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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Alexa

KloveChef Opens Up Voice-Guided Cooking Platform to Publishers

KloveChef, the voice-guided cooking startup cofounded by one of India’s biggest celebrity chefs in Sanjeev Kapoor, is opening up its platform this month to publishers wanting to add voice-guided cooking functionality to their recipes.

The new tool will allow anyone who has recipe content — chefs, cookbook authors, bloggers or food retailers — to upload their recipes to KloveChef’s platform via a web interface and it will convert them into a voice-guided recipes.

“We will democratize the interactive recipe creation and distribution,” said Bahubali Shété, KloveChef cofounder and CEO, in an interview with The Spoon.

Shété told me that recipe publishers will be able to use KloveChef to publish their recipes across a variety of voice platforms such as Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, Google Home and Amazon Fire TV. To do so, they just copy the recipe URL or paste the full recipe into the web interface and KloveChef will convert into a voice-guided recipe.

Shété also said that publishers will have the option of letting users send their recipes posted on other web channels such as YouTube or Pinterest to their voice assistants for guided cooking.

KloveChef is opening up their voice platform after finding some success with their Alexa voice skill targeted primarily at home cooks in India. According to Shété, the guided cooking assistant has a total of 465,000 users and 100,000 monthly active users.

Shété says publishers can make money through KloveChef if the recipe is converted into a shopping list. The recipe-to-shopping list feature, which KloveChef has been testing through its app in India, currently has over 1 million recipes converted into shopping lists via voice search.

I have to admit, I like the idea of self-publishing recipes to voice platforms. It reminds me of the early days of ebooks, when authors would use technology from early pioneers like Smashwords to put their books into the world and on other popular platforms. Perhaps not all that surprisingly, just as like those early days of ebooks, recipe self-publishers are relying on Amazon to reach the end consumer, only instead of Kindle this time it’s Alexa.

It’s too soon to see how successful KloveChef will be in attracting cooks for its voice guided recipe assistant outside of India. In its home market, they’ve been able to leverage the large reach of Kapoor, while here in the states, Alexa tends to favor its featured partners such as Food Network or Tasty. KloveChef will have to compete with the algorithm-favored partners through attracting recipe publishers such as popular food bloggers or food retailers with built-in audiences to accrue a sizeable user base.

Looking forward, the company hopes to also attract users by making the platform better over time. One of the early features will be adapting guided cooking where users can speed up a recipe or slow it down depending on their experience. The company plans to release the new capabilities by mid-August.

KidKraft’s New Toy Features a Smart Kitchen and Market Powered by Alexa and RFID

Perhaps we’ve been going about the roll out of the smart kitchen all wrong. Instead of debuting new, fully functioning–and expensive—smart fridges every year, we should just sit back and let KidKraft work its magic.

Last week at Toy Fair, KidKraft announced its Alexa 2-in-1 Kitchen and Market. That’s right, the wooden kitchen playset filled with wooden pans and fake food you remember from pre-school is getting an upgrade with digital voice assistance and RFID tags.

Like the name says, there are two parts to this playset, a market to buy things and a kitchen. But you actually have to provide your own Alexa device (presumably a cheap one you don’t mind getting banged around).

Alexa will work a little differently in the KidKraft playset. Instead of needing to say “Alexa” (which, if you have a kid and an Alexa, you know can get real annoying real fast), the smart speaker perks up when RFID tagged elements are placed in various places. As CNet reported from Toy Fair, place a hot dog in a pan on the stove and Alexa will respond with cooking noises. Or in another example, if a child “buys” lettuce, Alexa will suggest they make a salad with other ingredients.

The KidKraft playset will also play games and even tell dad jokes, which, as a dad, I am fine with.

There are, of course privacy concerns around bringing a smart speaker directly into the center of your child’s play. Amazon has not always proven to be the best protector of your privacy when it comes to the ubiquitous assistant.

But as with so many things in our connected age, your concern mileage may vary. You also have a more time to think about it as the KidKraft Alexa playset won’t go on sale for $300 on Amazon until next year.

But if you do choose to get one, don’t be surprised when you child starts expecting those same smarts (and dad jokes) in your real kitchen.

