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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Virtual Reality

Amazon Now Lets You Buy Physical Goods in Virtual Worlds. Could It Work For Food?

This week, Amazon announced a new platform called Amazon Anywhere that enables the discovery and purchase of physical products from within virtual environments such as virtual and augmented reality and video games.

The platform, which the company showed off through an integration with an augmented reality pet game called Peridot (from the same company that made Pokemon Go), allows customers to buy physical products without leaving the game environment. Game players and VR explorers can see product details, images, availability, Amazon Prime eligibility, price, and estimated delivery date as they would on Amazon’s website. They tap the “buy” button and check out using the linked Amazon account without leaving the game, and from there, products will ship out and can be tracked and managed via the Amazon app or website.

Today in-game and virtual world purchases are limited to digital goods like currencies or digital characters, but Amazon’s new platform opens up a potentially interesting new way for players to buy physical products. The Peridot demo enables players to buy merch like t-shirts, hoodies, phone accessories, and throw pillows with game art on them, but what if shelf-stable food or food-related items were sold from within the virtual environment? Would emerging CPG brands, which often use DTC strategies early on, see this as a potential new channel to market?

While the idea is an intriguing one, the main problem with Amazon’s platform is it’s Amazon’s platform. Amazon is a relatively expensive place to purchase food, and smaller emerging DTC brands tend to prefer selling on their website using white-label e-commerce platforms like Shopify, WooCommerce/WordPress, Magento, and Squarespace until they finally graduate to retail.

However, in-world physical product purchases might get traction with bigger multichannel CPGs. Amazon tried to court big CPG brands early on with its IoT-powered Dash buttons, but eventually abandoned the project in 2019 (though they are still selling a Dash smart shelf). The company also tried to get a return on its massive investment in Alexa through sales of everyday consumables, but the division’s recent struggles show consumers, for the most part, still like to click buttons on a web page or an app to complete a purchase.

Which brings us back to Amazon Everywhere. The use of virtual or augmented worlds will grow in time, meaning Amazon’s early effort to build a platform could pay big dividends in the long run. Brands could tie products to stories or characters through experiences that would be pretty much impossible through more traditional advertising. With in-world purchases, they would be able to convert in an entirely new way.

While it’s too soon to tell if consumers will bite, I have no doubt Amazon will attempt to find out. My guess is we’ll also see other players like Facebook and Microsoft follow Amazon’s lead and build out VR and video game in-world purchase platforms for physical products as well, but for now, it looks like Amazon has got the jump on them.

Make Beats at the Breakfast Table with Reese’s Puffs AR Cereal Box Drum Machine

After seeing Mark Ronson’s “Watch the Sound” series on music, my 10-year-old son is now very into drum machines and beats. And while he would love a vintage Roland TR 808 to kick off his burgeoning music career, I think instead I’ll get him a box of Reese’s Puffs cereal.

Not that I think a bowl of Reese’s Puffs is the breakfast of champions, but a new promotional box for the cereal out now features an augmented reality drum machine on the back. I received a press release about the new cereal box beatmaker this morning. Usually when I get these types of emails, I immediately toss them. But as I looked at the information, it actually seemed like a pretty cool use of technology, so I went out and bought a box this morning (with apologies to my wife, who does not yet know there is a giant box of sugar cereal jammed into our pantry).

Here’s how it works. On the back of the box is a diagram of the RP-FX drum pad. You scan a special QR code with your mobile phone and it takes you to a special Reese’s web app that accesses your phone’s camera. Place cereal puffs wherever you like on the drum pad spaces and then hover your camera phone over the box. Using AR, the app “reads” where you placed your puffs and generates a beat accordingly. Move the puffs around and the beat changes.

It’s definitely not high fidelity or Pro Tools quality production, but it actually works surprisingly well. Once you have your beat just as you like, you can use the app to record it, so you can share it with friends or use it as the basis of your next club banger.

You can hear the one I whipped up this morning here (or, you know, wait a few months and it’ll be all over the radio).

As noted earlier, I typically shy away from covering promotional stunts like this. But as a parent and a fan of both music and technology, this promotion is actually worth, well, promoting. Besides, using a cereal box to build your own beat sure beats digging for a cheap plastic toy at the bottom of one.

Augmented Reality Bites

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Virtual food hall, meet the augmented-reality restaurant menu. You’ll soon be best friends.

Hear me out.

