When Kitchen Innovations, a small Toronto-based maker of kitchen gadgets, claimed that its NutriScale was “the ONLY” all-in-one cutting board and kitchen scale, I was skeptical. The idea seemed so obvious that there had to be a ton of them out there.
After some Googling however, it seems that, like the Highlander, NutriScale may be the only one — in North America anyway (there appears to be one from Salter in the UK). But even then, NutriScale isn’t actually available anywhere yet; it’s still a project on Kickstarter that has a long way to go to complete its campaign goal.
The NutriScale is exactly what it says it is: an 11-pound kitchen scale with plastic covers that you can cut things on. In one place, you can weigh the right amount of meat or vegetables required for a recipe and chop them up. The device has a built-in hole for sliding the cut up pieces neatly into a bowl, pan or blender, and there’s an optional second cutting surface so you don’t use the same board for meats and vegetables.
The cutting surfaces are plastic and dishwasher safe. According to people at the company, the sensors embedded in the scale are hearty enough to withstand the pressures of repetitive, high impact cutting.
Kitchen Innovations is looking to crowdfund $40,000 (~$50,000 Canadian dollars) by December 1. The money will go towards machine tooling and manufacturing, and help fund a portion of the initial 5,000-unit product run.
NutriScale is biggest project ever for Kitchen Innovations, which has designed and manufactured kitchen gadgets such as colorful spoon holders and oven mitts since 2004. It’s also the first product the company has designed that contains electronics, which may be a red flag for some Kickstarter watchers. There have been many a Kickstarted hardware projects that had a rough time actually getting to market, and this being a first-time product for the company may present unforeseen challenges.
Kitchen Innovations is confident, however, that it will be able to avoid any production issues and deliver the NutriScale because it has a long history of manufacturing and trusted relationships with factories overseas. Still, integrating sensors and other electronics into a device can create issues that don’t arise when making silicone spoons.
What’s nice about NutriScale is that it’s not trying to be everything to everyone or drastically reinvent anything. There’s no artificial intelligence, no internet connection, and no companion app. It just combines the functionality of two standalone devices into one.
Which does make you wonder why there aren’t a ton of them out there.
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