Food Tech News: KFC Canada Partners with Alexa, Blockchain and a New Peanut Allergy Drug

Pat yourself on the back — you made it to February. We’re in the thick of winter and here at The Spoon we’re busier than ever reporting on news and prepping for our Customize food personalization summit (you’re coming, right?)

But there’s always time for food tech news! Here are a few interesting stories from around the web this week: an Alexa skill that lets you talk to Colonel Sanders, food safety blockchain, e-grocery funding and a new peanut allergy drug. Enjoy!

KFC Canada unveils new Alexa skill
This week KFC Canada announced a new Alexa skill which allows users to chat with and reorder fried chicken from… the Colonel himself. The fast food chain teamed up with AWS to develop the skill, which uses AI to turn text into speech that sounds like the voice of Colonel Sanders. According to a release from KFC Canada, KFC is the first global QSR to use this text-to-speech technology. 

Photo: Neogen

Neogen partners with riope.io for food safety blockchain
Neogen Corporation, an international food safety company, is partnering with blockchain-for-food startup Ripe Technology (creators of ripe.io). Neogen will use ripe.io to create a blockchain to track food safety diagnostics and animal genomics for their customers. The company hopes that incorporating blockchain will help customers verify the authenticity of their food products and lead to increased transparency and traceability. 

FDA approves drug for peanut allergies
Those who suffer from life-threatening peanut allergies may soon be able to breathe a little easier. US health regulators have approved the first ever drug for peanut allergies. Called Palforzia, the oral drug works by slowly ramping up exposure of peanut protein to desensitize allergy sufferers. It’s specifically meant for children and teenagers.

E-grocery Supermercato24 raises €11 million (~$12.1 USD)
Supermercato24, a Milan-based e-grocery marketplace, announced that it had raised  €11 million (~$12.1 million USD), bringing its total funding to €28.4 million ($31.2 million USD) (via EU Startups). The round was led by DIP with participation from current investors 360 Capital Partners, Innogest and more. On Supermercato’s online platform, users can shop for groceries from local supermarkets, which will then be delivered to their door. With its new funds, Supermercato24 will expand its operations throughout Italy and Poland, where it’s already available, and grow into new countries. 

Amazon: Instant Pots, Avocados and, of course, Amazon Devices are Big Sellers This Year

In what is becoming its own holiday tradition, Amazon sent out a press release this week explaining how Amazon and Amazon devices in particular crushed it this past Cyber Monday.

In Amazon’s typical vague fashion, the company didn’t release any hard numbers, saying only that “Customers purchased millions more Amazon Devices compared to the same period last year in Amazon’s Stores globally and the best-selling items were Echo Dot and Fire TV Stick 4K with Alexa Voice Remote.”

It’s no real surprise that the biggest e-commerce site in the world could pull levers and buttons on its biggest shopping day of the year to generate millions of sales of its own products. But if we look back, during last year’s Cyber Monday holiday weekend, Echo Dot was also a big seller, with millions of Echo devices sold. And in 2017, Amazon said that over that entire holiday shopping season that it had sold tens of millions of Alexa devices.

In short, dominance perpetuates itself, and with Amazon owning 70 percent of the smart speaker market, its dominance doesn’t seem to be going anywhere anytime soon. For the smart kitchen, this means appliance makers will continue to bake Alexa capabilities into their devices, which will beget more sales of Alexa-enabled devices, and the cycle continues.

Quick sidenote: It’s interesting to see Amazon’s wording evolve over the past three years. In 2017 it was “Alexa” enabled devices. In 2018 they were “Echo” devices and this year they are “Amazon” devices. This evolution is a reflection of how Amazon has broadened its first-party offerings with items like the Fire TV devices and Ring connected doorbells and lights.

But it wasn’t all Amazon, Amazon, Amazon this holiday season. The company also announced its “Best of Prime 2019” this week and among the winners were Instant Pot and… avocados.

The Instant Pot (which merged with the maker of Pyrex earlier this year) is indefatigable. Amazon said it has been a top seller for the past three years, and the Instant Pot DUO60 was among the most gifted items by Prime members this year as well.

