

For Sam Calisch, Copper isn’t just about selling stoves—it’s about transforming how people think about electrification. “We want to make switching easy and show the best versions of what’s possible,” he said.

You can listen to my full conversation with Sam by clicking the podcast player below, on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Brava’s Latest Update Enables Blind and Low-Vision Users to Cook Independently With The Light-Powered Oven

This week, Brava, a company that makes countertop consumer appliances that cook with light, has announced the launch of the first major update to the software since 2021.

The biggest change announced is the ability to fully access and control the Brava through the app. Unlike previous versions, which required some interaction with the Brava’s touchscreen, users can now manage ingredient selection, doneness, and recipe instructions entirely through the Brava app, reducing reliance on the oven’s interface. This update is particularly impactful for those with physical limitations, allowing them to enjoy the Brava’s convenience and precision with ease.

While full app control of an appliance is something some folks make like (and others may hate), what’s neat about this update is that Brava chose to also enable new features that make the Brava more accessible to individuals who are blind or have low-vision.

As can be seen in the video below, the key advancement hear is the Brava app works with screen readers, which are digital assistants that work with apps that allow those that are blind or have low vision to navigate.

“Screen readers so it changes the behavior of your touchscreen device, “said Fernando Macias, Access Technology Specialist at San Francisco Lighthouse for the Blind and Visually Impaired. “So that everything you touch on the screen, (the screen reader) will read out loud, and that is what enables us to navigate, especially if you’re a blind or have have low vision.” Brava worked with San Francisco Lighthouse to enable the screen reader features.

In addition to greater accessibility features for low-vision users and full control of the appliance via the app, the updated software provides users with more granular info on light intensity and duration parameters that drive each recipe, empowering them to modify or create recipes with greater insight.

Long-time Spoon readers may recall that The Spoon was the first press org to get a look at the Brava back in 2018. Just over a year after the Brava was introduced to the work, Middleby acquired the company. Interestingly, Brava’s founding team (Thomas Cheng, Daniel Yue, and John Pleasants) are all still with the company five years after the acquisition, a sign that Middleby continues to invest and show interest in the platform.

A First Look at Roku Shoku, Sony’s Culinary Recording System to Capture and Replicate Chefs’ Recipes

This past week in Japan, Sony unveiled a project they’ve been developing in secret called Roku Shoku, a culinary recording system designed to capture exactly how a chef prepares a meal. The system also serves as a guidance tool, helping casual or inexperienced cooks create dishes with the precision of an expert with years of training.

Sony has been working on this project, which stands for “Record” (Roku) and “Cooking” (Shoku), for the past five years. Last week, the entertainment and consumer electronics giant held the first-ever press demonstration of the recording studio for The Spoon team.

“We have a recording studio here in Tokyo,” said Tomoko Nomoto, Project Leader for Roku Shoku. “We invite Michelin-starred chefs, or even grandmothers, to the studio and ask them to cook with our system. We then record their culinary data, including temperature, steam levels, and the entire cooking process.”

The project is led by a Sony R&D team out of Tokyo and is separate from research in the area of gastronomy that has taken place at Sony’s AI Research division Sony AI (the formal Gastronomy program announced in 2020 has been sunsetted, but Sony continues to work on gastronomy-related projects). Since launching the Tokyo recording studio in 2021, the team has captured thousands of recipes across a range of cuisines, including Japanese, Chinese, French, Italian, and Thai.

The Roku Shoku system features induction cooktops with temperature sensors, scales to monitor and weigh ingredients, cameras to capture a chef’s movements, and an off-the-shelf game controller made by Steam to control the setup.

Nomoto shared that users can replicate meals precisely as chefs cook them, a claim I tested myself. You can watch me trying it in the video below.

First Ever Look at Sony's Roku Shoku Culinary Recording System

According to Nomoto, the goal is to use Roku Shoku both to document recipes for restaurants and food service locations and to preserve culinary creations for future use.

“The first step will be to work with restaurants that want to share a consistent experience worldwide or recreate dishes that are no longer available, like when a chef passes away or retires,” said Nomoto.

Spoon readers might recall Cloudchef, another system that records chef creations. Nomoto explained a key difference: Sony plans for Roku Shoku to enable only human chefs to recreate these meals, while Cloudchef eventually aims to use robots for meal replication. Currently, both systems are focused solely on human use (see Spoon’s Tiffany McClurg using the Cloudchef system here).

The company has launched a website where you can find out more and request a demo.

SCHOTT Debuts New Ceramic Cooktop Glass That Can Double as Full Color Video Display

Tired of boring black-glass cooktops?

How about a cooktop that provides video cooking guides, color images, and more? That’s the idea behind SCHOTT’s new CERAN Luminoir TFT (thin film transistor) display.

At last week’s IFA conference in Germany, SCHOTT announced a new TFT display technology that enabled a full-color touch screen to display high-fidelity video and images. This is a big deal for cooktop manufacturers, who, alongside their customers, typically embrace the sleek black aesthetics of glass-ceramic surfaces. However, using any integrated display would normally mean sacrificing the dark black display associated with high-end ceramic cooktops, as black glass tends to absorb light, making display integration challenging.

