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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

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iCuisine Wants To Bring Smart Features To Everday Kitchen Utensils

While it seems like there is a new connected countertop appliance announced every other week, the smart kitchen revolution has largely left everyday kitchen tools like spatulas, whisks and other cooking utensils behind.

That’s where iCuisine‘s founder Luic Mucha hopes to change things. Mucha was at the Housewares show this week in Chicago showing off his company’s modular smart kitchen system that connects utensils to a smart sensor system that syncs with a smartphone app to assist the user in cooking a meal. The system utilizes a smart transmitter called the Wi-Key that plugs into the company’s cooking utensils to gather temperature or weight data and send it to the app. The system, which has twenty or so different smart kitchen products including a cutting board, measuring cup and frying pan, can also help the user walk through recipes step by step.

Mucha, who was awarded a patent for the technology in 2015, said: “when we started development, we didn’t want to create a product that would be too expensive.” According to Mucha, by putting all the electronics in a single sensor, they can keep the cost down. The company is planning on releasing a branded line of products in the US called iCuisine, but is also discussing licensing the technology with consumer electronics and appliance manufacturers.

I have to admit, I like the idea of a modular system that is focused on keeping costs down. I am also intrigued by the possibilities of extending intelligence beyond bigger countertop and built-in appliances to any number of utensils a typical cook uses when cooking something up in the kitchen. However, the one thing I am not sure about is whether a busy cook will want to go through the busywork of pulling out the Wi-Key sensor out of each utensil as they go from step to step within the cooking process.

You can see my interview with Mucha from the show floor at Housewares below:

Video: Grove CEO Gabe Blanchet Has Big Plans for Home Farming

If you’re like me, right now you have a pot of thyme (or rosemary, or basil) clinging to life on your windowsill. No matter how much I water it or how carefully I place it in the sunshine, I cannot keep plants alive—even simple indoor ones like herbs.

This is a huge bummer because, while I love to cook with fresh herbs, they can be quite pricey at the grocery store, tend to wilt in the fridge within days, and aren’t always of the highest quality. But home growing systems like Grove are trying to help those without green thumbs (guilty) transform their kitchens, living rooms, and empty garages into mini indoor farms.

A model of how Grove’s indoor farming systems would function in the home.

Though they’re not the only ones leveraging IoT to make indoor growing kits, Grove is thinking big to bring home farming systems to wide swaths of consumers. In order to get consumers to install growing systems in their house, they’ve got to a) look nice, and b) deliver good, consistent results. Grove has teamed up with major appliance and furniture companies to check both of these boxes: Blanchet and his team will provide home ag software and seed pods, and their partners will create custom indoor farming hardware to match.

Grove showed off their initial hydroponic home farming system at the Smart Kitchen Summit Startup Showcase in 2016. He returned in 2017 and sat down with SKS founder Mike Wolf to talk about the future of small-scale indoor farming and how he’s able to grow 30-40% of his own food, right at home.

Watch the video and then head over here to check out more videos from Smart Kitchen Summits of yore.

Got a food tech startup idea of your own? Apply for our Startup Showcase for SKS Europe, June 11-12th in Dublin, Ireland. 

We Tried The Impossible Burger, And It Was…

On a rainy day in Seattle, Mike Wolf and I set off on a mission. We were going to sample the much-hyped Impossible burger. As a vegetarian who hasn’t tried a beef burger in 4 years or so, I was pretty psyched to sink my teeth into one of these look-alikes. But would it be everything I dreamed of?


Look at all of that excitement!

First off, a little background about Impossible Foods: the Silicon Valley-based millennial darling trying to make meat alternatives that are as good as the real thing. Their plant-based burgers are sweeping the country by storm, garnering a mega Instagram following and pretty favorable reviews. While the patties were originally available at only a few trendy restaurants, they’re now on menus in a lot of major cities.

Impossible patties contain wheat protein, coconut oil, potato protein and their ace in the hole: heme. An iron-containing compound found in blood, heme is what gives red meat that rich, umami taste. Impossible Foods’ scientists have found a way to extract heme from plants, which they hope will give their burgers a magic meatiness missing in so many veggie burgers.

