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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

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The Story of RJ Batts, Fourteen Year Old Inventor Of The Tip Tough

Not all kitchen innovation has to be high-tech to have a great story.

In fact, the tale of fourteen-year-old inventor RJ Batts is one of the cooler stories I heard this week at the Housewares show in Chicago. Standing at his booth among rows of other makers and creators more than twice or thrice his age, RJ told me how his concept, the Tip Tough – a finger protector for slicing and dicing on a cutting board – went from idea on paper to buzzed-about product at this year’s big home products trade show.

It all got started when RJ’s dad cut his fingers slicing food. Determined to figure out a way to protect his dad’s fingers in the future, RJ picked up a sketchbook and drew the first conceptualization of the Tip Tough. After a quick online search told them there wasn’t anything like this available, RJ and his family began to investigate how to bring the product to market.

The Tip Tough

Without any knowledge of the mechanics of product creation, RJ soon enrolled in a local program for young inventors called the Young Entrepreneurs Academy at the Salisbury (MD) Area Chamber of Commerce. The program gave RJ and his family what they needed to know to craft his pitch, understand fundraising and get a sense of how to bring the product to market.

“They guided me through learning how to go to business,” said RJ. “Without that, the product would have been sitting in a sketchbook, and I wouldn’t have to know what to do with that.”

He soon competed in a local startup competition at Salisbury University, where he received $15,000 for second place in a competition where he beat out many adults. And this week at the Housewares Show, RJ was featured in the Inventor’s Corner as the younger inventor at the show.

RJ and his company, Picklehead, are running a Kickstarter for the finger protector and plan to bring the stainless steel Tip Tough to market by July. They are planning on shipping a plastic version of the Tip Tough later this year.

While it may not be a smart kitchen device, the Tip Tough fulfills an obvious need, something many more modern – and connected – devices can often struggle with.  On my panel this week about the future of the smart home, my panelists talked about the need for simplicity of focus and creating obvious value in the minds of the consumer. As someone who gets annoyed I can’t cut that final piece of steak as finely as I’d like, I am a big proponent (as are my fingers) of simple, straightforward and non-connected innovation like the Tough Tip.

You can hear my interview with RJ above and support his Kickstarter here.

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The Company Behind PancakeBot Brings Us A Crazy Connected Coffee Table

First they helped take pancake making next-level with the PancakeBot, a pancake robot that helps the cook go beyond those Mickey Mouse and Death Star cakes you made for your kids into the world of pancake selfies. And now, StoreBound, a home product innovation company founded by longtime housewares executive Evan Dash (a recent guest on the Smart Kitchen Show podcast), wants to help us up our coffee table game with the SoBro, a “smart home” coffee table that comes complete with a built-in refrigerator, Bluetooth speakers, device charging ports and more.

I caught up with Dash at the Housewares Show to ask about the SoBro.  He told me the idea for the SoBro was to create the ultimate mancave coffee table, one which any guy or girl would love to put in their TV room, game room or that one-room flat and become the life of the party. In fact, the name of the product, SoBro, actually speaks to its target market: Bros.

No doubt, the specs are the most impressive I’ve ever seen for a piece of furniture I usually put my beer and popcorn on. It features a full refrigerator (“It’s not a cooler,” Dash emphasized.”It has a compressor”), ports to plug in your gadgets, Bluetooth to connect to music sources that will play music out of a set of stereo speakers and a subwoofer and an LED screen on the top of the coffee table.

The SoBro will retail for $1000, but early buyers can get it for $549 on Indiegogo.

You can hear more about the SoBro from Evan Dash in the video above.

Evan Dash, CEO of StoreBound, will be at the Smart Kitchen Summit. Get your tickets today. 

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Amidst Coffee Makers & Cookware, SproutsIO Talks Personal Produce At Housewares

Amidst the coffee makers, cookware and bartenderbots in Chicago this week at the International Home and Housewares Show, SproutsIO stood out as the one and only maker of a connected microgarden.

The SproutsIO microgarden, which allows an individual to grow vegetables in their home without soil or sunlight, is headed to market this year after a successful Kickstarter campaign last fall in which the company raised over $116 thousand. The SproutsIO will retail for $799, a price company CEO Jenny Broutin Farah believes will come down over time as they reach more efficiencies through high-volume manufacturing.

Broutin Farah told me (you can view the interview above) that one of the major benefits of SproutsIO is it grows vegetables much more quickly and efficiently than traditional soil-growing. The reason, she said, is the device can fully tailor growing conditions to each seed type, something which is difficult if outright impossible in traditional growing environments. According to Broutin Farah, SproutsIO can grow vegetables with just 2% of the water required in a traditional soil garden and 40% of the nutrients.