However, SCHOTT says they solved this issue by optimizing light and color transmission through the glass-ceramic substrate, enabling the integration of high-resolution TFT displays while maintaining a deep black appearance when the display is off. This allows for the “dead front” effect, which keeps the cooking surface looking clean and like a typical high-end cooktop when not in use, but enabling a multicolor display when activated.

You can see the SCHOTT CERAN Luminoir TFT on display in the video below:

SCHOTT CERAN Luminoir® TFT - “Ready for undiscovered possibilities?”

Could this mean the cooktop surface itself has entered that chat as the preferred video display in the kitchen? Maybe, but it’s early. Over the past decade, various appliance and system manufacturers have jockeyed to position their preferred platform as the primary video display of choice in the kitchen. There was Amazon with its digital assistants, GE Appliances with its video-enabled built-in microwave oven, and Samsung pushing its Family Hub fridge with its large digital displays in the door. However, no one has really pushed the cooktop, mostly because the dark-black ceramic surfaces did not make for very good digital displays.

At least until now. We’ll keep an eye on this space to see if any cooktop makers move to integrate this technology and push their ceramic cooktops to become multimedia hubs. At the very least, expect some appliance brands to use this technology to offer visually rich touch-screen user interfaces, and most likely some of these will be on display by this time next year at IFA.

IFA Smart Kitchen Roundup: Appliance Brands Try to Tap Into AI Zeitgeist With AI-Powered Food Recognition

This weekend at IFA, several big appliance brands used the show to tell the world that they are all in on AI, mainly through the integration of cameras into their ovens paired with software to enable personalized recipes and customized shopping lists.

Siemens showed off the iQ 700 oven has a built-in camera that recognizes over 80 different dishes and automatically adjusts to the ideal cooking settings. This feature allows users to place food, like a frozen pizza, in the oven and hit start for optimized cooking. The updated model offers more food recognition capabilities than previous versions and includes an optional steam function to achieve a crispy crust on baked goods.

Hisense debuted the Hi9 Series Oven, equipped with AI-powered InCamera technology for intelligent baking with over 140 pre-programmed recipes. The company also introduced a smart fridge in the Hisense Refrigerator PureFlat Smart Series, and its description sounds like they’ve been taking cues from Samsung and the Family Hub. The company described the fridge as “a home appliance control center” that “allows you to adjust temperature settings remotely through the ConnectLife app.”. The fridge also has AI-powered inventory tracking, though the company was light on details about how the tracking feature works.

Beko also let everyone know that they are trying to jam AI into as many things as possible, including their ovens. Like with HiSense and Siemens, they pointed to camera-assisted cooking in their ovens. From the release: “Beko brings AI-assisted camera technology to its Smart Home ovens, delivering a self-improving cooking experience for optimal results in the kitchen whatever the dish. With food recognition and cooking suggestions across more than 30 different food types, the new Beko Autonomous Cooking technology uses AI to finish cooking according to personalized browning levels.”

Ovens with cameras and food recognition aren’t exactly new, as we’ve been seeing this feature for the better part of a decade since June (RIP) debuted the technology. The appliance industry often displays a herd mentality, and clearly, the herd feels they’ve got to show off their AI chops, even if the technology is somewhat pedestrian at this point.

Electrolux Debuts Taste Assist AI on AEG Line

Not every new AI-feature introduction at IFA was tied to integrated cameras and image recognition. Electrolux introduced its AI Taste Assist feature on its AEG line of kitchen appliances. According to the announcement, AI Taste Assist will take recipes from the Internet, import them, and send cooking instructions to the oven, but not before it recommends ways to enhance and optimize the cook. In a demo on-stage by Electrolux at IFA, the company emphasized how the new feature was meant to overcome what they called the “cooking gap”, which they described as the limitations of existing recipes and the enhanced capabilities of modern cooking equipment. The feature that Electrolux primarily promoted to bridge this gap was steam cooking, a feature that was injected into a lasagna recipe in an on-stage demo of the Taste Assist feature by Christopher Duncan, Electrolux’s SVP of Taste for Europe.

One notable absence at Electrolux’s IFA new conference was GRO, the next-generation modular kitchen concept the company announced in June of 2022. All indications are that the Swedish appliance brand has not made any progress in commercializing GRO, probably partly due to the company’s struggles over the past couple of years. The company laid off approximately three thousand employees last year, and earlier this year, it saw the departure of its longtime CEO, Jonas Samuelson, as the company continued to struggle post-pandemic and in the fast of increased competition from Asian appliance brands.

SideChef Unveils AI Feature in App That Creates Step-by-Step Recipes From Photos of Food

SideChef recently introduced RecipeGen AI, a new beta feature that generates step-by-step recipes from a photo of any dish. Users can upload pictures of meals from restaurants or social media, and the app will provide a shoppable recipe based on the image.