Unlike plant-based burger competitor Beyond Meat, which is sold in grocery stores across the country and online, Impossible burgers are only available in restaurants. They premiered on the menu at celebrity chef’s restaurant Momofuku Nishi in 2016 and have since expanded to restaurants around the country. This business model might change, though, as their website hinted that they do have retail plans in the pipeline.

An Impossible burger, ready to go on the flat top.

So did it live up to expectations? Mostly. The Impossible burger is definitely good: it’s savory, has a good texture, and even has that umami flavor that comes from red meat. I suppose that’s thanks to the heme, which is also what makes the Impossible burger “bleed” when cooked rare.


Don’t worry, we washed our hands first.

Sadly, ours was very well-done, so we couldn’t test the bleed. But that’s alright. The burger was still juicy, despite a seared, caramelized exterior. I was surprised by how much it reminded me of burgers of yore, and I even tasted a distinct animal-like funkiness (thanks, heme!). It wasn’t quite as chubby and rosy-tinted as the photos on their website, but it still beat my expectations. I didn’t even add ketchup, and I always add ketchup.

I also appreciated how fatty it was, chiefly thanks to coconut oil. Impossible isn’t trying to make a health-food burger—just one that tastes as good as meat. In fact, their patty has comparable levels of protein, iron and fat to an 80/20 beef burger, though it doesn’t contain cholesterol. This makes sense if they’re targeting a wide, flexitarian audience, instead of a health-conscious vegan one.

Of course, there’s the possibility that my perspective was skewed since I haven’t had beef in a few years. So Mike Wolf took a bite of each to compare and contrast.


The true taste test. 

We got cheese on our burgers and, according to Mike, there wasn’t a huge difference between the two patties. In fact, if you topped your burger with bold flavors like blue cheese, special sauce, and pickles, you might not even notice that you weren’t chomping into a quarter pound of cow flesh.

The Impossible burger also had a delicious taste of self-righteousness. We all know that meat isn’t exactly great for the environment and that we should probably be reducing our beef consumption. Impossible’s website claims that by replacing one meat burger with one of their wheat protein-based patties, you’ll spare 75 square feet of land for wildlife, save water equivalent to a 10-minute shower, and spare 18 driving-miles worth of greenhouse gases.

Now for the downsides: Most notably, the Impossible burger is expensive. It cost an extra $4 to replace a beef patty with an Impossible one, at least at the restaurant we went to. That put the beef burger at $5.99 plus tax, and the Impossible burger at $9.99. Customize it with cheese and a topping or two, and things start to add up. It’s not a huge difference, but if they’re aiming to nab flexitarians price could be a big deciding factor.

In the end, I really enjoyed my Impossible burger experience. In fact, if someone suggests a burger night, I would go out of my way to find a spot that serves their patties (they have a map for that). Now if they could get started on making plant-based pulled pork, it would be much appreciated.

Video: Will Software Change the Way We Cook? (Hint: Yes)

What do you think software tastes like?

According to Jon Jenkins, Director of Technology at Hestan Smart Labs (the company behind the Hestan Cue), it tastes like consistency. In this video from the Smart Kitchen Summit, Jenkins explains how software can revolutionize the way that home cooks use recipes, eliminating human error to help them achieve the same high-quality results every time—just like a restaurant.

Jenkins has a seasoned background in both hardware and software. He cut his teeth at Amazon and Pinterest building software around personalization before he “caught the hardware bug” in 2014. Shortly afterward, he joined the team at Hestan Smart Cooking, the company behind guided cooking system Hestan Cue.

During his talk, Jenkins posed some interesting questions:

  • Why don’t recipes look exactly the same every time, no matter who cooks them?
  • How do we reduce variability and eliminate human error in the kitchen?
  • Why can’t home cooks have the same level of output consistency that you’d find at a Thomas Keller restaurant?

The answer to all of these queries, as you might have guessed, is software. Watch the video to see Jenkins make some bold assertions about the future of recipes, crack a few jokes, and explain how software will change the way the way we cook in the future.

