Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution
This is our video recap of the top three trending stories from the past week.
In this recap, we look at the latest iteration of Bosch’s kitchen robot Mykie, the crazy flash-freezer/microwave combo which debuted at IFA, and the impact Blockchain will have on the food system.
It’s the Spoon’s video top 3, recapping three trending stories about the future of food, cooking and the kitchen from the past week.
Want to go deeper? Here are the stories in this week’s recap:
Bill Gates invests in post-livestock meat company, Memphis Meats
It’s the Spoon’s video top 3, recaping three trending stories about the future of food, cooking and the kitchen from the past week.
This week’s we take a look at Bistro Planets’s food truck tech, DoorDash’s pilot program with Marble for delivery robots and whether or not instant aging is the newest trend in wine.
Enjoy!
It’s our weekly video recap of the top three trending stories from over the past week on The Spoon. Our recap includes these stories:
Make sure to follow us on Facebook to get our weekly video wrapup of the top trending stories first.
Welcome to the Spoon’s first video review of the three of the most interesting stories from the past week about the future of food, cooking and the kitchen.
This week we’ve got stories about the intersection of design and biohacking, how virtual reality could be used to enhance your experience at the local watering hole, and how bars and restaurants are deploying smart coasters to engage with customers and better understand what they’re up to (I think I’ve got the answer: drinking).
P.S. Let us know what you think of this new format!
The Echo Show arrived this week. Like many, I was excited to put the latest addition to the Echo lineup through its paces.
Welcome to my one day review.
Why write a review after using a product one day? Doesn’t one need to spend weeks – maybe even months – with a product like the Echo Show to really understand the possibilities of this complicated and interesting new product?
Yes, but here’s the thing: For most products, you also are able to notice things right away. Not unlike a first date when you show up at the restaurant and notice your date for the night has three eyebrows or is a loud talker, there are things you notice right away when you’re around someone or something.
So here goes:
Out of Box Experience
The install experience was painless, quick and well optimized. Once I pulled the Show out of the box and plugged it in, it walked (and talked) me through the installation.
The device found my Wi-Fi network, had me enter my password, and within a minute it had checked in with the cloud and knew this was Michael Wolf’s new Echo Show. The Show started to download a software update, which took about five minutes. Overall, the product was installed and running in 10 minutes.
The Sound
For about five minutes, I thought this device sounded horrible. Then I saw the layer of protective plastic over the speaker.
This is why I don’t write five minute reviews.
Plastic removed, the Echo Show sounds good. Not quite as good as my Sonos Play 3, but it could give my Play 1 a run for its money. Turned up, the Echo Show is fairly loud.
Volume is controllable via Alexa, but it also has volume up and down buttons on top of the device, which I like. Sometimes you just like old fashioned physical buttons.
The Echo Show Shape and Look
Like many this week, I was surprised at the beefiness of the Show when it arrived at my house. This is mostly due to Amazon’s early press images and videos which showed the the latest Echo mainly from the front of the device. When you actually see the Show in all its glory, it’s a lot deeper than you expect.
So Amazon intended for you to mainly see the Show from one side: its front. This is clear not only because of how deep and heavy the back side of the Show is, but also because the sides of the device are angled inward. It reminded me of those early big screen TVs before everything became ultra-thin.
Because of these angled sides, you can walk from side to side and still have the illusion that this is a thin device. See video below:
Given the shape of the device, it works best against a wall. While I’m sure that with so many of today’s modern kitchens having islands, I’m sure many Echo Shows will end up stranded one one (sorry), but I’d suggest putting it up against a backsplash as it just looks better.
The device’s front screen leans ever-so-slightly backward. When I pushed the device with my hand and tried to tip it over from the front, it stuck stubbornly in place. It’s clear that Amazon gave some thought to how this device would sit on a surface like a kitchen counter as people and things moved around it and possibly bump into it.
Visual Information + Voice = Game Changer
Here’s something I realized right away: By finally giving Alexa a screen, Amazon has opened up immense new possibilities for potential applications and content opportunities.
This may sound like an overstatement, but it isn’t.
The main reason for this is the powerful combination of synchronized voice control/visual information. While the Amazon visual skill cupboard is slightly bare at this point, you can see from what few samples there are that by adding visual information, Amazon’s created a new and exciting direction for the Echo.
I spent the most time with new Allrecipes visual skill. While the skill feels very much like a 1.0 effort (I’ll have a review of the Allrecipes skill soon), but I can nonetheless see the potential. I was able to bring up recipes, pick one I like, browse the ingredients and cooking instructions.
