Today at IFA in Berlin, SideChef and Haier announced a new partnership which will put SideChef’s guided recipes on all new Haier smart fridges released in the European market. The new feature will offer step-by-step cooking instructions and recommend recipes to owners of Haier smart fridges based on the current content of their fridge.
From the release:
Guided recipes are now at users’ fingertips, ensuring successful meal preparation every time. SideChef’s rich recipe content is curated from chefs and culinary professionals, unlocking unlimited meal potential while taking into consideration cuisine cravings, dietary restrictions, and general preferences.
This deal marks another step in the SideChef-Haier relationship, which has been growing steadily for over a year now. The two companies worked closely on development of the GE Kitchen Hub smart display and this past April they expanded their relationship by building an integration that enabled users to send cooking instructions and parameters to different GE appliances from within the SideChef app.
SideChef has in the past done deals with GE in the U.S. and Electrolux is Asia. Now, with the addition of Haier in Europe, SideChef will continue to expand its geographic-specific relationships in the appliance space as it helps Haier build a strong offering in localized language content (such as French and German).
“As Haier China expands its product line out further geographically, we are working with them to have products that are localized through content,” SideChef CEO Kevin Yu told me over the phone. “Recipes are a huge driver for them and others.”
The SideChef content will make its way to all of Haier Europe’s new smart fridges with displays later this year. While the initial version of these guided recipes won’t have the ability to drive and interact with other Haier appliances (such as with the GE implementation in the U.S.), Yu didn’t rule it out from future versions.
And while today’s news is based on the company’s new partnership with a major appliance brand, Yu told me that it’s not just hardware companies he’s talking to nowadays. Meetings with big food and appliance brands are taking up as much or more of his calendar space as they all have gotten serious about digitization in the face of an ever-growing threat from Amazon. Yu said it started with the Amazon acquisition of Whole Foods and momentum has only grown since that time.
“We’re seeing a lot of urgency from the food guys,” he said.
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