Want to rub shoulders with innovators in the future of food and cooking? We – and Hestan Cue’s Jon Jenkins – will be in Dublin on June 11th-12th for our first Smart Kitchen Summit Europe. We hope to see you there!

Video: James Ehrlich Talks Food, Epiphanies, & the (Eco)Village of the Future

Take a second, right now, and picture the community of the future. Are there green roofs, lazily-turning windmills, and streetlights powered by solar energy? Maybe even a lawn-mowing robot or two?

James Ehrlich, CEO of ReGen Villages, has a pretty innovative vision for how neighborhoods of the future should look and function. After a career as a tech entrepreneur and television producer for The Hippy Gourmet, with a few epiphanies along the way, he came to the sobering realization that “the planet is, in fact, falling apart.”

In response, Ehrlich began sketching out plans for modern ecovillages with food “not as a sidebar or a flourish, but as the actual mechanism for how a neighborhood infrastructure is built.” ReGen Villages is currently in the midst of construction their first pilot community in Almere, Netherlands, with plans to expand.

After he wowed us with his optimistic vision for the future of homes, neighborhoods, and communities at the Smart Kitchen Summit last year, Ehrlich sat down with Allen Weiner of The Spoon chat with about epiphanies (and breakdowns), the concept behind ReGen Villages, and what’s on the horizon (hint: their ecovillages might be coming to a state near you!).

Psst—look out for videos from past Smart Kitchen Summits every Friday on The Spoon. And if you’re in Europe (or just want an excuse to EuroTrip), register for SKS Europe, coming to Dublin in June.

Smart Kitchen Appliances: What If “Smart” Means Superior Instead Of Connected?

One of the core discussions around the smart kitchen at SKS over the past three years has been the function and usability of smart devices in the kitchen. What devices will actually help us cook better food more easily and what are just silly attempts at connectivity for connectivity’s sake?

Breville has a different take on what makes an appliance smart, and it goes well beyond the ability to connect to its devices via a smart app. The new Breville Smart Oven Air has unique technology that allows for incredibly precise temperature control and can actually change how the heat is distributed. In other words, depending on the requirements of the specific dish you’re cooking, you can make the oven hotter at the front, top, bottom, or back of the chamber.

Allen Weiner of The Spoon sat down with Scott Brady, General Manager of Global Marketing at Breville at the 2017 Smart Kitchen Summit to talk about how Breville’s smart oven makes life easier in the kitchen. According to Brady, “this precise heat distribution lets you complete a lot of simple cooking tasks a lot better.”

For example, if you’re baking a cake, you’ll want the heat focused on the bottom of the oven to prevent it from cracking; whereas, for a pizza, you’ll want the heat evenly distributed throughout. Both are possibilities with the Breville oven, so that you can get the perfect finish no matter what you’re cooking. And the guesswork of how to heat and at what temperature isn’t left up to the user – the oven will course correct and heat to perfection no matter what the dish.

Another trend in kitchen appliances seems to be more all-in-one functionality. The future kitchen will likely not have a slow cooker, an oven, a toaster, a microwave and a sous vide machine but rather one or two devices that does most of that with ease. Breville is trying to pull that off with the Smart Oven Air. For one, it’s bringing in air-frying, which is a much healthier way to prepare your favorite fried foods. Instead of using hot oil, the oven uses fast-moving convection heat to mimic the effect of a traditional deep-fryer. Precise temperature control and regulated air movement mean that this oven can also dehydrate fruit, as well as act as a slow-cooker.

The question is: The Breville oven may be smart, but where does the company stand on connectivity?

For Breville, Brady says, “We don’t want to be connected for connected’s sake.” Instead, their goal is to create products that offer unique, new technology that’s truly helpful—not cumbersome. The future of smart kitchen devices is creative technology that actually makes culinary tasks easier for the user when combined with the convenience of an app, a built-in recipe database and intelligence baked into the device itself.

Brady says Breville is working on products that meet this promise, and you can expect them in 2018.

Building A Common Language For Food

Perhaps the most overused buzzword in the past several years is IoT – Internet of Things. We’ve even seen IoE (Internet of Everything) and IIoT (Industrial Internet of Things) emerge – but this year at SKS 2017, we were introduced to another Internet of phrases – one that has a chance to completely transform how we interact with food in our lives.