From the release: “We are living in exciting times, where every inspiration can become a person’s reality,” says SideChef Founder & CEO, Kevin Yu. “At SideChef we’re excited to be the first to use AI to allow any home cook to make their food inspiration a reality for themselves and loved ones, with a single photo!

CNET writer Amanda Smith gave the app a test drive and came away with mixed feelings. While the app successfully identified many ingredients, it missed key components in some cases, such as sourdough focaccia and strawberry butter. It also occasionally added ingredients that weren’t in the dish, like bell peppers, leaving Smith feeling the accuracy was somewhat hit or miss.

Smith’s takeaway: Succes “depends on the recipe. It has a hard time with nuance and, like other AI tools, tends to make it up if it’s unsure. It’s a handy little app that could be used to inspire new ideas and ingredient concoctions or if you’re in a restaurant and don’t want to bother the waiter with dish details.”

Samsung Food Also Debuts AI-Powered Shopping Lists From Photos

SideChef isn’t the only smart kitchen company debuting photo-to-recipes/shopping lists powered by AI in their apps. At IFA last week, Samsung announced new AI-powered meal planning and food management features. The Vision AI feature now allows users to add ingredients to their Food List by simply taking a photo with their smartphone, expanding beyond the previous limitations of Samsung’s Family Hub smart fridge. This list can be used to suggest recipes, prioritize items nearing expiration, and automatically update after meals are cooked or ingredients are purchased.

Additionally, the company announced a new premium tier called Samsung Food+, a $7/month subscription service offers personalized weekly meal plans, tailored to users’ nutritional goals and dietary preferences, and tracks macronutrients and caloric intake. This premium tier also integrates more advanced AI functionality, allowing users to customize recipes and receive a full week of meal recommendations, helping reduce food waste and simplify grocery shopping by making the app a central hub for food management and meal preparation.

Midea Debuts First Countertop Appliances to Use Ki Wireless Power Standard

Seven years after the Wireless Power Consortium first started working on a standard for countertop kitchen appliances, Midea announced the first product that works with the Ki standard. According to a story in The Verge, Midea announced its Celestial Flex Series of products, which includes a blender, steamer, and kettle, at the IFA show in Berlin.

Midea, one of China’s largest appliance brands, hasn’t said when its Ki lineup will ship, pricing, or regions to which it will ship. It also has not indicated if they are working on a Ki-compliant cooktop, (though it wouldn’t matter much to customers since any Ki-compliant cooktop should work). However, they did announce a new all-in-one built-in oven called the Midea One that has a built-in air fryer and automated multi-step cooking function capabilities.

The announcement of the first products is a big milestone for any standard, and Ki is no exception. And while it’s good to see a major manufacturer commit to the standard, the better part of a decade is a pretty long time for a standard to finally make it to market, which is probably why—as we reported earlier this year—some companies have taken it upon themselves to build wireless power products that don’t use the standard.

It will be interesting to watch if Cloen or others who have attempted to build non-Ki-based wireless power kitchen products will now begin to embrace Ki. My guess is they will since proprietary technologies are an uphill battle, particularly when trying to convince retailers to jump on board.

Initial Ki products with integrated transmission coils are expected to be indication cooktops, but in the long term, WPC expects the technology to be installed under the counter on quartz, granite, and marble countertops.

A Decade Before The ChatGPT Recipe Craze, a Cooking Show Champ Helped IBM Train Chef Watson

By now, most everyone has tried their hand at prompt engineering ChatGPT or another LLM to create a decent recipe.

But a decade and a half ago, well before the current craze of making recipes with generative AI, IBM was trying to figure out how to make Watson start cooking. The supercomputer-powered AI, which was probably the first real-world AI most of us knew by name, had just broken into the broader American consciousness after it had beaten human players Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter in a Jeopardy tournament. Now, IBM was looking for ways to showcase how the technology could help people be more creative, and they identified cooking and recipes as the next world to conquer.

Around this time, the Watson team teamed up with the Institute of Culinary Education (ICE) to help train Watson. James Briscione, who had won Chopped season 2 a couple of years before and was the ICE’s director of culinary research, remembers those early days when IBM computer scientists filed into his kitchen.

“The first day we set up, the Watson team came to the kitchens at ICE, walked in with a laptop, flipped it open, logged into an interface that IBM was hosting, and we started parsing datasets.”

This meant going through and looking at ingredient combinations based on cuisine style, dish type, and flavor profiles of different dishes, as well as breaking down each type of ingredient into the various flavor and aromatic compounds into building blocks, which allowed Watson to then process millions of flavor combinations and recommend them to ICE chefs. During the process, the Watson team made sure the human chefs remained as ana integral and necessary part of the AI feedback loop.

“For the majority of the project, it did not give us recipes, it gave us ingredient combinations,” said Briscione. “And then I did the work then to translate that into the recipe.”

Briscione said taking Watson’s combination suggestions and combining them into a recipe helped unlock the creativity of him and the other chefs.

“As a sort of a thought experiment, it was even more interesting because then we could take an ingredient output, I would take it and interpret that ingredient output one way. Another chef could take that exact same ingredient output and interpret it completely differently. So in inspiring creativity, it was really, really powerful.”

