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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Next-Gen Cooking

Scott Heimendinger Wants to Reinvent a Two Million Year Old Kitchen Tool by Making it Vibrate (Really Fast)

If you were to bet on what the oldest kitchen tool in existence is, you’d be smart to put your money on the knife. It’s not just centuries old but tens of thousands of centuries old, as humans have been using sharp objects to cut food for over two million years.

So when someone says they want to reinvent something that old, it’s natural to be skeptical. After all, what exactly can you do to a knife to make it better at what it does?

If you ask Scott Heimendinger, he’d tell you that adding ultrasonic technology to a knife can actually improve this ancient tool. Heimendinger, who previously founded a consumer sous vide startup in Sansaire, has been working on doing just that for more than half a decade, and today he announced that end result of all that work is now on sale and will ship early next year.

So what exactly is an ultrasonic knife? If you’re familiar with ultrasonic toothbrushes, it’s similar in that ultrasonic energy creates thousands of vibrations per second. In fact, according to the announcement, the knife (called the C-200) will vibrate 40 thousand times per second.

Given the time and energy invested, I asked Heimendinger if he was nervous about launching a new product despite being a startup veteran.

“Of course I’m nervous,” he said. “This is a thing I’ve been working on for nearly six years and it’s gonna see daylight for the first time ever. And I’m totally nervous. I have so much of my heart and soul poured into this thing and money and literal blood.”

Since it’s been more than a decade since his first product launch with Sansaire, I also asked him how the landscape for smart kitchen products has changed since then.

“In 2012 and 2013, the Modernist cooking movement was really sort of on an upward trajectory,” said Heimendinger. “Now, I think that the more prevalent movement in cooking, especially home cooking, is not more technology but less. It’s sort of a return to analog in a whole bunch of ways.”

If that’s the case, why add ultrasonic technology to a knife? According to Heimendinger, one of the truisms in the world of kitchen tools is that they must make a cook’s life easier, not harder. Smart kitchen tech, done poorly, just adds more steps. With his knife, those thousands of invisible vibrations per second help make cutting up to 50% easier.

“It was so important to me to design a product where all you have to do is touch a button,” said Heimendinger. “That’s it. There’s no phone pairing. There’s no Wi-Fi setup. There’s no anything. And you can use it when it’s off, as its also a really good analog knife.”

Still, even with the focus on simplicity of use, Heimendinger realizes the knife community can be skeptical, and not everyone will be ready to welcome something like an ultrasonic knife.

“The knife community can be dogmatic in certain ways,” he said. “I know that there’s going to be some people who think that (adding ultrasonic tech) is anathema to the sanctity of a pounded piece of sharp metal. But I hope that they’ll be able to see that I’m taking this quite seriously. And if we want to have a conversation about what actually makes cutting easier for home cooks, then there’s data to support this does just that.”

According to the announcement, the blade is made from Japanese AUS-10 san mai stainless steel that’s durable and corrosion-resistant. The button and grip are suitable for both right- and left-handed users, and the blade can be re-sharpened just like a traditional knife.

The product will retail for $399. Production of the first batch begins in November, and pre-orders open this week on seattleultrasonics.com, with deliveries expected in January 2026.

A Software Update Bricked Some Anova Precision Ovens. Anova’s Solution Involves Tin Foil and Tape

On July 28, some owners of the Anova Precision Oven woke up to bricked appliances. According to posts on Reddit and a Facebook group for the company’s high-tech combi-oven, customers reported “black screens of death” and non-responsive ovens after an overnight firmware update.

After a flood of inbound requests for support, the company acknowledged the problem in emails to affected customers: “We discovered an issue with a firmware update that may have affected your oven. On Monday, July 28th, we released a firmware update that caused roughly 145 ovens to fail – displaying only a black screen after startup. We caught this quickly and pulled the update but your oven may have been affected.”

Initially, the company said it would look for a fix, and offered customers a refund if they preferred not to wait.

One encouraging sign for Anova and its users was that the bricked ovens were still connecting to Wi-Fi, which meant there was a chance a new update could be pushed to fix the issue. However, finding a solution was complicated by the fact that the ovens went to sleep about 20 minutes after being powered on, while the firmware download and update process took roughly three hours. To make matters worse, that update window occurred in the middle of the night.

Anova’s customer support recognized that was problematic and not workable for pretty much anyone: “To recover your oven, we need to keep it awake for the full three hour overnight update window, between 1–4 AM in the local timezone where the oven is connected,” wrote the company in an update on their support site. “If staying up all night tapping the oven screen every 15 minutes sounds like nightmare fuel, we have devised an alternative method to keep your oven awake.”

That alternative? MacGyver-ing a fix with tin foil and tape. The company’s proposed solution provided step-by-step instructions showing the size of the tin foil “finger” and how to attach it to the screen to trick it into staying awake during the update process.

“In the morning, remove the foil, and tap the screen. If the oven UI does not display and the screen remains dark, unplug the oven and plug it in again. If the oven has updated overnight, you will see the standard boot sequence, and your oven UI will appear. Otherwise, try the process again.”

