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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Next-Gen Cooking

Early Research Shows Promise for Cooking with Lasers

Ever since I first saw secretly evil superhero Homelander cut through anything and everyone with laser beam eyes, I’ve thought it’d sure be handy to have a pair of laser peepers to clean up weeds around the house or cook a quick meal.

While I (unfortunately ) won’t be able to shoot lasers from my eyes anytime soon, things are looking up in the laser cooking department thanks to a recent research project by a group of students a Columbia University. In a recent article for npj Science of Food program for Nature, the group describes the project in which they print and cook raw 3D printed chicken using lasers.

The group started by pureeing a chicken breast and then extruded the chicken paste into squares using a 3D printer. From there, they used different lasers to conduct various trials that varied parameters with three different lasers: A 5–10 W blue diode laser (445 nm) as primary heating source, and comparative tests done with an Near Infrared (NIR) laser (980 nm), NIR laser (10.6 μm).

From the explainer video:

“By tuning parameters such as circle diameter, circle density, path length, randomness, and laser speed, you can optimize the distribution of energy that hits the surface of the food, but at higher resolution than conventional heating methods.”

The group also experimented cooking in highly-precise cooking patterns (including a checkerboard pattern) to see how it compared with traditional cooking. The takeaway? Laser cooking might make better food than traditional cooking methods like broiling.

“Compared to oven broiling, we found that laser cooked foods are more moist and shrink less after heating,” concluded the group.

Interestingly, the group also found that lasers can cook food wrapped in plastic. The idea of being to cook through packaging opens up potential new avenues for offering consumers no-contact food in foodservice scenarios, something that’s no doubt of interest in these pandemic-stricken times.

While some like SavorEat are building print-and-cook systems, this is the first time I’ve seen a cooking system which uses lasers. The high-fidelity control of laser cooking is reminiscent of the solid-state cooking systems slowly making their way to market, only instead of using radio waves they shoot highly directed beams of light.

You can read the full research paper here and watch the explainer video below:

Robots that Cook: precision cooking with multiwavelength lasers

SpiceHero’s Creator Wants to Modernize a Stone Age Tool To Help Make Tastier Spices

If you’re a chef or a spice aficionado, there’s a good chance you use a mortar and pestle to crush your spices. But for the rest of us who are happy to buy our spices in the form of pre-ground powders from the grocery store, we’re missing out.

That’s at least according to Thomas Weigele, who is currently running a campaign on Kickstarter to get his invention – an automated mortar and pestle called the SpiceHero – funded. So why would someone want to create a modern version of a tool that has been in use since the Stone Age?

According to Wiegele, the idea came back when he was on the APAC consumer insights team for B/S/H Appliances, where his team would conduct ethnographic studies on markets in Asia. During one study about cooking behaviors across all socioeconomic groups in India, Weigele says one insight came up over and over: “Preparing spices with a mixer-grinder is good, but taste was much better when my mom or grandma prepared it with a Mortar and Pestle.”

He and a colleague soon realized it wasn’t just nostalgia. When they ran tests, it became clear this ancient tool for smashing and grinding spices brought out flavors in ways other methods did not. Electric spice grinder/mixers slice the spices into a uniform dust, while a mortar and pestle would result in a pleasing “mix of coarse and fine particles for dry spices and pastes have more texture and can extract the oil from the seeds, herbs and vegetables.”

Those insights resulted in B/S/H approving a project led by Wiegele to make a prototype for a semi-automated mortar and pestle machine. Unfortunately, the device, which ground the spices by rotating the stone inside the bowl, did not provide the same results as a traditional mortar and pestle. Weigele and others proposed a fully automated (with pounding motion and all) version, but B/S/H management did not give the green light.

When Wiegele left B/S/H and decided to head to school to get his masters degree in 2019, he couldn’t shake the idea of an automated mortar and pestle, so he soon hired a freelance engineer and started working on a prototype. Two iterations later, he was ready to launch his device on Kickstarter.

The SpiceHero looks a bit like a small stand mixer, only instead of beaters or mixing blades, the machine featured a pestle that pounds the contents of the bowl (mortar) at the rate of once a second. Wiegele hopes the machine, which starts at €140 as one of the reward tiers, will be ready to ship to backers in about a year.

First, though, the campaign needs to get funded. Wiegele has capped the amount for industrial design in the campaign at €20 thousand ($23.4 thousand), and after that, the rest will be used for tooling and inventory. With about three weeks to go, the campaign for the Spice Hero stands at about 50% funded around about €10 thousand.