But the coolest feature of the Allrecipes app was the ability to play and pause videos. This is really important because if you’re like me, you like to watch and rewatch videos as you move through the cook process.
At the risk of being repetitive, let me say it again: it’s this combination of voice search and command with visually rich information in a shared-screen computing device is by far the most exciting thing about the Echo Show.
There are other aspects about having an always on screen that are important. The “sleep screen” info on the Echo Show is unobtrusive, natural and well placed. Maybe because Amazon has had so much practice creating sleep screen content with the Kindle, but it’s clear Amazon thought about placing interesting and relevant info on a device. With the Echo Show, the device not only shows basic temperature and time info, but it scrolls through headlines, suggestions for using, etc.
The Camera
Of course, the camera’s most obvious benefit is the ability to communicate with others via voice chat. While I haven’t done a drop-in with my own Show yet, I did try it out in store at Amazon Books and the video quality seems really good.
Less obvious is the camera is being used as a sensor. When I turn out the lights the screen soon goes into soft-light mode, which I thought was a nice feature. And while it is early days for the Show, I expect at some point Amazon will unlock other computer vision capabilities that could really unlock contextually relevant information.
“I Would Use That”
When it comes to Alexa and our first two Echo devices, let’s just say my wife Tiffany has been indifferent to annoyed. Sure, she’ll ask Alexa to play music, but for the most part doesn’t see the value.
But after a few minutes playing with Echo Show, she was sold.
She tried out the Allrecipes app. She searched for a recipe and tried the video feature and liked it. She started, paused, played a video of making a strawberry smoothie, something my daughter wanted to make.
After a few minutes, my wife said, “this is something I would use.”
And of course, she then suggested I get rid of another one of my kitchen gadgets taking up counter space in order to put this one in the kitchen.
But hey, progress, right?
There’s no shortage of new approaches to tech-powered home gardening nowadays, but HAMAMA’s Seed Quilts might be the easiest I’ve seen.
I had a chance to talk to HAMAMA CEO Daniel Goodman at the FOOD IT event put on by the Mixing Bowl this past week, who walked me through how the Seed Quilt works.
I’ll be testing out some Seed Quilts myself shortly and have a formal review later (stay tuned), but the initial impression is that Seed Quilts seems remarkably approachable in an almost smart-garden-meets-Chia-Pet kind of way.
When you sign up for a Seed Quilt subscription, you get a Grow Kit to start and three Seed Quilts. You simply put the Seed Quilt in the Microgrow Kit and water it, and in 7 days you should have some greens on their way.
According to Goodman, the Seed Quilts work with ambient light and don’t need any special lighting.
The idea of the Seed Quilt came to Goodman and his partner Camille Richman after they left MIT Media Lab where they had worked on controlled environment agriculture research. While at MIT, the two were excited about the possibilities of combining automation and agriculture but realized much of the fruits (or greens) of their labor would take some time to commercialize given the complexity of the technology. They wanted to make something more consumer accessible, and the Seed Quilt concept was born.
A subscription to Seed Quilts $14 a month all in, which gets you three Seed Quilts per month. You’ll have to buy the Grow Kit to start, which also costs $14 ($12 plus $2 shipping and handling).
You can see Dan talk about the Seed Quilt in the video above.
Yesterday at the FOODIT event in Mountain View, I had salad for lunch.
Why I am telling you this? Because unlike any salad I’ve had before, this one was custom built for me by a robot named Sally.
We’ve written about Sally before at the Spoon, but this is the first time I got to taste a Sally-crafted salad. On hand to give me a tour and tell us about Sally was Chowbotics CEO Deepak Sekar.
You can watch the video of Sally making a salad above, but here are a few takeaways from my conversation with Sekar and Chef Kelly Olazar:
Overall, I like the salad and was impressed with how quick Sally worked. While the robot’s price seems high, I figured that if could replace a worker and generate $500-$1000 a day in a busy cafeteria, the product makes sense financially in a high-volume food service location.
Like most everyone, one of the reasons I love going to New York City is the food.
And after all, why not? The variety is endless, and every meal brings a chance to eat somewhere (and something) amazing. In just one three-day trip to the Big Apple this week, I got to eat dinner at America’s best pasta restaurant, have lunch in the middle of Grand Central Station, and grab breakfast at one of the city’s best cafes with longtime former editor of Food and Wine, Dana Cowin.*
But the meal I got most excited about was a $10 Bento Bowl I had at eatsa. That’s because while I’d written a bunch about the quinoa-centric, tech-heavy restaurant startup, I’d yet to eat there, so I was intrigued to see what it was like to eat with a completely automated the front-of-house experience.