Over these last few weeks, multiple news bites around virtual food halls have surfaced. These food halls are collections of restaurants that exist online and where meals are only available for delivery and pickup. They are in many ways a natural effect of the pandemic shutting down dining rooms and the restaurant biz going off-premises.

The latest one comes from Lunchbox. This week, the company integrated its online digital order platform into C3’s virtual restaurant brand ecosystem to bring a bunch of different delivery-only eateries under one virtual umbrella.

Being able to order a plant-based burger, chicken, and maybe a rice dish through a single digital interface sounds great until you zero in on that word digital. One of the potential problems with this new wave of virtual food halls is that customers will never have the chance to actually visit these restaurants in person. Your introduction to their food comes in the form of 2D thumbnails you have to scroll through on your phone and squint at to even get an inkling of what you’re about to order. If you’re familiar with the restaurant that’s less of an issue, but most virtual food halls and brands are new, and ordering from them is something of a culinary gamble.

Enter augmented reality (AR), a technology some say is the next great innovation for restaurant menus. Modern Restaurant Management ran a piece this week exploring the possibility of customers using their own smartphones to display 3D models of the food they are about to order. With AR, instead of a small, flat, 2D image, a user could “see” how the dish looks on their table, zoom in on it and view it from multiple angles to get a much better idea of what they’re about to buy.

I should note that the Modern Restaurant Management Post was authored by Mike Cadoux of augmented reality platform QReal. In other words, Cadoux’s has skin in the AR game.

But he makes a good point when it comes to thinking about AR in the context of the new off-premises reality in which restaurants now operate: “Early adoption of AR was hindered by the problem of getting the experience to the customer. People are loath to download apps, and delivery platforms had to service thousands of restaurants, most of which wouldn’t have access to 3D models. Now a restaurant or brand can push their own content to the customer. They would be wise to utilize all the smartphones capabilities and showcase their food with the next-generation of content.”

Spoon Editor Chris Albrecht actually spoke with Cadoux back in August, when QReal released a study with Oxford University’s Saïd Business School that found participants were more likely to order an item if they could view options in AR. “It’s like a test drive for a car,” Cadoux told The Spoon at the time. “Same way when you buy food, you want to think about what it’s like to eat it.”

The tech makes especially good sense for virtual food halls. As I said, these restaurants do not have dining rooms, so customers are relying solely on the digital realm to learn about the food. If, for the sake of argument, Lunchbox and C3 were to integrate AR into their ordering platform, they could better showcase the “fine dining” aspects of their food and in doing so make their meals more appetizing. Everyone else, from Zuul’s virtual-only sandwich chain to Steve Aoki’s pizza brand, could also reap the benefits of AR in the virtual restaurant realm.

AR is not yet mainstream, and its presence in the restaurant industry is still largely forthcoming. But since one pandemic year seems equal to five normal ones, an AR-powered food hall may be closer than we think.

Uber Engineer Says “No” to Uber’s Prop. 22

Californians, take note. One of the things those in the Golden State will vote on come November is Prop. 22, a $180 million ballot measure that would allow third-party delivery services to classify drivers as independent contractors. The measure would effectively override California’s Assembly Bill 5 (AB 5), which was signed into law last year and dictates that Uber, Grubhub, and other gig-economy companies must classify drivers and couriers as employees. 

Classifying them as independent contractors means delivery drivers would lack access to workers comp., paid sick leave, and other benefits W-2 employees receive. It goes without saying that a lot of folks are against Prop. 22. One of them is an employee at Uber.

Kurt Nelson, who’s been a software engineer at Uber since 2018, penned an op-ed at TechCrunch this week that argues drivers should be classified as employees. Nelson, who still makes deliveries for app-based companies in order to understand the gig economy, writes that Uber “refuses to obey” AB5 and instead prefers to “write a new set of rules for themselves” with Prop. 22. 

Among many other notable lines, there was also this gem about the gig economy: “I’ve met drivers who have to sleep in their cars, risk financial ruin over a single doctor’s appointment or go without life-saving medication. There’s no way around it. Uber’s Prop 22 is a multi-million effort to deny these workers their rights.”

You can read the piece in its entirety here. Uber has yet to make any public response to Nelson’s op-ed, so stay tuned.

Restaurant Tech ‘Round the Web

Kitchen United CEO Jim Collins has stepped down to “focus on personal endeavors,” according to Nation’s Restaurant News. Collins played a major role in turning KU into one of the leaders of the ghost kitchen space. Michael Montagano, KU’s former chief financial officer and treasurer, has been named CEO.