Nowadays, Briscione is applying what he’s learned to build a new company that helps train large language models to better understand food. He will discuss this new company at the Smart Kitchen Summit next week.

You can watch the entire interview and see the transcript below. .

The Chef Who Helped Build Chef Watson: A Conversation With James Briscione

Transcript

Michael Wolf: I’m excited to have James Briscione who is a chef I’ve been following for a while. James, you do so many things. You’re an author. You’re a Food Network personality. And you’re one of those rare chefs that have been dabbling with AI longer than pretty much most people even working with AI at all. So it’s exciting to have you. Thanks for coming.

James Briscione Yeah, Michael. Excited to chat here excited about SKS coming up in June. This will be a great event and can’t wait to get there.

Michael Wolf Yeah, we’re going to hear you on stage talking about your experiences and what you’re looking forward to with the integration of AI. But for those who don’t know you, tell us a little bit about your background and what you’ve done over your career.

James Briscione As you said, I’m a chef first. I started as a dishwasher at the age of 16, worked my way up to some of the top kitchens in the country. James Beard award winning kitchens that I was at the helm of. Four Star Fine Dining in New York City. Kind of did it all. With that really elevated fine dining background, I moved into education at the Institute of Culinary Education in Manhattan and really was in the right place at the right time when IBM came knocking and said, ‘we’ve got this crazy idea. We’ve got this thing called Watson, that just conquered Jeopardy. And now we want to see if it can help people. We know it can answer questions. We want to see if it can help people be more creative.’

And they thought about music, they thought about visual arts, but you know, felt those were too subjective and culinary arts was a very objective area for this. So when they came to meet with us, they met with all the instructors, kind of talked about the process of development and creating dishes, and how you work as a chef. Having just been the first two-time champion on the show Chopped on the Food Network, the way I sort of process and put together flavors and ingredients was exactly what they were trying to build with Watson. So that started about a four-year relationship working with the core team there at IBM to develop Chef Watson, which I now know was recipe generative AI. Almost 11 years ago, before we started building it, I had no idea what those words even meant. And AI was only something you saw in Will Smith movies.

Michael Wolf So those early days, you’re helping with Watson. Are they bringing you into a kitchen at IBM headquarters? What does that exactly mean? Are they monitoring you with cameras, or are you saying, ‘hey, these are what flavors are trying to tell a computer what a flavor is?’

James Briscione First, as we talked about it, I was still in that Chopped competition mode. So I was like, ‘if I’m going to cook against this computer, I’m going to kick its ass. I’m actually going to prove that this thing can’t do it better than a human. The first day we set up, they came to the kitchens at ICE (the Institute of Culinary Education), walked in with a laptop, flipped it open, logged into an interface that IBM was, was hosting, and we started parsing datasets and going through and generating ingredient combinations based on a number of different factors based on cuisine style. so original cuisine, a type of dish and, and, and a core ingredient to inform, the flavor profile of, of the dish. So we’d say Italian grilled lobster. And then it would generate trillions of possible ingredient combinations that could be used to create a dish that were typical Italian ingredients that kind of fit in with what it knew about a grilled lobster recipe or a grilling recipe and a lobster recipe overlay. And then use that lobster to as kind of the core flavor profile to then build sort of that flavor tree off of that core ingredient, which that process, that’s how I tend to think about creating a dish, but getting down to the molecular level, understanding all of the aromatic compounds in the food, how those flavors relate to one another, why they go well together. I never looked at information that way or understood it in that form. And it was mind blowing to process tens of thousands of aromatic compounds in every dish, just like that.

Michael Wolf So it was essentially building, I don’t know if the right word is ontology, but kind of trying to dissect food at a more atomic level and then understanding what the commonalities are. You know, saying ‘lobster often goes in these types of dishes’ or ‘Hey, maybe it works with these types of dishes.’ So really trying to create the data building blocks so Watson can then say, hey, here’s a unique flavor idea, recipe idea you may not have thought of with your small human brain.

James Briscione Exactly. And, you know, for the majority of the project, it did not give us recipes. It gave us ingredient combinations. And then like, you know, it was kind of, I did the work then to translate that into the recipe. But as sort of a thought experiment, it was even more interesting because then we could take an ingredient output, I would take it, and interpret that ingredient output one way. Another chef could take that exact same ingredient output and interpret it completely differently. So in inspiring creativity, it was really, really powerful. And actually, there were some cool examples of where we would take the same generation, go to separate sides of the kitchen, and come back in the middle with our finished dish. You couldn’t even tell that they started at the same place.

Michael Wolf You’ve watched over the past decade, this expansion of folks trying to use technology to understand the way we cook better. Those early days of watching Watson were pretty seminal and informative, and that was the first time I remember seeing articles, maybe in the New York Times, saying ‘Watson beat Jeopardy, now it’s trying to cook’. So as you’ve watched this evolve over the past decade, what have you been thinking about? And what have you learned maybe about AI and its intersection with food? Is it something now you’re more excited about than ever?

