Category: Topics
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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…
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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…
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So what’s the deal with rocket scientists and pizza? No, that’s not a Jerry Seinfeld punch-line setup, but an actual question I have after seeing Andrew Simmon’s recent post on Linkedin about the latest pizza robot he’s stumbled across. Simmons, who’s made a name for himself documenting his learnings as he tinkers with his restaurant…
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Japanese food giant Kirin announced this week that it is selling an ‘electric salt spoon’ that amplifies food’s saltiness by applying an electric current to the tongue. According to the product’s co-developer, the product works by using the current to draw more sodium into contact with the tongue, which in turn enhances the perceived saltiness…
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Speedy Eats, a maker of unattended vending and retail technology, will debut its first location with a customer this summer. The company, which has been showcasing its unattended retail concept at its lab in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, for the past year, will launch with an unnamed food operator in August, according to CEO Speed Bancroft.…
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There’s been no shortage of cooking robot startups in the past few years, but most are focused on commercial kitchens. It’s for good reason: consumers tend to like appliances we’re familiar with, and the idea of having a robot make our food seems, well, like something out of a science fiction future. But these hurdles…
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We’re just one month away from the Smart Kitchen Summit, so we’re going to be checking and hearing from some of our speakers. First up is Clayton Wood, a long-time entrepreneur who has been navigating the food robotics market for the last five years, first as the CEO of Picnic (which debuted its robot at…
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Underground delivery startup Pipedream Labs announced it has raised $13 million in funding. Company CEO Garrett McCurrach disclosed the funding, led by Starship Ventures, with participation from Cortado Ventures, Myelin Ventures, and others, in a post on LinkedIn. The new capital infusion will primarily be utilized to enhance Pipedream’s “Instant Pickup” service and kick-start the…
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A new report published by Tillster shows that quick-service restaurant customers are increasingly opting to use restaurant-specific apps over 3rd party delivery apps. The report, which analyzed the results of a survey of over 1,000 quick-service and fast-casual diners, showed that the number of customers who used restaurant-owned ordering channels over the past three months…
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Appliance giant Whirlpool has let its entire Yummly team go. According to industry sources, the company recently laid off all the employees for the recipe and cooking app and website. These sources tell the Spoon that it’s unclear what the company plans to do with the property it acquired in 2017. The news of the…
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For small operators (and big ones as well) in the pizza business, Andrew Simmons’s posts on Linkedin have become must-read material. That’s because Simmons, who I wrote about last year as he experimented with utilizing pizza automation technology in his San Diego area restaurant, has open-sourced his learnings as he continues experimenting with various forms…
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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…
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