The company, which was one of the 15 startup showcase finalists at the Smart Kitchen Summit last October, will also monetize through selling seeds through a subscription service to user of the SproutsIO device.

You can hear the full interview above with Jenny Broutin Farah.

Housewares 2017: Somabar Pushes Robo-Bartender Into Production

This week at Housewares I caught up with Somabar, a company that makes cocktail-mixing robots.

I talked to company CEO, Dylan Purcell Lowe, who told me they’ve started production of the company’s robot bartender, which won best of show for the appliance category at CES 2016.  The device, which you can preorder for $429, is now in the hands of beta testers. The company expects to start shipping new orders by fall of this year.

According to Purcell Lowe, interest in the Somabar has come from both the consumer and professional/enterprise markets. The device, which has enough capacity to serve up to 300 drinks, would work well in hotels or restaurants according says Purcell Lowe, which is why their next generation Somabar will come in two versions: one for consumer and one for the pro market.

You can check out my interview with Purcell Lowe above and watch a quick walk-through of the Somabar below via Instagram.

We checked out the Somabar robotic bartender at #ihhs2017. #futureofdrink #foodtech #robotics

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Housewares 2017: Behmor Dropping Price On Connected Brewer As It Rolls Out Alexa Integration

The Spoon is at the Housewares Show in Chicago this week and is stopping by some of the booths at the Smart Home Pavilion to see what the companies have brewing.

At my first stop I visited with Joe Behm, CEO of Behmor, a maker of high quality coffee brewers and roasters for specialty coffee connoisseurs.  Back in October, Behmor was the first coffee maker manufacturer to announce Alexa integration and, according to Behm, the Alexa integration will roll out in about 30 days.

Behm also disclosed some other news: the company expects to drop the price on their connected brewer from $299 to $199 from mid-April onward.

“That price point is going to change the dynamic,” said Behm. “Once you drop below $200, then they (the consumer) start to see the benefit.”  Behm explained that the Behmor Connected Brewer is the only certified “Gold Cup” connected brewing machine on the market today. Gold Cup certification is a designation overseen by the Specialty Coffee Association of America (SCAA).

In a way, Behm sees his connected coffee maker as having a similar benefit to that of sous vide circulators. Much like a sous vide circulator adds greater precision to the cooking process, he believes his connected brewer can more easily bring greater precision and control to the coffee brewing process by enabling the user to tailor the brew with the machine’s app that highlights the specific flavor notes and, by adjusting the brewing temperature slightly, creating different coffee profiles from the same coffee.

You can hear our interview with Behm by clicking play above.

Dave Arnold Moves Forward With Production Of The Spinzall

We’ve been following Dave Arnold’s latest project, the Spinzall, since the very beginning, and today the chef-meets-mad-scientist released an update on the crowdfunding campaign for his culinary centrifuge system.

In a video update which can be seen above, Arnold said despite missing his crowdfunding target, he was able to reduce the number of Spinzall units required for the first production and, as a result, “we’re going to move forward.”

He goes on to show off early production parts for the plastic portion of the Spinzall and gives updates on the first-off tooling for the Spinzall rotor. According to Arnold, they should have firm Spinzall ship dates in early February after a test run of the rotor made with initial production parts.

It’s an interesting choice for Arnold to move forward with production since his crowdfunding campaign was “all or nothing” mode, but because he ran it on Modernist Pantry, an online resource and retailer focused on culinary science tools and ingredients and not on a traditional crowdfunding platform, he wasn’t held to the usual campaign terms required by sites such as Kickstarter. The Spinzall’s original crowdfunding target was $699 thousand, and with a day to go Arnold has raised 69% of that target at $480 thousand.

My guess is backers who know Arnold are perfectly fine with this. After all, they know he and his company Booker and Dax have shown they can ship products and, more importantly, moving forward means not only will they get the Spinzall, but they’ll also get lots more of Dave talking about the Spinzall.

Ever Wonder What Dinosaur Tastes Like? Ask Nathan Myhrvold (VIDEO)

Ever wondered what a dino burger tastes like?

The answer is ostrich or emu. While this may come as a surprise to some (I would have guessed lizard), what isn’t surprising is the guy who provided us with the answer: Nathan Myhrvold.

That’s because Myhrvold is one of the few people on the planet that can talk with authority about both paleontology and bread making.

I became familiar with Myhrvold’s eclectic interests first-hand last fall when I had a chance to visit the new headquarters for Intellectual Ventures and Modernist Cuisine.  Within the space of an hour, I’d had a whirlwind tour that featured efforts to recycle spent nuclear rods, finding a cure for the Ebola virus and bread made with cricket flour. I also had a chance to sit down with Myhrvold and discovered the longtime CTO of Microsoft and founder of Modernist Cuisine has a thoughtful and interesting opinion on pretty much everything, and that was doubly so when it comes to food, cooking and kitchen innovation.