James Briscione 100% more excited than ever. I think the potential here to simplify, to streamline, which to me is kind of the ultimate promise of AI, to make our lives better, to organize and streamline. I think where obviously it gets tricky, is one, it’s new. So there’s going to be some inherent distrust of it. One bad recipe, one recipe that doesn’t work and people are going to bail on it as well.

Michael Wolf Right, right. We’ve all done those bad recipes with ChatGPT. Like that just sounds awful.

James Briscione Yeah, and you know, I mean, it’s going to be interesting to watch this landscape too now because the majority of what’s out there are just some, you know, some basic GPT wrappers. And if any of these copyright lawsuits get through, a lot of these datasets, these sources, start to dry up or become more restricted. So one thing I’m starting to work into is building a new dedicated model for recipe generation with nutrition and flavor inputs that really can optimize your food specifically for you. If you want to get down as far as the genome, I think that’s some functionality that is off in the future, but generally, as an active 44-year-old male who lives in a hot climate, AI can tell me exactly what I should be eating on a day-to-day basis to optimize me for what I do.

Michael Wolf That’s interesting. And I think the startup you’re working on is called CulinAI. And so that’s exactly it. And so is this something you’re building your own large language model or you’re building something that can integrate with maybe some of the other large language models? Tell us a little bit about it.

James Briscione Yeah, so, and I’m actually working with the original developer of Chef Watson. It’s kind of a hybrid model where we are going to be employing some large language models, but also some kind of dedicated pieces that would be unique to this model, particularly the flavor science and the nutrition data input. And then, really, kind of the secret sauce is in the selection because, again, we know that the large language models can generate lots of great things that look like good recipes, but training it to then go back through those and select out the ones that are actually right is where it all comes together.

Michael Wolf Well, I’m excited to hear more about that at Smart Kitchen Summit. You are someone who works in a professional kitchen. You’ve been on TV, won awards, you have your own restaurant. But there’s also the consumer, right? Someone who, like me, doesn’t know what they’re doing. And one of the reasons I got interested in the Smart Kitchen in the early days is because I thought that maybe technology can help me become a better cook. How do you think average everyday consumers who aren’t like you can use technology tools like AI to help them cook better?

James Briscione We talked about kind of one of the biggest benefits AI is to make our lives better, to simplify processes and personalization, right? And I think that’s really where it comes in to find the right information. Even just how to get your ingredients organized at the beginning of the week to set up for, hey, ‘here’s what I’m going to, here’s what I’m going to cook for the week’, building out a meal plan that utilizes all of the ingredients that you have so that you don’t, at the end of the week, have half a pint of cherry tomatoes, three quarters of a head of celery, two onions, and half a butternut squash. It’s all just sitting there because you bought it all because you had to have it for that recipe, and now it all is just kind of like laying to waste, and you leave it there until it’s time to finally throw it away. And I think some of those, I think a lot of those things are what discourage people or kind of keep people from cooking. So, AI tools that can teach you to approach that process the way I do as a chef of not just looking at, okay, here’s what I’m gonna do for dinner for Tuesday night, but okay, as I’m doing dinner for Tuesday night, here’s how we get lunch for Wednesday ready.

Michael Wolf Right, right.

James Briscione And another chunk of dinner for Thursday, all kind of set up and set aside so that that’s easier too. And I think a lot of those tools are some of the things we’re looking at building into CulinAI, and I think those are the pieces that I’m excited about.

Michael Wolf Well, I’m excited to hear you in Seattle in June at Smart Kitchen Summit. James, where can people find out more about you?

James Briscione Most social media platforms at James Briscione. That’s probably the best way to find me, LinkedIn, all of the typical places, just right under my name, I’m there. There’s not many Brisciones around, so.

Michael Wolf All right, man, we’ll see you in a bit. Yeah, there aren’t. That’s a great, unique name. All right, James, we’ll see you soon.

James Briscione All right.

Tovala’s Keeley Kabala: Success in Smart Kitchen Requires Listening to Your Customers

Back in 2016, an early-stage startup called Tovala appeared in just the second Smart Kitchen Summit Startup Showcase. Company CEO David Rabie showed off the first-gen oven and discussed the vision for a combination of a hardware appliance and a food subscription service.

Fast forward eight years later, and Tovala has become one of the true success stories in the smart kitchen, amassing a large and enthusiastic user base for its oven and an extremely high lock-in rate for its meal delivery service.

I caught up recently with Tovala’s COO, Keeley Kabala, to talk about Tovala’s business in 2024 and where he sees his company and food delivery going over the next decade.

One of the key takeaways for me was that Tovala still focuses heavily on adding value for its customers through its oven, even if that means enabling users to take advantage of the multi-function cooking automation that is one of the key differentiators for the Tovala. The company sells two models of oven today – a five-in-one and a six-in-one – and as of today they have over one thousand CPG products in the database that they can run scan-to-cook where the oven will have an optimised set of cooking instructions that can bring the different forms of heat (and steam) into the cooking process.

According to Kabala, many of those CPG products are available at Costco.