IoF stands for the Internet of Food, an effort to create a digital language and infrastructure for food. At the 2017 Smart Kitchen Summit, Dr. Matthew Lange of UC Berkeley and IC-Foods presented on the beginnings of IoF, describing it as “bring[ing] a common data language and ontology to the world of food and the impact on activities, such as food shopping and cooking.”

Despite its name, the Internet of Food is not just about food; it’s about every process and industry related to food, such as the environment, agriculture and health. The idea is to create a language to operationalize all food-related data pertaining to these subjects and impact every industry that may touch the food chain.

This means thinking about food outside of the kitchen—before it gets into the kitchen, and after it leaves the kitchen before we eat it. Lange explains that IoF is about annotating these processes and building a vocabulary that can explain the likes of flavor components, nutrient components, energy usage, etc. By developing an ontology about how food moves through the supply chain, farmers, for example, can be given more appropriate advice about how to best grow, store, and deliver food.

When it comes to smart things in the kitchen, most people immediately jump to thinking about appliances. But Lange insists we’re getting ahead of ourselves. Suppose, for instance, you have a sensor that measures the precise humidity and temperature of a drawer in your refrigerator. Seems handy, right? “But this doesn’t mean anything if you don’t know at what humidity and temperature that spinach should be stored,” notes Dr. Lange.

This is where the Internet of Food comes in. When we bring smart into the kitchen, we have to think one step before appliances and gadgets and get smart about food itself first—and we have the data to do it.

There is already a plethora of food data available: there are traditional data sets harvested from governmental and private researchers, and there is data about food sourced from the Internet of Things. The vision for the Internet of Food is to combine all these data sets and develop an ontology to tag the data, making it interoperable between scientific disciplines and different people on the supply chain.

Beyond technical efficiency, the IoF also aims to improve perhaps the best part about food: its flavor. The question is: How can we know which flavors go well together? Lange makes an analogy to musical notes; if you dissect a musical scale, you’ll see that C plays in harmony with E, but no so much with F#. What if we can apply this systematic principle to food and food flavors? According to Lange, with a developed ontology for food, we can find an algorithm to make sense of why certain flavors are in harmony with one another.

The Internet of Food expands “smart” out of the kitchen into every process related to food harvesting, shopping, and cooking. Watch Dr. Matthew Lange’s full talk from the 2017 Smart Kitchen Summit:

Going Beyond The Stick: New Options Emerge For Sous Vide In 2018

While the ultra-early sous vide enthusiasts among us started their precision cooking journeys with water ovens like the Sous Vide Supreme, the last few years in home sous vide have been all about “the stick.”

That’s right, as sous vide enters the zeitgeist, immersion circulators from the likes of from Anova, Nomiku, and ChefSteps are the default option for everyone from Modernist Cuisine types to those dipping their toe into the precision heated water for the very first time.

But, as 2017 draws to a close, there are some new sous vide products coming to market that gives consumers an option beyond ‘the stick.’

Here’s my look at some of these new products:

Mellow Smart Sous Vide

After a long delay, the Mellow smart sous vide machine is shipping. This unique-looking cooking machine, which features a cooling system that allows you put your bag inside throughout the day, is now available for general purchase on the company’s website for $399 ($299 through cyber Monday!).

I’ve been testing the Mellow for the last few weeks, and I must say this: If anything, the Mellow is by far the most interesting looking sous vide appliance. That’s because unlike sous vide immersion circulators, with the Mellow you drop your plastic bag into the large transparent tank which allows you to watch your food suspended in water while it cooks. While it may seem strange to say it, watching a ribeye cook in a water bath can be surprisingly mesmerizing.

Here’s a video I took of the Mellow cooking a ribeye:

Like the immersion circulators mentioned above, the Mellow has an app that serves as the primary control interface for the device. The app is pretty solid, with a decent support/FAQ section, a limited selection of cooking guides and a good looking design.

And of course, the built-in chiller for sous vide is a nice benefit for those who want to program a cook for a specific time such as when they get home from work.