Mobile POS platform GoTab launched an integration with hospitality labor management system 7shifts. The combined offering gives restaurant owners/operators the ability to view sales and labor data from the same interface.

Meal prep software company Meallogix announced a partnership with DoorDash this week. A press release sent to The Spoon notes that the deal gives Meallogix’ customers the option of using the third-party delivery service to manage their routes for the last mile of delivery.

As Menus Move to Mobile Phones, Research Shows AR Could Drive More Sales

Among the countless ways COVID is altering the meal journey is the humble menu. Gone are the germy, reusable laminated menus of the past, and while single-use paper menus are a cheap stopgap, the whole experience will move to our mobile phones.

There’s a problem with ordering through mobile menus, though: they aren’t very enticing. Unless you’re familiar with the restaurant you’re ordering from, you’re scrolling and swiping through a lengthy list of tiny 2D thumbnail images to find what you want.

But new research out of Oxford University shows that augmented reality (AR) could be the way to create appetizing menus on your mobile phone. Oxford’s study, conducted in Oxford, England last year in partnership with the AR company Qreal, a subsidiary of The Glimpse Group, gave some participants traditional menus and others AR-capable menus that presented the virtual food as it would look right in front of them on the table.

Highlights from the study, which were emailed to The Spoon, found that “Participants were significantly more likely to order a dessert if they viewed options in the AR menu (41.2%) versus the control menu (18%).” This was across age groups and sexes, as well as across familiarity with AR, so it wasn’t just tech-savvy folk indulging in a shiny new toy.

Not only that, but participants in the study using the AR menu also “spent significantly more on dessert than those in the control condition, $2.93 versus $1.38 (increase of 112%)”

As Mike Cadoux, General Manager of Qreal, summed it up with me over the phone last week, the addition of AR plays into the old adage that you “eat with your eyes first.”

“It’s like a test drive for a car,” said Cadoux, “Same way when you buy food, you want to think about what it’s like to eat it.”

If the results of this study had been released even six months ago, it probably would have been viewed as more of an interesting idea. A nice-to-have kind of thing, but definitely a can kicked down the road in favor of something more pressing.

The coronavirus, however, could accelerate AR’s adoption in the restaurant industry. First, as noted, even if you can (legally and emotionally) to sit and dine in a restaurant, the menu is moving towards mobile, so restaurants need to rethink their digital strategy and how they present their food to customers to begin with.

But more pressing is the fact that the restaurant business was already moving towards off-premises eating before the pandemic and now relies on delivery and takeout to stay alive. This, in turn means that more people will be selecting their meals from the comfort of their couch via mobile phone.

“Instead of a thumbnail of a picture,” Cadoux said, “You can view it in 3D and move it to an AR experience.” AR gives customers a better sense of what the food will look like, from all angles, when it’s on their own plates on and tables.

In addition to restaurants, third-party delivery services, with their marketplaces and massive audiences, should also be looking closely at providing an AR option.

There are the economics of a shift to an AR menu for any restaurant of delivery service to consider. But thanks to Apple and Google, AR technology is easier than ever to implement. And while the Oxford study doesn’t prove outright that implementing AR menus will guarantee increased sales, the study is a nice data point that seems to indicate it’s worth at least experimenting with it.

Coolhobo is Developing AR to Identify Dietary Restrictions in the Grocery Aisle

I’ve been on a diet since the beginning of the year. It’s nothing crazy, just trying to cut out a lot of sugar and carbs. This involves more time at the grocery store because I have to read the label and inspect the nutrition facts on every item before I buy it.

So I was intrigued when Chinese AR startup Coolhobo posted a video of a new technology its working on called Hobose that uses your phone’s camera and computer vision to quickly find foods that fit your particular dietary needs/restrictions. The Hobose technology can be integrated into a native app from a partner like a grocery retailer, and once opened, Hobose creates a personalized “Traffic Light” for shoppers. Users go through and select what they want to avoid, things like high calories, or high carbs, high fats, etc.. There’s also a ranking for how many additives a shopper will tolerate.

Once in the store, the shopper fires up the mobile app and points the camera at various products on the shelves. As each item is scanned, Hobose comes back with a green light (good!) or red light (too much of what you don’t want). You can see it in action in this demo video that Coolhobo posted.