Here’s a quick recap of my experience:
The Walk-In Experience: When I walked into the Madison Avenue eatsa, it was moderately crowded. At 3:30 in the afternoon it was late for lunch, so I’d expect even bigger crowds during lunch hour.
This location was loud. Of course, everything seems to be bustling in the middle of Manhattan, but this eatsa location was definitely louder than most fast food or fast casual restaurants I’ve been to, in no small part due to the loud music playing over the speakers.
I also noticed an eatsa employee in the lobby. I found this interesting because I wasn’t sure if anyone ever saw an employee when dining at eatsa.
The Order Experience: The order experience is straightforward. Before I could peruse the menu on one of the 8 or kiosks, I was asked to swipe a credit card. I was then given a choice of pre-made bowls or the option to build my own custom bowl.
Ordering food at eatsa
I found the menu simple and easy to understand. Once I chose a Chef’s bowl, I added a beverage and paid. The total price for my bowl was under ten bucks.
Wait and Pick Up: After checkout, my name soon appeared on a big screen above the wall of cubbies.
After ordering, my name appeared on a big screen under ‘Current Orders’
When my food was ready, the screen told me which cubby from which to pick up my meal. The total wait time was less than five minutes. When I picked my meal up, both my bowl and drink were there. However, my dining companion’s drink was missing, so he had to ask the eatsa employee to radio to the back and have them put a drink in the cubby.
How Was The Food?: You should know this: the food at eatsa is really good. I have to admit I wasn’t sure how much I would like a quinoa-centered meal, but the bento bowl I ordered was fresh, crispy and most of all, delicious. My friend Aaron Cohen ordered the hummus and falafel bowl and found it equally tasty.
After eating at eatsa, here are my takeaways:
The whole experience was very low friction: Eating at eatsa is just really, really easy to do. I walked in, ordered and started eating in about 5 minutes. I think for lunch customers in busy cities or corporate dense suburbs, eatsa is perfectly optimized for quick pick-up-and-go lunches.
Price-value exceeds most restaurants. The food quality and taste are extremely high for the price. My meal was under ten bucks, lower than average when compared to pretty much any chain restaurant.
It’s not all robots…yet. In a way, I was happy to see a human employee in the lobby of eatsa. It became apparent with my friend’s missing drink why eatsa would need to have someone in the front of the house to answer questions and solve problems.
The mystery is part of the allure. Since we’re early in the robot-restaurant revolution, people are naturally curious about how the restaurant works. When I asked the young woman working up front what went on in the back of house, she said, “some people say it’s robots” with a twinkle in her eye and left it at that.
This is the future of fast food and fast casual. As CEOs from fast casual chains like Buffalo Wild Wings wring their hands about the future, eatsa is busy creating a new template that leverages automation to bring a high-quality, low-friction food experience to the consumer. While I don’t think all restaurants will automate the front-of-house like eatsa – after all, no one can replace a great maître d’ or the ambiance of a cool coffee shop with touch screen kiosk – I have no doubt that what eatsa has created is a glimpse into the future.
*Yes, that’s a humble-brag, as I’m a fan of Dana’s and you should be too (you can check her podcast here). And no, a Dana Cowin is not included with every meal at High Street on Hudson.
After walking the show floor at last year’s Housewares Show in Chicago, I became pretty excited. As with most consumer industries, I’m convinced the housewares industry will witness significant change over the next decade as disruptive new technology ushers in new business models, services and creative new products that will reshape the entire space. Based on what I saw on the show floor and heard in my conversations, it felt like we were only in the first or second inning of this shift.
All of which meant most of the change to this important industry is still to come, so when I was asked by the Home and Housewares Association to develop and moderate the keynote panel for this year’s show, I knew there would be a whole bunch to talk about. To do that, I knew I would need panelists who could provide smart, provocative and diverse but complimentary viewpoints to help the audience understand the issues and walk away with actionable insights.
That’s exactly what I got. Here are the panelists for the keynote panel entitled ‘How The Smart Home Is Disrupting Housewares’:
Nathan Smith – CTO, Wink. Wink is one of the most high-profile startups of the modern smart home wave, and Nathan has been there since the beginning.
Carley Knobloch – As HGTV’s resident smart home expert, Carley’s focus is always on the end-consumer and whether a given product is solving real problems or just technology for technology’s sake.