All this said, the Mellow has one downside: It’s fairly big. Not only does it have a large footprint, but it’s tall. Really tall. Like most, my storage space is at a premium, and I don’t have the space to store a device with the dimensions of the Mellow.

The Mellow is also a bit more expensive than immersion circulators (again, the company is selling it for $299 through Cyber Monday), but if you’re looking for the latest in sous vide gadgets, you might find the regular price of $399 well worth it.

The Cinder Grill

Want to move beyond the bag? The Cinder Grill might be for you.

The Cinder Grill allows you to cook sous vide without the water or the bags. The device, which looks like the love child of Tesla and the George Foreman Grill, has two precision heating surfaces that allow you to precision cook meat, vegetables or other food and also lets you finish the food with searing functionality.

The two-in-one sous vide and sear capability is an obvious benefit of the Cinder. I also like the idea of cooking without plastic, not so much because I am afraid of toxins within the plastic, but I feel bad about throwing away plastic after every cook.

Like the Mellow, the biggest downside of the Cinder is its size. I’ve been testing it out for a few months, and while it’s become probably one of my favorite ways to cook meat, the device has a really big footprint. And while it does have the benefit of being a dual-tasker (cook and sear), even with multifunction capability I would find it a struggle to stash the Cinder on one of my shelves.

You can see how the Cinder looks in action here:

Like the Mellow, the Cinder also has an app, which allowed me to set time and temperature and also notified me when a cook is finished. But unlike the Mellow (or even more so with sous vide immersion circulators like the ChefSteps), the Cinder app doesn’t go very deep with the cooking content itself, something I am sure the company plans to build out over time.

If you want to get a Cinder Grill, you can order one on their website, but it might take a little while before you see your Cinder. The company has started shipping to some of its backers, but is still in the process of ironing out some production kinks, and likely won’t reach wide availability until early next year.

Still, if you like the idea of precision cooking without the water and plastic, you might want to put in an order. The Cinder costs $499.

Sous Vide Supreme Touch+

And any mention of home sous vide appliances should include the new Sous Vide Supreme Touch+, the latest generation Sous Vide Supreme water bath. And while the idea of precision water baths are hardly new, with this product the company has completely remade their flagship product complete with a touchscreen, a see-through lid, Wi-Fi, an app (of course) and Alexa voice integration.

If you want to get in on the new Sous Vide Supreme Touch+ at a significant discount, you can buy it for $200 off the retail price at $399 on Indiegogo.

Anova Precision Oven

While 2017 has been an interesting year for the oven, 2018 is likely to be even better. One of the products I’m most intrigued about is the Anova Precision Oven. The device, which includes a steam oven, convection, and connectivity, also allow you to sous vide. The device, which was originally slated to ship in 2017, now looks on track for a mid-2018 ship date.

There’s no doubt that immersion circulators are easy to use, but by giving consumers more options to cook sous vide, will open it up to a wider audience.

In short, nowadays sous vide is more than the stick.

You can hear an audio version of this post here on our Daily Spoon podcast (add the Daily Spoon Alexa Skill here to get this podcast on your Echo device):

Campbell’s Evaluating Augmented Reality and Other Tech As It Navigates Digital Transformation

While cans of Campbell’s Soup may not look much different today from when you or I grew up, don’t be fooled. Executives at the storied food brand are spending lots of time nowadays figuring out how to navigate a fast-changing market increasingly disrupted by e-commerce, IoT and other digital technologies.

So at last month’s Smart Kitchen Summit, we decided to ask Campbell’s Matt Pritchard about the company’s digital transformation. As Campbell’s VP of Digital Marketing, Pritchard is one of the executives responsible for charting the course of the company as it prepares for the future.

One thing the soup company exec made clear is that need for Campbell’s to stay close to the consumer no matter what the technology.

“What we got to figure out is how we deepen our consumer connection and how do we become more meaningful in their life.”

That connection, according to Pritchard comes across the entire meal journey, whether that’s during planning, shopping or making meals.

“Where we got to focus on is what is the desired consumer journey, where they are trying to get to, and how do we create integrated experiences to play after that.”