And while it really didn’t provide any other context or numbers, Avocados were also a big seller throughout 2019 for Amazon Prime members as well.

OK. Sure.

This is just the first round of Amazon’s “Aren’t We Great?” press releases. Expect another after Christmas as well, telling (in vague terms only) how many millions of devices it sold throughout this holiday season.

Alexa Adds Thousands Of Buzzfeed Tasty Recipes To Echo Show

This week Amazon and Buzzfeed announced a partnership that brings thousands of Buzzfeed Tasty’s famous quick-play social videos to Amazon’s video-enabled digital assistants.

According to email sent to The Spoon, here’s how it works: First ask Alexa to find a recipe by saying something like, “Alexa, find pork recipes from Tasty.” Alexa will then show you options, and you can tell the device which recipe to select by saying something like, “Alexa, select recipe number three.”

From there, say, “Alexa, start recipe” and Alexa will read off each step in the recipe as well as list them on the left-hand side of the screen of the Echo Show. It will also show a looping video of the recipe on the right. You can also ask Alexa to read off ingredients by saying “Alexa, read ingredients” and add it to a shopping list by saying “Alexa, add to shopping list.”

I wish I could tell you how well it works, but at the time of this writing I couldn’t get either of my Echo Show devices to actually find Buzzfeed Tasty recipes. The new feature is supposed to be available to anyone in the U.S. with an Echo Show as of this week, so I assume I will be able to access the program over the next few days as the kinks are worked out.

Too bad, since I am very curious about how well turning a Buzzfeed Tasty recipe into a more instructional/step-by-step format on a screen will work. Like many, I’ve watched a lot of Buzzfeed recipes online but have never actually cooked to one of them, in part because they seem designed more for entertainment than to be functional. Putting them onto the Echo Show could change that, so I’ll update this post once I can actually cook with one.

One thing that struck me about this integration is that it is simply turned on and available to work (once it works) for anyone with an Echo Show. This is different from earlier Alexa Echo Show integrations like that of Allrecipes, which required the user to add as an Alexa Skill.

My suspicion is that Amazon is having trouble getting people to add new skills to their voice assistants, so at this point the company is, in some cases, just doing it for the consumer. Makes sense, actually, since a “cloud computer” like Alexa isn’t exactly short on storage. That and it just seems a bit more magical if you one day could just ask Alexa to do something and she does it rather than going through an “add skill” extra-step.

I am also curious how the “add to shopping list” feature works. This news follows an integration with Walmart (via shoppable recipe platform Northfork) that allows Tasty app users to make recipes shoppable by adding them their Walmart shopping lists and online grocery carts. The Alexa/Tasty integration doesn’t quite look like it takes recipes all the way to the Amazon cart, but if I know Amazon, I expect that will eventually change.

SideChef Launches Guided Cooking Integration With Bixby, Samsung’s AI Assistant

This week, SideChef announced an integration with Samsung’s intelligent voice assistant Bixby. The partnership centers around the launch of a voice-activated guided cooking capsule (capsules are Samsung’s equivalent to Amazon Alexa skills) which will give users of Bixby-powered mobile phones access to approximately 15 thousand recipes, most with step-by-step video-powered cooking instructions.

From the news release:

“Users can hone in on the exact recipe they would like by adding natural language constraints, such as dietary restriction, cuisine type, and even specific ingredients. Once a recipe is selected, SideChef provides video instruction through Bixby to guide home cooks through the entire recipe preparation process, from start to finish.”

While Samsung’s voice assistant doesn’t quite have the same degree of loyal usership as, say, Google Assistant on mobile phones or Amazon Alexa in the home, it is installed on a whole lot of Samsung products. Last year Samsung CEO D.J. Koh declared that the company’s AI assistant could reach a total of 500 million devices if it were to be installed on every Samsung device.

Of course, to reach that massive audience, SideChef’s new capsule would then have to be installed by the consumer, who will be able to find it on the Bixby Marketplace (Samsung’s “app store” for Bixby Capsules). Samsung launched the marketplace in mid-2019, and the newness of the store may actually play to SideChef’s advantage as theirs is probably one of the few recipe-centric voice apps and most likely the only guided cooking capsule on the still relatively bare shelves of the Bixby marketplace.