“Right now we have dozens of Kirkland products that can scan to cook right from the beginning,” said Kabala. “So people many times are leaving the store with scannable items that have cook cycles already programmed in for their oven to use.”

Not only does Tovala have scan-to-cook for Costco’s Kirkland brand items, but it is also selling its oven in select Costco, which Kabala believes will give them more exposure to different customer types, which will give them new data points around which to build product around customer preferences.

It’s this listening to customers, says Kabala, the is critical for their future success.

“If we’re willing to listen to our customers, they’ll give you a chance to iterate.” said Kabala. “If you don’t listen, you might not be around forever. It’s been great to see just how vocal people are, too. They really care. So they don’t hold back on their feedback. We just have to make sure we keep listening.”

You can watch the interview below as well as read the transcript of the full conversation.

If you’d like to connect with Keeley in person, he will be at the Smart Kitchen Summit next week. You can get your tickets at the SKS website.

A Conversation with Tovala's Keeley Kabala

Michael Wolf: All right, I’m here with Keely Kabala, not Keely Tovala, because it sounds like some people get that mixed up because the name sounds so familiar.

Keeley Kabala: Yeah, it’s got the same last few letters, but yes, it was named before I got here. I didn’t choose the name of the company, but it’s led to confusion and many jokes along the way.

Michael Wolf: And I imagine one of those jokers is David Rabie, the cofounder and CEO of the company I’ve spoken with. He’s been at Smart Kitchen Summit to some of it, but we’re excited to have you come out to Seattle in June to talk about what you guys are doing at Tovala. Tovala is a really interesting company because they are one of the real success stories in this idea of like bringing new technology into the kitchen. And also you have this interesting pairing with a food delivery service. You guys have really been a shining star in that space, combining a food delivery service with the hardware. We’ll talk about that in a little bit, but before we jump into like what’s going on with Tovala, tell us a little bit about your background and how you got where you are.

Keeley Kabala: Sure. My whole professional career has kind of been in the consumer appliance space. Did my very first internships at Whirlpool and Fellows, making appliances and paper shredders. I went over to Whirlpool full-time and had a variety of different interesting and challenging assignments all over the world. I got to live in Europe for a year, in China for a year, launched products and dishwashers, refrigerators. And interestingly enough, David and Brian, the other co-founder of Tovala, asked me to be their first employee in 2015. I didn’t understand the concept of Tovala and turned them down. And they asked me again a few months later and again a few months later. And finally, after they launched the Kickstarter and it became a little bit more real, I ended up joining the team as the VP of Hardware Engineering. And so, at that time, they had the Gen 1 oven, which had a lot of pros but also had a lot of cons. And my job was to work with the team to create what was our second gen oven. And it’s kind of the base for the two SKUs that we have right now. So we developed that in 2017, 2018, and it launched November 2018 and kind of has been our bread and butter on the hardware side ever since. And then on the ops side, I joined the food ops team kind of in a support role in early 2019. We were trying to figure out, we had just opened our own food facility on the South side of Chicago. And I kind of came over just a little advisement type role for our COO at the time on cost and quality and kind of just took over OPS along the way. And then, you know, we really started to explode in the back half of 2019. And it’s been a wild ride throughout the pandemic and opening food facilities along the way. But yeah, that’s been my Tovala journey. Originally, I came for the hardware side, and now I spend most of my time on the food side, but both teams report to me.

Michael Wolf: And you have that engineering mindset, obviously, build products throughout your career. And I would imagine that an engineering mindset really helps as you try to optimize the food delivery side and the operation side.

Keeley Kabala: Yeah, yeah, I think we have a good team of engineers that bridge both the oven and the food side. I think that’s probably one of our competitive advantages compared to just maybe a meal kit company that doesn’t have the engineering firepower that we have, whether it’s on the hardware side, the ops engineering side or the software side. You know, some of our engineers have developed very sophisticated thermal modeling to make sure our food is safe. And also the packaging is as light as possible for customers, based on zip codes, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And getting to work with them has been a good challenge. I think there’s, you know, one of our unique advantages is having the control of the food because we produce the food, ship the food, and then have the kill step and the quality control in actually the customer’s house because we’re using our, you know, chef curated cook cycles to cook the food. So it’s a good engineering systems problem to solve.

Michael Wolf: The current hardware, which like you said, is the foundation of what you helped build. One of the core ideas that I’ve always found with Tovala is it has steam, which I think obviously makes the food a lot better. You know, steam ovens haven’t really become widely deployed in consumer kitchens in the US but I think it really does make food better. So talk about, you know, the feature set within the oven and why it works so well with the food you guys deliver.