If the device still won’t update, Anova says it will work with customers to resolve the issue and, presumably, replace any ovens that remain bricked.

On one hand, 150 or so bricked ovens might not sound like a big deal. On the other hand, it kind of is, since no customer wants their product to have any kind of “screen of death.” To its credit, Anova appears to have acted quickly, containing the damage by recognizing the problem early and rolling out a fixed firmware update to unaffected units.

In the end, customers generally welcome updates that add extra functionality to their ovens. Waking up to discover your appliance can now, say, air fry or perform another new trick is great, just as long as the oven still works afterward (and the company doesn’t abruptly end support for the product).

Is Posha the Robotic Heir to the Thermomix? The Founders Sure Hope So

For the past five or so years, the emails have landed in my inbox on a steady basis, nearly every month. They’ve included updates on a small startup building a countertop cooking robot named Posha.

The emails, almost always written by the company’s CEO and co-founder, Raghav Gupta, detail progress, both big and small, ranging from software tweaks and field trial insights to news of an $8 million Series A funding round.

The progress has been slow but steady. And over the past year, the company has reached a milestone that most cooking robot startups (especially those targeting the home) haven’t come close to: they’re now building robots using scaled manufacturing, and those robots are arriving in customer homes.

Given that I’ve followed dozens of companies attempting this goal over the past decade, I figured I’d take Raghav up on his invite to see the robot in action and talk with him about what’s next.

So this past Sunday, I headed to an Airbnb Raghav had rented north of Seattle to demo the Posha robot for media and investors. Raghav asked if I wanted to cook a meal with Posha, and within minutes of arriving, the robot was preparing spaghetti Alfredo.

The machine stirred, heated, and timed each step with minimal interaction from me. Posha includes four ingredient containers, multiple spatulas, a spice carousel, and an induction cooktop. A camera watches over the food, analyzing “color, texture, consistency,” and, according to Raghav, provides “human chef-like intelligence.” Users load chopped ingredients, select a recipe, and let the device do the rest. “You just tell Posha you need that, and you walk away,” Raghav explained.

Posha, originally named Nymble (both the robot and the company), has changed significantly from its early days as a college project. “We were two people taking out of our parents’ garage trying to make a cooking robot.”

The first version was a robotic arm, but Raghav said customer feedback led them to pivot. “We had this choice of either repurposing our robotic arm for commercial kitchen use cases or changing our technology altogether to make something that consumers wanted. We chose the latter route because we were in love with the problem we were trying to solve.”

That problem: helping people figure out what to eat on a daily basis. “People like you and me want to eat freshly cooked meals and feed our families freshly cooked meals. But it’s hard to find the time to cook these meals every single day.” He believes this tradeoff, between eating well and having enough time, is what led to a national health crisis. “We are in the middle of a health catastrophe,” he said. “And I think with Posha, it will help America become one of the healthiest countries in the world, at the same time being one of the most productive countries in the world.”

Those are lofty goals, ones I’m pretty skeptical about given the high price tag of the Posha and the nearly non-existent adoption of cooking robots so far. But according to Raghav, he sees his product as a natural evolution of a device that has been quite successful, especially in Europe: the Thermomix.

“I think we have a strong precedent in terms of Thermomix. They sell like a million units every single year, and what Posha is, is actually Thermomix++.”

If there’s a model to aim for, the Thermomix is a good one, and I have to say, the ease with which I was able to make spaghetti Alfredo was reminiscent of the first time I used a Thermomix. In fact, it was essentially what Raghav described, the Thermomix++, in that it required me to do even less once I picked the recipe and hit go. From there, over the next 30 minutes, the Posha added ingredients and cooked the meal to completion.

It’s perhaps this ease of use and the similarity to Raghav’s professed North Star in the Thermomix that helped the company recently raise over $8 million in Series A funding. You’d have to be living under a rock, covered with more rocks, and then some dirt not to realize how hard it is for consumer hardware startups to raise money (let alone a robot cooking startup). The fact that Posha secured funding led by Accel is a sign they may be doing something others in this space haven’t.

So far, Posha has shipped 200 units, with 600 more expected by the end of September. “We’re trying to grow 3X every six months or so,” Raghav said. The product retails for $1,750, with pre-orders at $1,500.

If you’d like to see Posha in action, check out my cooking video below. Raghav will also be speaking about his journey at the Smart Kitchen Summit this week, so if you want to hear more and ask him questions, make sure to grab your ticket..

The Spoon Cooks a Meal with Posha the Home Cooking Robot

This Culinary Tech Inventor Thought He Could Build Some Parts For His Latest Gadget in the US. Then He Called Around.

When kitchen tech inventor Scott Heimendinger started prototyping his latest hardware product, he knew that much of it would need to be built overseas. Still, he was curious whether he could rely on local Seattle-based shops to produce some of the parts.

“I contacted local shops here in Seattle. There are a couple of machine and metalworking shops, and I thought, well, I would like to be a good customer, right? Like I’d love to spend money locally, especially on shops that are doing this kind of stuff.”

But when he called around, Scott quickly discovered that not only were the local shops going to be an order of magnitude more expensive, but they’d also take longer to deliver.