If you’d like to back a project that could up your spice game with this modernized take on an ancient tool, you can check out the SpiceHero Kickstarter page here.

Podcast: Creating New Categories in Kitchen Tech With Scott Heimendinger

Scott Heimendinger was ready to talk about his plan.

I’d just spent a half hour talking to the longtime culinary innovator who’d spent much of the past decade bringing some of the first consumer sous vide and steam oven products to market, and after telling me about his journey through starting a company, working for Modernist Cuisine and later Anova, Heimendinger was ready to raise the curtain on what he wanted to do next.

Well, almost.

Heimendinger was ready to talk about the type of product he wanted to build (a category creator) and how he wanted to do it (by doing lots of prototyping and researching). However, what he wasn’t ready to spill the beans on is what he is actually building.

I can’t blame him. The kitchen hardware market is notoriously competitive, a space where something goes from novel to commoditized in a matter of a few years. Heimendinger had that experience with his own company (Sansaire), where he’d helped create one of the first consumer sous vide appliances.

“It’s only a matter of time until you could walk into a RiteAid and buy a sous vide machine on the same aisle that sells the Oster toasters for $25,” he told me.

One way to prevent that fast move towards commoditization – or at least make money before it happens – is to lock up the intellectual property first by filing patents (something Heimendinger has already done) and keep quiet about what you’re building until it’s ready (something he’s doing now).

So while Heimendinger wasn’t ready to give me all the details about the new product he hopes will be a category creator, I was happy to hear about his motivation for starting a new kitchen tech company.

“I’ve realized over my past experiences with MC (Modernist Cuisine),with Sansaire, with Anova and doing my own thing, even with my time at Microsoft, is that I really love zero to one,” he said. “I really love the part that I’m in right now, which is that I’m making something new.”

In other words, Heimendinger likes inventing things. Navigating the unknown.

But while he loves the ‘zero to one’ part, what he doesn’t like is taking a product beyond that. For that, Heimendinger knows he needs a team.

“When I get through prototype and spin up some flashy PowerPoints, bug all of the friends in my network to test this thing and give me feedback and listen to my stupid pitch over and over and over again, then I would like to go to companies that might be able to commercialize it,” he said. “And do what they’re really good at, which is make sure that it can get successfully manufactured and priced right, and marketed right, and distributed right. All that stuff.”

And then what?

“Hopefully, go back to the next zero.”

I caught up with Heimendinger for the latest episode of the Spoon Podcast. If you’d like to hear our full conversation, just click play below or find it at Apples Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

If you’d like to see Heimendinger at Smart Kitchen Summit 2021 virtual in November talking about how to build category creators, get your ticket here.

4.5 Million Thermomix Owners are Using the Cookidoo Online Recipe Platform

While a number of companies are trying to build cooking robots for the home, the closest thing to a do-everything cooking appliance on the market today is the Thermomix.

And nowadays, it seems a lot of homes have a Thermomix, at least according to a recent post by the company.

According to the post, Thermomix sold one TM6, the latest generation multicooker, every 23 seconds in 2020, which translates to about 1.37 million for the year. While that may seem like a drop in the bucket for an industry that moves almost 700 million units annually, it translates to big numbers when you consider the price of the product. At $1,500 per unit, topline revenue for the TM6 pencils out to about a little over $2 billion, which would be a significant market for any countertop cooking appliance. In fact, compare that to the estimated total pressure cooker market size of $5.5 billion, which puts the TM6 market alone at almost 40% of the market for Instant Pot and all its various copycats.

And that’s not even the most interesting part of the update. According to Thermomix, there are now 4.5 million total Thermomixes connected to the company’s digital cooking platform, Cookidoo. That number includes both TM6 models and the previous generation TM5s. That’s up from about 1 million total users for the appliance’s digital cooking platform since 2017.

Engagement is also pretty high. According to Thermomix, Thermomix users make about 750 thousand meals a day using Cookidoo, which translates to about one in six Thermomix users each day.