Keeley Kabala: Yeah, we have a five-in-one and a six-in-one. The five in one has the bake, the broil, the air fry functionality, as well as toast and reheat. And then, on our six-in-one, we’ve added steam. So steam is just another cooking mode that allows to preserve moisture inside of some of the more delicate food items to reduce browning for other delicate food items. And actually in many ways can help accelerate the cook because you’re getting the cooking from the steam surface and the heat transfer going through the food. So, you know, we’ve gone into air frying. We were kind of, I think, a little late to getting into air frying. We were debating that for a long time on the differences between it and, you know, just bake, convection bake. But we launched the air fry model that has the two feet speed fan. It gets really great performance. And then, you know, our six-in-one has the steam functionality that does really great on some of the bread items. case ideas. It comes out really great. The salmon turns out perfect when it’s with steam and then hit with the broil at the end. I think the true advantage is the multi-step cooking where you’re able to change modes and temperatures. And that’s what most of our, you know, Tovala cycles do, whether it’s the scan to cook groceries or the Tovala meals, or some of our customers who really enjoy cooking at home, they create sophisticated cycles on their own. Some people just like to hit bake 400, 15 minutes all the time. Others get a little bit more creative. They have a ramp up with an air fry to get the high velocity airflow in the oven, hit it with bake, and then the broil at the end to get caramelization or whatever the case may be. But yeah, I think our true advantage is the multi-step cooking.

Michael Wolf: And that pairing of your food or even CPGs with the scan to cook with the ability to switch to different modes makes it fairly unique. I think most people just buy something at Costco, put it in the microwave, or put it in their air fryer, and hit go. But you have all these five to six different elements that you can combine. So each food has its own essentially recipe around the cook. Apply a certain amount of heat, you’re gonna finish with this, add some steam, and that’s optimized for each food that you deliver to the consumer.

Keeley Kabala: Yeah, exactly. And it’s also from a food safety standpoint. So it’s a balancing act that our food safety team and our culinary team constantly are trading off on. It’s a unique spot for us to have that, one, that additional kill step in the home. But actually, quality control is something that we actually have. How the food turns out when you cook it, we control that in the person’s house. Most other meal delivery companies, your end result is determined based on how good of a chef you are. And we extend one layer further where our oven is cooking the cook cycles the way our chefs intend at the test kitchen here at HQ. And they’ve gone through several rounds of testing. And the important thing is pairing the protein with the side. And so you can cook chicken a bunch of different ways, but whether it’s paired with mashed potatoes or a rice pilaf or green beans, how it gets to that food safe temperature is going to be different. And so our chefs have to balance that out. And so that’s why each recipe has a unique cook site.

Michael Wolf: And you do work with stuff that people can buy at the grocery store because you have scan to cook. That to me is really helpful. And I think that would be something that consumers more broadly would like if, hey, I could buy something at the store and my cooking device can be optimized around what the optimal cook mode is for that. Maybe that’s a combination of like the food brand working with the appliance maker, but that isn’t really available today beyond like what you guys are doing. Is this something you think maybe more widely available in a 10 year time frame. Maybe that’s with a Tovala or another appliance where essentially the cook and the different elements of the cook can be applied in a more precise manner based on what consumers are putting into their cooking box.

Keeley Kabala: I think for certain customers, that’s definitely the case and definitely a benefit, like not having to check, not having to preheat. I think that’s the other thing that’s like one of our main advantages is anything we’ve scanned to cook in a Tovala, whether it’s a Tovala meal or a CPG type item where you scan the UPC, you set and forget it, you cook it from ambient heat. And so we’ve calculated the preheat and how the oven warms up into the cook cycle. And so I do think that’s another thing. It brings the convenience factor. If you had to always preheat your oven, then remember to come back 10 minutes later, put it in. It’s just one more step that I don’t think customers need or want to do. It’s really a non-value step to them. So we try to eliminate those. And then not every item is going to work. Not every oven item is ovenable. It can’t be cooked with the heaters. Some companies have very delicate packaging. And we don’t want them to melt, so that’s why we don’t pick everything that can be from CPG or from the frozen aisle. But there’s a lot. There’s over 1,000 items at this point in our database. We continue to add to them based on customer’s demand. There’s definitely times of days where this functionality is used quite often. And certain items, whether it’s snacks or breakfasts, are very prevalent use cases for these.

Michael Wolf: So looking forward, I imagine you think a bit about what the Tovala cooking side could look like in a long-term time horizon. Do you guys think you’ll continue to evolve the cooking appliance? Maybe in 10 years, will it be whether it be more automation or different modes of heating? Or do you think consumers just want a basic what you have today and just a little bit of change over time?

Keeley Kabala: I think, I mean, the biggest thing for us right now is, you know, for the history of our company, we’ve always been direct to consumer. And so people are coming to us more with a food need first. And very recently we started in retail. We’re in Costco now with our oven. And so I think we’re getting feedback from our customers on different things they want. So I think it’s like, based on where the starting point of the customer comes in, they’re going to want different functionalities, different capabilities, similar to when we went from the gen one to the gen two oven. You know, the gen one oven didn’t have a bake button on the front of it. We thought everyone wanted the super smart appliance, only app usage, and we very quickly got feedback that we needed to make some tweaks. And so we brought the functionality still in the app, but also to the front of the oven. You know, the gen one had a larger footprint. We needed to change the footprint size. The kitchen counters are so valuable in everyone’s home. We needed to make sure we were optimizing every square inch. And so going into retail now, we’re getting feedback. We’re very early into it. Only been a few months with Costco, but we’re seeing that there’s different functionalities, different features, different use cases. And so I think there will definitely be some tweaks in the hardware and the overall experience in general.