Hobose in action, green is a go, red is a no!

When we first wrote about Coolhobo almost two years ago, the company was working on much bigger, virtual assistant for grocery shoppers. It would direct people to items in the store, provide lots of information on that product (like the story of an imported wine), and also had social features.

This is definitely more of a stripped down solution from the company. Coolhobo Co-Founder and CEO Loic Kobbes told me via email “We’ve learned from many iterations that users don’t want to be overloaded with information, they just want to know what’s good for them.”

It’s easy to see the appeal of this type of fast, should I/shouldn’t I information at the grocery store where there are a ton of products, some of which may make health claims that are at the very least, misleading. Other companies are working on nutrition guidance solutions as well, such as DNA Nudge, which uses a combination of your DNA and a wearable that scans products to give you a thumbs up or thumbs down on particular items.

Right now, Kobbes said that Hobose is in the development stage and the company is looking for partners to test it out. While Coolhobo may be offering a more svelte AR application than its previous work, it is expanding its worldview for the first time and looking to bring in partners from countries outside of China.

I’m not sure if it will make it to my local market, but who knows? Perhaps I can replace reading each box I pick up with a quick scan of my phone.

The Many Ways VR is Changing How We Eat

It would be easy to dismiss virtual reality (VR) as something that won’t impact what and how we eat, especially since, you know, virtual eating won’t fill a physical stomach. But there’s actually a lot going on in VR that is transforming our relationship with food.

I started thinking about this after reading a study in Food Navigator about how VR can provide sensory context for food taste testing. The idea behind the study is that where we consume food can have an impact on how we perceive it. Eaters can perceive food served in a Michelin-starred restaurant differently than the same food served at a suburban mall food court.

As Food Navigator writes, in this VR study conducted at Cornell, participants were given identical samples of blue cheese that they tasted in three virtual settings: a lab, a park bench and a dairy barn. Participants rated the cheese as more pungent in the barn setting that the other settings.

This means that food companies may be able to construct virtual testing environments to see how consumers react to products in different settings, rather than having to actually build or re-locate tests to different real world settings. They could taste whether a frozen lasagne tastes better at home, or in an office lunch room to better understand consumers and market accordingly.

Cornell researchers could take this sensory study up a notch with Givaudan’s virtual smell technology. We tried it out at the Food IT conference earlier this year and were amazed at how it recreated virtual smells like strawberry and banana as we made virtual smoothies in a blender, or virtual garlic and onions on our steak.

But in addition to tricking our senses, virtual reality is also poised to make real changes up and down the food stack.

There are already plenty of restaurants that will dazzle you with a VR experience, and even using VR to better train restaurant employees. Companies like Kabaq are laying the groundwork for augmented reality in restaurants for food selection and virtual reality for digital food courts where people peruse and order food for delivery.

Virtual reality is being used to make training robots easier so we don’t just order food for delivery from our favorite restaurant, we recreate that same food in our homes. As we’ve written before, it’s possible that world class chefs could use VR to train robots with precise movements. Someday not too far off, the training software for these robots could then be downloaded to your home cooking robot so you could have a virtual Thomas Keller make your dinner.

On the farm, companies like AI Reverie are using virtual reality to create synthetic data that can be used to train artificial intelligence. Robot weed killers could be trained to spot specific types of weeds in a virtual setting, which means the robot could learn how that weed looks in all different kinds of lighting and weather conditions, without needing to wait for those conditions to occur in the real world.

VR has been overhyped before, so most people are probably wary of its true promise at this point. But the technology is making small in-roads right now and will have a very real impact in the near future.

Kabaq Wants to Create the World’s First Virtual Reality Food Court

There’s no denying that we live in an age of curated images, where every Instagram photo is cropped, edited, and put through a filter before it’s sent into the stratosphere.

Kabaq, one of the 13 companies pitching at the Startup Showcase for the Smart Kitchen Summit (SKS) this October, is leveraging virtual and augmented reality (VR and AR) to create a more immersive food experience for our image-obsessed society. Thus far, the company has worked with Magnolia Bakery to help engaged couples see their wedding cake before the big day, and also led an AR campaign to let Snapchat users play with 3D-visualized pizzas.

But Kabaq founder Alper Guler has much grander ambitions for his company. Read our Q&A with Guler to get a better picture (pun intended) of their vision for a future in which our food choices are guided by VR and AR.

This interview has been edited for clarity. 