Some of the ways in which Campbell’s touches the consumer through digital are expected, such as recipe apps. But some ideas suggested by Pritchard hint at some interesting potential directions for the brand and CPG products more broadly.

“Some could be a communication challenge where we make clear we are in recipe collection apps. But it could quite easily be in the center store where we’ve got those rows and rows of cans of soup, how can we create an experience with augmented reality that brings the nutrition panel to life.”

We’ve seen a variety of retailers embrace augmented reality as of late as the technology matures, interest from the brands themselves could extend the reach of the technology from store shelves into the home and around the cooking experience.

And it’s in the kitchen where Campbell’s sees much of their future technology evolution.

“Being in the heart of the connected kitchen is the purpose of today and one of those things we need to figure out,” said Pritchard.

What would that look like? One possible way is through smarter inventory management and replenishment.

“A consumer goes home, put some of our products in the pantry, then they use those products,” said Pritchard. “We’ve got to figure out how do we know they used those products so we can help with a replenishment scenario. So, I’m looking at things like sensor companies because they can figure out when a product has been in a fridge or a pantry.”

So while the soup may stay the same, the company behind the red and white cans is busy figuring out how to stay connected with consumers as the food journey becomes increasingly digital.

You can watch the entire interview with Matt Pritchard below:

The Spoon Video Review Of The Bonaverde Berlin Roast-Grind-Brew Coffee Machine

Coffee is a drink people take seriously, and go to great lengths in order to achieve the perfect cup. Bonaverde, the Kickstarter phenom that took its sweet time coming to market, is betting that freshness will be its key to success.

While many coffee devices out there will give you exact control over water temperature, or grind size, Bonaverde’s pitch is that you need to take it back to the bean. A raw, green coffee bean, to be more precise. The Berlin is an all-in-one device that roasts, grinds and brews your coffee. The idea being that the sooner you brew the coffee after its roasted, the fresher and better it will taste.

But that freshness has a price. The Berlin is $800, requires a RFID-tagged pouch of green coffee beans to even work, and takes about 20 minutes to deliver your first cup of coffee. Update: As a commenter points out, there is an app (available via Facebook Messenger) that will let you roast any green bean. This option was not mentioned in the materials we received.

So, is it worth it? That’s for you to decide. To help, we put a Berlin through its paces. You can watch our video of the Bonaverde Berlin in action below:

Don’t Brick My Fridge!

Product manufacturers face many new challenges when they introduce smart, connected appliances and devices into the market. New business models, extended support windows, rapid technology changes, supply chain adjustments, post-support deprecation planning, and information security are all factors that companies developing connected products now need to consider and address.

The former CEO of Ford is famously quoted as saying that Ford now sees itself as a technology company. The shift that appliance manufacturers must make in their businesses to produce and support connected products is no less significant. In the old world, you could build and distribute your big metal box and move on to the next thing. Consumer feedback contributed to the next model, if there was one. But connected appliances are a whole different business. Now you’re creating and maintaining back-end software services, and you’re possibly maintaining and updating device firmware and customer-facing apps. And, in addition to investing in regular updates to the software and back-end services to keep them running on the devices and platforms you support, you’ll also find that your customers expect that app to improve and add functionality over time.

Then there’s the data. What are you going to do with all the telemetry data these connected devices are collecting? How can you use this data to guide future product decisions, optimize your support and failure prediction models, and enhance your customers’ experience?

One of the panel discussions at this year’s Smart Kitchen Summit, “Don’t Brick My Fridge,” focused on exploring these very issues. With a diverse panel of speakers, we looked at these challenges from multiple perspectives. Joe Britt, CEO of Afero, and Jonathan Cobb, COO at Ayla Networks, addressed key factors about the requisite data and infrastructure platforms; Cristian Ionescu, Head of Smart Home at Renesas, discussed some of the supply chain and distribution channel challenges; and Chris McGugan, GM of Innovation at Sears & Kenmore, gave some perspective from an appliance manufacturer’s point of view.

Don’t Brick My Fridge from The Spoon on Vimeo.