Michael Wolf: That Costco relationship is really interesting to me because when I think of Costco, they obviously sell appliances, but I go there mainly for food. I usually get the same things. You guys combine the oven with a kind of consumable. Once people buy the oven through a Costco, can they then pick up the Tovala food at Costco or would only be delivered to you guys, to them?

Keeley Kabala: So right now we haven’t started any food in retail. That’s on a roadmap of things to consider. Right now we have dozens of Kirkland products that can scan to cook right from the beginning. So people many times are leaving the store with scannable items that have cook cycles already programmed in for their oven to use. But right now we only sell ovens at Costco. But I think once again, this is our advantage we have is we have the opportunity to go into the other side of the store and start getting some of our products there for quicker trials for customers who aren’t familiar yet as much with Tovala as a food product and only are learning about us first time more on the appliance side.

Michael Wolf: And that’s interesting that you guys have worked with Costco. So some of the food items available at Costco, you can scan to cook. So they’re probably excited about that.

Keeley Kabala: Yeah, they’re super excited about that. I mean, not only are they getting to move our ovens through their store, but it’ll help them move some of their other products as well. And it just kind of brings some from newness and kind of a tech advantage that Costco didn’t have previously on the food side.

Michael Wolf: What are you most excited about when you think about the Consumer Kitchen five years down the road, 10 years down the road? What excites you about that space?

Keeley Kabala: I mean, I think in general, a way to reduce waste. So whether it’s personalization and understanding what people want to eat so they make sure they don’t buy or order the wrong stuff that ends up being wasted or better understanding of inventory management. But I think in general, both food and energy waste are still major opportunities in the kitchen space. And so whether it’s how people get their food, how much food they get, when they get their food, what food they get, I think are all still major opportunities across our business and other businesses. And then, you know, I have a large oven in my home. I worked for a company that made very nice large ovens. I only use the large oven now on Thanksgiving. Like there’s a lot less energy usage by having the right appliance for the right job. And I think for what I need normally, you know, Tovala answers that. I think there’s a lot of other really smart, compact kitchen appliances. And so I think adoption is, I think, been interesting to see, not just us, but other companies as well, you know, gain adoption. And the one thing I’ve always shocked by is how willing people are to try new things in the kitchen and are willing to take on early stage innovation because they are really trying to optimize the food that they eat, their time, and their space in their kitchen. And so that’s why companies like us and many others have existed and continue to get a chance to iterate. If we’re willing to listen to our customers, they’ll give you a chance to iterate. If you don’t listen, you might not be around forever, but it’s been great to see just how vocal people are, too. They really care. So they don’t hold back on their feedback. We just got to make sure we keep listening.

Michael Wolf: Great closing words, Keely Kabala with Tovala. Thank you so much for spending time with me today.

Keeley Kabala: Yeah, have a great day.

Is The US Power Grid Prepared For The Transition To Induction Cooking?

In case you haven’t heard, electricity demand is shooting through the roof.

After more than two decades of flattened usage due to more efficient lightbulbs, appliances, and factories, the growing adoption of EVs and the explosion in new data centers for compute-intensive applications such as AI over the last few years has resulted in skyrocketing demand for electricity, according to a new report in the New York Times. In fact, forecasters estimate that peak demand in the summer will grow by 38,000 megawatts nationwide in the next five years, which is akin to adding another California to an already overburdened grid.

Above: Electricity Demand Over Time and Forecasted Demand. Source: New York Times

The Times report does a good job highlighting how EVs and higher usage air conditioning in homes are two of the biggest culprits for reversing the trend, but largely omits any discussion of another potential big driver of electricity usage in the future: induction cooking.

And from the looks of it, induction could significantly impact the overall electricity usage of a family home. While it’s more energy efficient in general, a household switching from gas to electric induction cooking will use more electricity. How much? According to some sources, an hour of induction cooking will use between 1.4 kW and 2 kW per day. That compares with about 2.5 kW per day in charging for the typical EV.

So, not quite as much as EV, but still enough to translate to a significant draw on the grid once we’re talking tens of millions of induction stoves. All of which begs the question, will the grid be ready?

It’s something that’s definitely on the mind of some in the appliance world. One appliance executive recently told me that grid readiness is one of the microenvironment variables they are factoring in when evaluating their own induction cooktop strategy. Add to that various local restrictions around gas cooking (and pushback against said restrictions), and the calculation as to how much they push electric appliances gets somewhat nuanced depending on a given market’s grid readiness and regulatory environment.

My own guess is that while we’re finally seeing induction making inroads in the US, the adoption isn’t moving at such a rate that it will make matters significantly worse than other factors, such as EV and data center growth. In fact, it’s because those other reasons have grabbed the attention of those responsible for forecasting and building out our electricity infrastructure that the industry will more than likely be ready for when we hit tens and even hundreds of millions of induction cooktops in homes.