The Spoon: First thing’s first: give us your 15-second elevator pitch.
Kabaq: As Kabaq, we create the most lifelike 3D models of food in the world through AR/VR. Our main goal is to help customers to decide what to eat, while at the same time helping restaurants to push premium items and tell stories about their food.

What inspired you to start Kabaq?
The era of Instagram, Facebook and Snapchat has changed what and how we eat at restaurants. Today food isn’t just about taste; it’s also about the visual experience. Now social platforms and smartphone manufacturers have created this shift in food, investing and pushing heavily in immersive technologies like augmented and virtual reality. These two emerging trends inspired us to bring Kabaq into life.

What’s the most challenging part of getting a food tech startup off the ground?
Food and technology are connected to dining experiences more than ever. Technology is improving our experience of how we grow, source, discover and order food. But adaptation of new technology has been slow, and we are experiencing a relatively slow response from the market.

How will Kabaq change the day-to-day life of its users?
In the future I believe smart glasses will replace smartphones. Everybody will use these smart glasses to engage with digital experiences around them. Imagine you are in this restaurant, using your augmented reality glasses: you can see the whole menu on your table virtually, and even order through your glasses. Don’t worry about the check — it is already paid through your glasses.

VR can also change how we order delivery. Think about how we used to connect to the internet through dial-up modems. We needed to disconnect from the internet to call and order food for pick-up. Then, companies like Seamless created platforms to order food online. With mobile phones and location-based services like UberEats, the experience became even more smooth.

In the near future I believe when you are connected to VR, you will also order your food in VR. We will create the world’s first virtual food court for people to visit through VR and order directly through the same system.

What’s next for Kabaq?
We are creating beneficial use-cases for using AR in-restaurants, delivery apps, marketing, catering and cookbooks. We’re working to bring AR to all aspects of food — and soon.

—

Thanks, Alper! Get your tickets to SKS to hear him pitch alongside 12 emerging food tech companies at our Startup Showcase and get a taste of how Kabaq applies VR to food.

How Will AR and VR Change the Way We Eat? Jenny Dorsey Has Some Thoughts

Part chef, part entrepreneur, all innovator, Jenny Dorsey has become to go-to expert in the intersection of augmented and virtual reality. When Smart Kitchen Summit founder Michael Wolf spoke with her on our podcast last year, he called her “foremost authority on the nexus point between AR/VR and food.”

So of course we invited Dorsey to speak about it on stage at SKS. To whet your palate, we asked her a few questions to discover more about what exactly we have to look forward to in culinary future — virtual and otherwise.

Want to learn more? Make sure to get your tickets to SKS on October 8-9th to see Jenny Dorsey talk about how augmented and virtual reality will change the way we eat.

This interview has been edited for clarity and content.

Q: What drew you to explore AR and VR through food, something seemingly very separate and disconnected?
A: It is the strangest story. I went to acupuncture in the spring of 2017 totally confused about what I wanted to do with my life and art. I had this random idea pop into my head at acupuncture that I should focus on AR and VR…which I literally knew nothing about. I went home to my husband and he just said, “Okay, I support you…but I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Fast forward a year, and I’ve been experimenting with different ways to merge these various things together. I’ve learned a lot about what doesn’t work (eating with headsets on) and what makes people prone to distraction (AR apps), but I also found some pretty awesome ways to communicate and strengthen my food through AR/VR. For instance, I hosted a tasting event in Nicaragua where we profiled three different types of Nicaraguan agricultural staples using 360° video, then served guests both headsets and the final tasting menu after they watched — and learned — the seed-to-harvest process of these ingredients. It was really educational, fun (for many, it was their first time in VR!) and the process added some extra meaning to the food and drink we prepared.

Our next big thing is a series called “Asian in America”, which explores the Asian American identity through a symbolic meal, paired with a stroke-by-stroke Tilt Brush recreation of each dish for viewers to watch, while listening to the symbolic explanations, before eating. (You can see more about both of those events over at Studio ATAO.)

Q: Tell us about your experimental pop-up series, Wednesdays.
A: Wednesdays started in January 2014 as a personal creative outlet while I was working in a restaurant and feeling pretty burned out. At the time, my then-boyfriend, now-husband was still in business school (where we met) and I remember us commiserating on how hard it was to get to really know people around us. He was interested in making cocktails, and we thought: why don’t we host a dinner party? We wanted to create an environment where people would be comfortable enough to be themselves and be vulnerable around others.