“I said, ‘look, I know this is going to be more expensive than what I’m doing in China, obviously, but maybe we can make this up on the time front.’ Before we even got into real pricing, we were already above 10X. So I said, ‘What about turnaround time?’ [They] said, well, it depends how busy we are, but like, you know, one to six weeks.’”

We’d started talking about the cost and complexity of building in the U.S. because we’d both recently listened to an episode of PJ Vogt’s Search Engine, in which Vogt interviewed YouTuber and engineer Destin Sandlin. Sandlin discussed his years-long effort to manufacture a product in America, and I wanted to get Scott’s take, especially since he’s been navigating the uncertainty caused by new tariffs. As it turned out, he had a lot to say.

One area he pointed to as a critical missing link was the shortage of tooling designers, the specialists who create the molds used to shape plastic parts.

“Tooling fabrication in principle is something that you could just do on a beefy CNC machine… In practice, no. It’s specialized techniques and tools. That knowledge has dried up in the U.S.”

We talked about why capabilities like tooling fabrication and injection molding have largely disappeared from the U.S., and one reason we both agreed on was the lack of trade education, starting as early as high school.

“Some of my favorite classes in high school were sculpture class, learning to use a bandsaw and a drill press,” he said. “I wish more folks in the United States prioritized the hands-on making of stuff.”

I pointed out the strange dichotomy of the past couple of decades, in which Silicon Valley was busy valorizing the maker movement, while at the same time the U.S.’s ability to manufacture at scale was simultaneously being hollowed out. It’s as if we celebrated prototyping, while the infrastructure to mass-produce those ideas was quietly de-emphasized and disinvested in.

“A weird thing that happened, where we talked about, ‘hey, let’s start making stuff and teach our kids to make stuff,'” I said. “But at the same time, America’s ability to make stuff at scale just kind of went up in smoke.”

Scott, for his part, chose to see the upside. Despite the loss of critical manufacturing knowledge and infrastructure, he said it’s still a great time to be an inventor, thanks to how accessible prototyping tools have become.

“I’m of two minds about this. On the one hand, like I love physically making stuff. I wish more folks in the United States prioritized the hands-on making of stuff, and I wish that we hadn’t eroded away these capabilities. On the other hand, it is almost point and click to have these things prototyped, if not mass-produced. And that’s an incredible boon to being a scrappy solopreneur.”.

You can listen to our latest episode by clicking play below, or you can find it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

If you’d like to ask Scott a question about his project, the challenges of manufacturing a product or the future of cooking, he’ll be at Smart Kitchen Summit next week. You can get your ticket here.

If video is your preferred podcast consumption format, you can also watch our conversation below:

Why It's So Hard to Build Hardware in America

Thermomix Has Long Been a Leader in Cooking Automation, But Now They’re Going Full Robot

For years, I’ve said that the Thermomix is quite possibly the most successful automated cooking appliance in the world. Sure, it’s not a humanoid robot or what we’ve come to expect from cooking robots in recent years, but the TM6 and TM7 are software-powered cooking appliances that automate and sequence functions in a way that feels surprisingly intelligent, especially compared to typical countertop or built-in kitchen appliances.

But now, if recent moves by Thermomix’s corporate parent, Vorwerk, are any indication, Thermomix may be going full robot. At last month’s Automatica conference in Munich, Thermomix and red-hot German robotics startup Neura Robotics announced a partnership in which Neura’s humanoid robot used Vorwerk’s Thermomix and Kobold vacuum cleaners to perform everyday household tasks.

According to Neura CEO David Reger, optimizing his robots to work with Vorwerk’s cooking and cleaning appliances is a step toward building an aging-in-place platform powered by humanoids.

“Together with Vorwerk, we are redefining household robotics – with intelligent assistants that provide concrete relief for people in their everyday lives: from cooking to independent living in old age,” said Reger.

Even more interestingly, Vorwerk also announced a partnership with AI and chip giant NVIDIA last month. According to the announcement, “Vorwerk is post-training NVIDIA Isaac GR00T N1, an open robot foundation model, to support families around the home, whether seniors looking to maintain their independence, or busy families in need of an extra pair of hands. To post-train the model, Vorwerk is leveraging the Isaac GR00T-Mimic data pipeline to generate large, diverse synthetic motions data to prepare robots for common household tasks such as cooking, cleaning, and more.

“Together with NVIDIA Robotics we are now taking a significant step towards the connected and automated home,” wrote Vorwerk CEO Thomas Rodemann on Linkedin. “Our goal: creating integrated digital/physical ecosystems that support our community in their everyday lives and make the home more convenient for everyone – whether it’s providing busy families with an extra pair of hands or giving seniors more independence.”

When Jensen Huang showed up at CES in January and said that the ChatGPT moment for robotics is right around the corner, I’m not sure if he was thinking about cooking food with the Thermomix, but maybe he was. Vorwerk would be a logical candidate to build true home robot assistants, since progressing rightward on the simple tool to fully-capable robot continuum already and they’ve been the most successful at integrating software with home cooking automation

You can watch the video of the NVIDIA-powered robot making food with the Thermomix in the video below.


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.