In 2017, Miele had attendees at Germany’s big appliance fair, IFA, raving with a demo of a new appliance called the Dialog.
The appliance, which uses solid state cooking technology instead of the more antiquated technology featured in microwave ovens, was an exciting development because it was the first time a high end consumer appliance brand had introduced a product with the cutting edge technology.
However, after 2017 we heard little about the Dialog. Sure, at IFA 2018 the German company talked up a meal delivery service through a partnership with another German company MChef, but, other than that, details of when the Dialog would be available were few and far between.
So imagine my surprise when Miele told me this month that the Dialog is now shipping in 20 countries. According to Miele spokeswoman Julie Cink, the Dialog is currently available in European countries such as “Germany (of course), Austria, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Italy or Great Britain.”
Cink said that in the second quarter of this year, the Dialog will be available in additional European countries such as France, Norway and Greece.
Still no word on when the Dialog will be available in the US. Miele’s executive director and namesake Markus Miele told me via email the holdup is because the required regulatory approval for the Dialog’s RF technology would require significant adaptations to the product.
“The regulations concerning the use of the frequencies are very different and so we have to modify the appliance (a lot),” wrote Miele.
The price tag on the Dialog is high, but in line with what you’d expect for a premium brand like Miele’s biggest product launch in years: 7,990 Euros.
MChef Meal Service Available Across Germany
I was also interested to find out that the meal delivery service we wrote about in 2018 is also available across Germany.
From Miele’s website:
“Customers can order individual dishes or three-course menus for the discerning from MChef, which are then shipped on elegant porcelain plates together with a matching wine to addresses throughout Germany.”
The meal service offers up to 20 different dishes which, according to Miele, are delivered via a “patented transport crate which guarantees freshness; used crockery is returned to the empty crate which is picked up and returned.”
Bottom line, the availability of the Dialog is a big deal and an overall win for solid state cooking. Most appliance companies I’ve talked to are working on developing their own RF cooking appliances, but have yet to push them to market because of the high price tag of the technology. With the Dialog now available, I expect that will put some pressure on other premium brands to look to accelerate their own pushes towards solid state cooking.
Leave a Reply