We hosted a beta-series of dinners with friends for the first month, then we started getting strangers coming to the table to eat, which prompted us to say “Hey, maybe we are onto something”. Fast forward 4 ½ years and we’ve hosted hundreds of dinners for thousands of guests across New York City and San Francisco, been written up in many major food media outlets, and usually sell out in 30 minutes or less!

We aren’t your average dinner party — we do ask a lot from our guests. There’s mandatory questions to answer before you even purchase your ticket (everything from “What’s your biggest failure and how has it motivated you?” to “Are you in the job you want? If not, how are you getting there?”), lots of bizarre things to eat and drink when you arrive (like bugs!) and direct, in-your-face realness from me, my husband and our team. There’s no small talk. It’s not for everyone, but for the people who follow us I think it’s really what they are looking for.

Q: What’s the coolest/craziest way you’ve seen technology changing the food system? Blow our mind!
A: I’m currently very interested in how blockchain could help the food system. Seeds & Chips just put out a call for blockchain influencing the egg supply chain, so I’m really excited to see what different companies come up with. I also spent some time at a winery last year and was amazed to see they have drones which tell them literally when and which plot of vineyards to pick for a certain Brix (sugar) count in that specific grape. That sort of detailed information would’ve taken constant field-walks to ascertain years ago.

There’s also technology that will calculate exactly how much food waste your restaurant generates in a week/month/year, AND a system that will turn that waste into compost. While technology has done a lot in terms of streamlining of our food system, I’m still waiting for it to solve some of the biggest issues we face today: a living wage, worker rights, consistency and training, preventing food waste, educating consumers, etc. — pieces that require more politics and facetime. Overall, we still have lots of work to do!

Q: How do you see AR/VR — and technology in general — shaping the future of food?
A: I still stand by the major points in my TechCrunch article from late last year. I think the biggest areas of impact will be food products (CPG) and how they are marketed — both experientially (through VR), but also packaging (through AR).

In terms of restaurants, I just wrote a piece about VR training, which I do think will be a fantastic and hugely influential piece of the technology — but it really needs to come down in price point first.

Overall, I think artists and creators are still getting acclimated to how this technology works and what they can do it with. I hope to see AR/VR become almost an expected point of interaction or engagement between food business (product, service or restaurant) and the customer as we continue finding artistry in it.

Q: What’s your desert island food or dish?
A: I feel I should say something cold, because I would be hot, but most likely I would be craving pho. LOL!

Coolhobo Brings Augmented Reality to Chinese Millennial Shoppers

While the name “Coolhobo” might conjure up an image of an old-timey drifter with a bindle and a sweet leather jacket, it’s actually a slight mispronunciation of the Chinese word for “carrot” (胡萝卜).

Based in Shenzen, China, Coolhobo is an early-stage startup that does augmented reality shopping and is aimed at Chinese Millennials. Though it could be used for any type of shopping, the company is starting with groceries. Coolhobo is creating a mobile app that allows shoppers to find desired products in a store, discover more information about them and share their experiences in a social setting to make shopping more fun.

As Coolhobo Co-Founder and CEO Loïc Kobes explained it to me, when the app is launched, users will be able to choose a product they are looking for (for example, a particular bread), and the app will tell them what store close by carries it. Once in the store, a cute Coolhobo virtual assistant pops up in the app to direct the user to the product’s location. Customers point their camera at the item and an array of floating information flitters about on-screen about the product, including nutrition and preparation information, as well as reviews from other customers.

Show is better than tell, so here’s a Coolhobo demo video that walks you through the experience:

AR Shopping by Coolhobo, Adding features and testing new UI

Kobes said that Chinese consumers really like imported products, but there isn’t a lot of information about them. Coolhobo provides that information, and can help customers choose between two similar imported items. But even once they choose something, “People need help to understand how to prepare it, how to cook it,” said Kobes.

Kobes described Coolhobo as a B2B and B2C company, and said he’s in partnership talks with a number of Chinese and international retailers. He said the app is scheduled to launch in June or July. Kobes took an earlier version of Coolhobo through the SOSV accelerator program, and is currently raising a seed round of funding.

According to Kobes, China is far ahead of the U.S. when it comes to shopping experiences, and, in particular, integrating mobile technology into them. This summer, we’ll see if Coolhobo’s augmented reality will be enough of a carrot for stores and consumers to sign up for the experience.