So when Myhrvold got on stage last month with the Wall Street Journal’s Wilson Rothman, I was pretty sure the discussion would be fascinating. I wasn’t disappointed.

The conversation ranged from the taste of dinosaur meat to Modernist’s new bread book to Myhrvold considering the question of whether steam should become an important feature of modern consumer ovens (answer: yes). He also addressed the subject of innovation in the kitchen and said there are two large opportunities: one of which is to use it to make us better cooks, the other is to help make our lives more convenient. He pointed to Keurig-based coffee models as a good example of fulfilling a consumer need for convenience, but also stressed how important it was to capture the imagination of consumer when introducing new product innovation into the kitchen.

Overall it’s a great interview, so I suggest watching the whole thing. If you’re interested in Modernist Bread, it’s available for pre-order on Amazon and will ship in May of 2017.

If you’re interested in other videos from the Smart Kitchen Summit, you can find them here. If you’d like our weekly newsletter with analysis and news about the future of cooking and the kitchen, subscribe here.

The Subscription Kitchen: Connected Kitchen and Home Delivery (VIDEO)

How do subscription models and the smart kitchen fit together?

That’s what Brita Rosenheim, the founder of Rosenheim Advisors, wanted to find out at last month’s Smart Kitchen Summit on the panel entitled, “The Subscription Kitchen: Connected Kitchen and Home Delivery”.

Joining her on the panel were:

Daniel Rausch – head of Amazon Dash, Amazon’s auto-replenishment platform

Kevin Yu – CEO of SideChef, a connected kitchen platform company working with Chef’d on a mealkit subscription service

David Rabie – CEO of Tovala, a company creating smart oven with a mealkit delivery subscription service.

(Video) Are Cocktails An Art Form Or Something You Can Delegate To Robots? Both.

Is cocktail making an art form or something you want to let the bots do?

If you’re Ryan Close, the cofounder of Bartesian, the answer is both.

At last month’s Smart Kitchen Summit, Close talked about how some people initially resented the idea of letting a robotic drink mixer do the work.

“Early on we had some people at CES thumb their nose at the idea of (automated) cocktails,” said Close. He would tell them that he wasn’t there to tell them how to make a cocktail, and yes, it is an art form, but then suggested that they’re not competing with bartenders or self-styled mixologists, but instead the huge market for ready-to-drink (RTD) cocktails, a $3 billion market market growing at almost 7% a year.

RTDs are “high fructose, high sugar,” said Close. Not only that, he said, but bartenderbots make fresher cocktails since they are still local mixology while a mass-produced cocktail is not. RTDs are “batch made; you can’t offer variety to your guests. There is not anything visceral to it, it’s twisting a cap off, whereas the art of mixology is still happening in our machine, you can see the liquor coming in, everything is being reconstituted, so it’s incredibly fresh.”

He also pointed out how bartenders themselves like the idea of using their recipe-driven drink capsules, since it allowed them to do something they’ve never done before: Extend their reach beyond the bar.

“Some of these bartenders who are very proud of what they created, they can only offer it in the restaurant,” said Close. Now, “they can create mixology, and we can put it into our capsules, and they can brand a ‘Nobu Malibu’ line of capsules.’

This recipe licensing model is similar to the one PicoBrew if offering, only instead they license recipes from master brewers at craft breweries from around the world such as Rogue’s Dead Guy Ale.

This allows novices “stand on the should of giants, great brewers, and great recipes,” said Bill Mitchell, PicoBrew CEO, who appeared alongside Close in a panel moderated by Digital Trends Jenny McGrath.

Check out the video above to hear the full session.

Alton Brown Makes A Good Point: Is There Room For All These New Kitchen Gadgets?

The strawberry slicer. The veggetti. The Rollie. We totally feel Alton Brown’s pain about the poor design and general uselessness of some of these gadgets. Good thing that only applies to gadgets, not tech, right?

Well, not exactly. Here at The Spoon we spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about the line between gadget and technology. Is it the use of electricity? Batteries? The implementation of higher-level concepts? We’re still sorting all of this out, and we’d love to hear what you think in the comments below.

But here’s a bigger problem that Alton raises so clearly: “unitaskers,” as he calls them, or anything that can only do one job. They take up space in the kitchen and usually only solve one fairly minor problem. Unfortunately most connected kitchen tech falls into this category at the moment: connected coffee makers, pancakebots, sous vide machines, the list goes on. Will that change, or, as we become more acquainted with technology in the kitchen, will we simply build more counters and storage space?