Based on how technology evolves and ages, your refrigerator is likely to outlive the Android screen built into its door…or even the communication chip integrated onto its circuit board. So manufacturers need to consider new support models. Just like some parts may be warranted longer than others, perhaps connected features or components get supported for a specified, limited period.

These realities could potentially support new business models. Refrigerator as a service? Would consumers consider leasing connected appliances, like they do now for phones, cars, and some other products, ensuring that they can readily upgrade to the latest model every few years? Some companies are exploring this as an option.

And what happens if your company doesn’t survive, like the recent announcement from Teforia? Or say you decide to deprecate a product from your company’s portfolio. Once your app or back-end services are no longer supported, can your customers still use the appliance they likely paid a premium for? If your oven, for example, needs an app to set temperatures or cooking modes, what happens when—when, not if—that app is no longer available? You should ensure that the core features of your product still function. Have you provided customers with a local, analog control option? Deprecation issues can (and likely should) even impact a product’s industrial design.

There’s far more to consider than can be discussed in half an hour, but the panel did touch on some of the key challenges and concern for most companies. If you’re in that space—if your company is introducing connected kitchen products—be sure you’re ready for the new, longer support commitment you’re making, the new factors you need to consider (like data and security), and the long-term viability of your product as a stand-alone device. Without proper planning, budgeting, and even restructuring, you risk leaving your customers with useless metal boxes instead of the smart, connected appliances you designed.

About the Author: Richard Gunther is the Director of Client Experience at Universal Mind, a digital agency in Denver, CO. He’s also the Editor of the Digital Media Zone and hosts Home: On, a podcast about DIY home automation products and technology.

Google Assistant Is Becoming A Guided Cooking Platform. We Talk To The Person Leading The Charge

Back in April, Google’s Emma Persky wrote a post telling the world that Google has been working on a recipe guidance capability for Google Assistant.

At last month’s Smart Kitchen Summit, she gave a little more detail on what exactly the company has been up to.

Persky, who runs point for Google Assistant’s cooking guidance team, told the Spoon’s Allen Weiner how much of the focus has been on building in contextual understanding of recipes.

“We can talk you through step by step how to cook a recipe and answer contextual questions about how to do that,” said Persky. “To do this, we have to build a deep model of what a recipe actually looks like. Have to take the text of a recipe and understand that text so we know what pasta is, we know what type of pasta you’re talking about, we know what the units are, we know the cooking temperature.”

“On the other side, we know what the user is saying. We have a whole bunch of machinery at Google that is able to understand what a user is saying and turn that into a machine question. We have a whole bunch of data about how different people ask these questions, which we use to build a model and understand these types of questions.”

When asked about how Google is utilizing company competencies like search and YouTube, Persky said that while there’s been significant work done here, there’s an opportunity to get better.

“We do a pretty good job now when you ask on your phone or desktop ‘how do I sauté an onion?’ we show you a nice video of how to sauté an onion.”

But, she said, “there’s a lot of opportunity for guided cooking feature to more deeply integrate with this, so when your recipe says sauté the onion, and you don’t know how to sauté the onion, we are able to return these types of video answers on on Google Home platform to help you become a better chef over time.”

Persky also discussed how she thought web content schemas could evolve to create a foundation for richer content through platforms like Google Assistant.

“When it comes to companies that have this kind (recipe) data available to them, there are a lot of opportunity for finding ways to increase the fidelity of the data that we have access to. At the moment we have schema.org markup, which is a good first pass. We don’t have a lot of detail and use machine learning to extract a lot of the context from that. And I think where there’s an opportunity to where a lot of people working on this stuff is to find ways to access more high fidelity data that we could offer to the users as an improved experience.”

When asked by Weiner how schema.org and other web markup languages could improve, she had this to say: “There’s a lot of work we can do to improve the quality of that markup. For example, right now the markup just has one block of text for all the instructions in the recipe, but actually if we could break that down and have a step by step, it would be easier for us to parse that out. Right now we have to apply machine learning across that to do that.”

It’s a really good conversation to understand what Google has been up to as they look to combine recipe content with their voice AI platform. You can watch the full conversation between Allen Weiner and Emma Persky below:

Ed note: Answers in this interview have been edited slightly for brevity/clarity