Podcast: A Chef’s Journey To The Intersection Of Virtual/Augmented Reality & Food

Ever since I saw Chewie and CP30 playing hologram chess in Star Wars as a kid, I’ve been intrigued by the idea of creating virtual images and worlds.

A generation later, I more fascinated than ever by what we now call augmented and virtual reality. I’m especially intrigued about where these new technologies intersect with food, and a week doesn’t go by where I read about an innovator creating a new way to enhance the shopping, restaurant or cooking experience with AR or VR.

Another person excited about this fast growing space is Jenny Dorsey. A year ago, the professional chef had an epiphany: she needed to become the foremost authority on nexus point between AR/VR and food.

On the podcast, I catch up with Jenny to hear how her journey to become the go-to expert in this exciting area is going and learn about some new and interesting ways that augmented and virtual reality are changing food.

You can listen to the podcast below, download here or find it on Apple podcasts.

Will VR Help Robots Become Better Chefs?

Robots are playing an increasingly large role in restaurants, in fact they are expected to become mainstream there by 2025. Right now, the robot’s roll is mostly for mundane repetitive tasks, with the more artful bits of cooking still done by humans. There are a lot of reasons robots are relegated to menial tasks, and one of them is that it’s hard to program a robot to do something.

But a new startup spun out of UC Berkeley has developed technology that could bring a more human touch to robot cooking. Embodied Intelligence, which just raised $7 million in seed funding, is taking a new approach by having humans train robots through VR.

MIT Technology Review has a nice explainer on Embodied Intelligence, but for our purposes here, think of it this way: a human wearing virtual reality gear demonstrates how to perform an certain operation. The robot, through deep neural nets, learns how to mimic that VR operation.

As MIT Technology Review reports, more immediate capabilities “… will include picking complex shapes out of bins, assembling electronic components, and manipulating deformable objects such as wires, cables, or fabrics—skills that could translate well to advanced manufacturing settings.”

But it’s easy to imagine this technology expanding beyond the factory. Since the core of this process allows a robot to mimic a human, what if that human is a world-renown chef (or even just a competent one?). It’s fascinating to think of a master’s movements when it comes to slicing, or presenting a plate being precisely repeated.

True, a bucket of chanterelle’s is different than a bin full of bolts, but image recognition, AI and robot precision is only going to get better. It’s not hard to imagine a near future where robots move beyond flipping burgers and into more artful food preparation.

Of course, this also brings up the idea of soul in cooking. Can a machine just mimicking the actions of a chef could fully replicate the touch and experience a human puts into their creations? I don’t know, but if this technology works as advertised, we may not have to wait too long to find out.

Right now, Amazon AR is Kinda Silly for the Kitchen, but Just Wait

Amazon released augmented reality (AR) capabilities through its iOS app yesterday that allow consumers to place virtual versions of objects in real world settings through their phones. The number of products you can place is currently limited, but there is a Kitchen category where you can preview how virtual wares will look on your countertops or in cabinets.

Right now, the feature is more fun than truly useful in the kitchen (I can see it having more of an immediate impact in the living room). Mostly because a lot of the kitchen items are small, like a Cookie Monster mug which I don’t really need augmented reality to show me how much space I need on my counter.

If you’re looking for some utility, the app might be useful for bigger countertop appliances like toaster ovens or slow cookers to get a sense of how they would fit and look in a smaller kitchen. Or if you want to get a sense of how a style of kitchen barstools would look. Or you can get a sense of how a red toaster will work with the current color scheme of your kitchen.

The virtual mockups are definitely rough, and there really aren’t that many items to preview right now. But right now isn’t really the point. Amazon is a company that definitely does not live in the present, it’s always got one eye on the future and setting itself up for success then.

You can see how this would be helpful with larger appliances such as a refrigerator, or oven hood or cooktop to see how it will look. And the ability to provide real-life room mapping would be of great use, for example showing it a space and Amazon pulling up all the appliances that would fit there, or appliance colors that would go well with your existing decor.

There was one bit of unexpected coolness from my brief AR experiment. When I Airdropped the pictures from my phone to my MacBook, it immediately brought up the corresponding page to buy the product on Amazon in my browser. Well, “coolness” may not be the right word, but never let it be said that Amazon is not the master of the frictionless purchase.

You can check out the AR capabilities right now in iOS. Jut go the Amazon shopping app and click on the camera. From there you can find the best place for that Cookie Monster mug.