Drop dropped Drop.
The startup that started with a connected scale eight years ago announced it has a new brand identity. The company is now called Fresco, a name which “(reflects) the company’s priority to connect dots in the kitchen between appliances, home cooks and recipes to make cooking effortless,” said the announcement.
Fresco CEO Ben Harris said that the company needed a new brand given its evolution beyond its hardware roots.
“Drop was a great name for a physical product, but we pivoted to become a smart kitchen platform, providing end-to-end solutions to make appliances connected, from firmware development to IoT expertise and an app that pulls all the appliances together,” Harris said. “As a result, we needed a brand that better represented this.”
Drop is part of a cohort of smart kitchen startups that offer software and connectivity solutions to power kitchen appliances and help consumers cook and plan meals. While some of its peers have increasingly focused on shoppable recipes and looked to help power online grocery integrations, Drop has doubled down on expanding its solutions and increasing its partner roster in the connected kitchen and guided cooking space.
The company emphasized the word neutral when describing itself in a new intro video: “What started with a shared love of food and technology has evolved to become the neutral, cross-brand platform that seamlessly brings appliances, home cooks, and recipes together.” That emphasis on neutrality may be a reference to other smart kitchen software platforms that have sold large stakes to appliance brands (Chefling) or others that have been acquired outright (Whisk/Samsung, Yummly/Whirlpool).
The move to change a brand identity nearly a decade into a company’s existence isn’t without risk. Many in the kitchen and consumer cooking technology space are familiar with the Drop name and its products. Now it’s up to Fresco to educate the market about its new identity. However, because Fresco is a B2B brand, the lift won’t be nearly as heavy a lift for the company since it doesn’t have to educate consumers.
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