As regular Spoon readers know, the company’s recipe platform has come a long way since four years ago. The company has enabled the platform to connect to other appliances for coordinated cooking and last year added the ability to shop for food via the Cookidoo platform. And this year, the company rolled out a new companion appliance in the Thermomix Friend in select markets (the Thermomix Friend is not yet available in North America), which coordinates cooking with the TM6 from one screen.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rise Gardens Raises $9M in Series A Funding

Rise Gardens has raised $9 million in an oversubscribed Series A Round, according to a press release sent to The Spoon. The round was led by TELUS Ventures with participation from existing investors True Ventures and Amazon Alexa Fund and new investor Listen Ventures. It brings Rise’s total funding to date to $13 million. 

New funds will go towards product development and expansion, according to the company. As of right now, Rise Gardens makes an IoT-connected hydroponic grow system for the consumer home. The company provides the farming system, seed pods, nutrients for the water, and accompanying mobile app that users can rely on to monitor and manage plant growth. The garden comes in three sizes, plus a tabletop version that was released at the end of last year. 

As of right now, there are no voice control features on the gardens. But Rise CEO Hank Adams hinted last year at an eventual collaboration with Amazon that would bring Alexa functionality to the system. The Amazon Alexa Fund’s involvement in today’s funding round suggests that ambition is still very much in the plans. Rise will also in the near future sell its gardens via Amazon, marking the first time the product will be available via something other than the company’s direct-to-consumer channel.

Rise is one of a number of companies trying to bring the concept of high-tech gardening into consumers’ homes. Other notables right now include Gardyn, which makes a compact indoor-only unit, Lettuce Grow’s Farmstand, which can work both indoors and outdoors, and Hong Kong-based Aspara’s countertop unit.

All of these systems use hydroponics to grow leafy greens and herbs. They also all, at this point, come with a hefty price tag: Rise’s Single-Family Garden starts at $549 USD, for example, while a Lettuce Grow unit that holds 24 plants and includes LED lights costs $849.

Adams said today that part of its new funds will go towards reaching “an even wider audience in the U.S., Canada and around the world.”  

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

GE Profile Debuts Range Oven With Connected Pizza Oven Built In

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

GE Profile Trattoria Pizza Oven

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

Traeger Grills Acquires Connected Thermometer Company MEATER

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

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

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

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

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

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

Home Goods Holding Company Pattern Brands Announces $60M in Funding, Buys GIR

Patterns Brands, the DTC holding company that evolved out of brand agency Gin Lane, has announced that it has taken on $60 million in new debt and capital equity financing and that it has acquired silicone utensil specialist GIR. As part of the announcement, Pattern announced that it was planning on using some of that new funding to hunt for other interesting DTC brands to scoop up.

From the announcement:

By definition, what we’re doing is a roll-up. But our interest lies where it always has, since before this trend started. We care about building brands that matter to our generation. And what some roll-ups risk missing is that lasting value doesn’t come from forcing big, short-term profits. You have to strengthen the brands. You have to give them a community where they can thrive.

Up to this point, Pattern has consisted of two brands: The Equal Parts cookware and Open Spaces storage products brand. Spoon readers may remember we’ve written about Equal Parts early experiment of bundling text-based guidance from chefs with their cookware. The company looks like they’ve since dropped those early efforts at bundling cooking guidance and have become a more traditional DTC cookware brand.

For its part, GIR got its start when founder Samantha Rose had a successful Kickstarter campaign for a silicone spatula, has since become pretty successful kitchen utensil and accessory business.

One thing that’s not clear is whether the deal includes the Voltaire coffee grinder business. Back in 2015-16, GIR founder Rose had launched a Kickstarter campaign for an IoT connected burr coffee grinder. It took a while for GIR to ship the grinder and eventually it did. The grinder got its own website and looks like it might be a separate business at this point.

Pattern is one of a number of home goods startups looking to become the preferred brand of millennials as they settle down, buy homes and just generally begin acting more like their parents. Pattern, Caraway and Misen have all taken fresh looks at housewares categories and have focused on building robust direct-to-consumer channels through online storefronts and social media.

Last year, Storebound, which combined a similarly adventurous approach around categories with an heavy focus on online channels was acquired by Groupe SEB. With Pattern’s new debt and equity-funded warchest, I have to wonder if we’ll see a flurry of new DTC home goods acquisitions as bigger brands look to scoop up those brands with fast-growing businesses.

Loch Electronics Launches Kickstarter Campaign for Its Handy Countertop Dishwasher

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

MULTO COOKING BASE

Design

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

Connectivity

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

Cleaning and Care

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

SMART KITCHEN HUB

Design

8.9”touch screen tablet with jog dial and portable stand

Durable features to withstand tough kitchen environments.

Connectivity

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