Chris Young – as CEO of ChefSteps and co-author of Modernist Cuisine, Chris has his feet firmly planted in both the world of culinary innovation and hardware creation for consumers. Finding that middle ground that brings professional-like skills in the form of connected hardware is something Young’s been focuses on
We discussed a bunch of things, including the shifting retail landscape, the arrival of artificial intelligence and connected commerce, consumer experiences and use-cases, the importance of product utility, virtual assistants such as Amazon Alexa and Google Home, Millennials and cooking and so much more.
Based on what I learned this year, I’m convinced the housewares space is waking up to the opportunity of the connected home. I can’t wait to see how much will change by next year’s show.
You can watch the entire panel by clicking play above.
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Like many parents, I encourage my kids to get into the kitchen to try their hand at baking cookies, cupcakes or other pastries every now and then. While the benefits of raising young cooks far exceeds any downsides, one of the few complaints I have about my kids’ culinary exploration is the mess of ingredient bags and measuring cups left in their wake, at least until I make them grudgingly head back into the kitchen to clean up after themselves.
All of which has often had me wondering why we haven’t come up with a better way to store and manage ingredients. In some ways, ingredient storage and management has been stuck in time, benefitting from arrival of low-cost and handy storage systems from the likes of Tupperware and OXO, but yet to benefit from the application of modern technology to streamline the dispensing and measurement of ingredients.
But that will change if Nicole and Christopher Lee have any say in the matter. The married couple have been busy working on the PantryChic storage and dispense system for the past four years, and after a number of starts and stops that included product tweaks, raising funds and the arrival of twins (and a new baby on the way), they are finally pushing the product into production and expect to ship it this year.
I caught up with Christopher at the Housewares Show in Chicago this week to get a tour of the PantryChic system and get an update on the company. According to Christopher, the PantryChic company has had two patents issued and has two more on the way. He also said they are getting significant interest not only retailers and potential consumer product companies who want to license the PantryChic technology, but also from companies specializing in professional and industrial applications who see the PantryChic as a way to enable precise measurement and inventory management of sensitive materials like pharmaceuticals.
As the PantryChic nears production, the company is working on fleshing out the product’s fuller story, including developing an app that guides users through a recipe, as well working on third party platform integrations to enable replenishment of ingredients.
Those looking to get their hands on a PantryChic won’t have much longer to wait. Christopher told me they’ve secured funding and found a manufacturer and expect the PantryChic to ship this year.
You can check my video interview with Christopher above.
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One of the main selling points of a connected refrigerator is it allows a consumer to keep track of their food, manage shopping lists and even order groceries from the fridge itself.
But here’s the problem: continuously updating inventory and shopping via your fridge requires a significant behavior change on the part of consumers. Whether it’s scanning a barcode, manually logging a product or some other way of digitizing your inventory of foodstuff and home supplies, it’s just not the type of behavior most consumers have shown an eagerness or affinity towards doing.
But what if you moved inventory tracking and reordering to the point of disposal? In other words, instead of logging a product and putting it on the shopping list when you bring it into the home, you put it in the queue and get it teed up for same-day delivery from Amazon when you’re out of the product.
That’s exactly the vision NewTown, Connecticut startup GeniCan has in mind. The company, which was founded two years and a half years ago, has created an scanner that allows you to scan products as you dispose of them. It also lets you add things to the shopping list via voice by waking up the scanner as you throw things out. Hold a piece of lettuce or steak scraps in front of GeniCan and it will ask you “what may I add to your list?”
Another benefit of GeniCan is the ability to track dry goods. Fridges are where you put the fresh food like milk, meat and eggs, but tracking all that stuff in the pantry is not a natural fit for the smart fridge.
The GeniCan has integrated with the Amazon Dash – one of the few announcements around Dash at CES this January – and the company is talking to other food replenishment and delivery platform providers about adding their functionality to the device. By integrating with Dash and adding voice capabilities, the GeniCan becomes in a way a strategically placed Dash Wand, Amazon’s original kitchen scanner.
So, will GeniCan get consumers to forgo that smart fridge to track their inventory at the point of disposal? Possibly. I know I often put things on the shopping list when I run out of things rather than when I bring them home, so inserting technology at this point of the consumption cycle makes a lot of sense.
The GeniCan is available for preorder for $149 from the company’s website and they expect to ship the product this year.
You can hear how the GeniCan works by watching my interview with GeniCan cofounder Dave Pestka above.
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