This move comes a year after SideChef launched on Amazon’s video-enabled Alexa devices, the Alexa Echo Show and Echo Spot, and just a couple months after the smart kitchen software startup announced an integration with Haier’s smart fridges at IFA 2019. While it isn’t immediately clear if the Bixby integration will put SideChef on Samsung Family Hub refrigerators, I would expect that will happen sooner rather than later.

Finally, while SideChef continues to rack up appliance partnerships, the company is also beginning to explore partnerships with big CPG brands. Last month the startup partnered with Bacardi through its Alexa integration to enable step-by-step drink mixing.  This trend of food brands integrating with smart kitchen software platforms isn’t limited to SideChef, as SideChef competitor Innit announced a partnership in September with Mars through a Google Lens integration that will enable both guided cooking and personalized meal and nutrition recommendations.

How Sevenrooms Is Making Voice Tech the Centerpiece of Restaurant Operations

If you are a restaurant in 2019, one of your most valuable assets is your customer data: what they order, how much they spend, whether or not they hate parsley. There are numerous tech platforms nowadays to help restaurants access this mountain of information, but historically that’s meant handling a tablet or mobile device along with all the other items restaurant staff juggle.

Guest-management platform Sevenrooms wants to change that by making it possible to access vital customer information using your voice.

The NYC-based company’s software platform already lets restaurants track customer data points in real time and access that information quickly to provide guests with more personalized service. Now the company is doubling-down on voice tech, which it believes will be the key tool for collecting and inputing customer data into restaurant systems of the future.

The company, who has raised $21.5 million to date, received an investment for an undisclosed sum from the Amazon Alexa Fund in late 2018 and has been working on an Alexa skill ever since to help restaurants access customer data faster and more seamlessly, and without having to use their hands.

“That’s a thing that would have originally required a GM to be looking down at a tablet or some form of screen,” Allison Page, Sevenrooms’ cofounder and Chief Product Officer, says over the phone of getting customer data. “And Alexa’s going to make it so much easier to get [that information] hands free in the middle of service so they don’t have to interrupt that hospitality they’re providing.”

So long as a guest’s information is stored in the restaurant’s system (via, for example, a loyalty program), Alexa can access that information with a simple voice command. For example, a GM could ask Alexa who is sitting at Table 5 and be told it’s a local customer who’s spent a total of $5,000 at the restaurant over the course of time and is celebrating an anniversary that night. The GM could then send over a giftcard, dessert or some other token of appreciation for the guest that would both personalize their experience that night and, hopefully, keep them coming back.

In certain settings, it might seem superfluous to add a voice layer to a system. But restaurants are inherently chaotic settings where multitasking reigns supreme and staff quite literally have their hands full most of the time with trays of food that could easily be spilled and damage a touchscreen device. Going hands-free with voice-enabled technology is potentially a far more seamless way of integrating guest management into a restaurant’s system. Page says the skill can also tell a user things like how much revenue a restaurant has booked that night and how that number compares to previous nights, if a guest has dietary restrictions, and even if they wrote any recent reviews of the restaurant.

The system also works the other way around. If a server or GM learns, for example, that a guest just moved to the neighborhood, they can tell Alexa to input that data into the guest’s profile to store as information for future visits.

All of this can be done without the user ever having to log into the Sevenrooms system, and that’s at the heart of Sevenrooms’ Alexa integration: bringing tech into the restaurant without letting it take over a la tablet hell.

Page demonstrated this at the 2019 NRN show by donning a pair of Alexa-enabled glasses and showing the audience how she could ask the skill questions about a restaurant guest and have the information appear right on the lens.

Whether its glasses, watches, or some other wearable device that’s the future of voice tech is yet to be determined. While voice tech in the restaurant has gotten a lot of press lately thanks to McDonald’s acquisition of Apprente, it’s still early days for the technology’s place in restaurants, and there are still challenges to work through. For example, Page says one of the current hurdles for Sevenrooms is getting Alexa to properly understand voice commands and questions in the middle of a noisy dining room. The company is currently working with Amazon on solving this issue.

There’s also the question of whether restaurants will sign up for yet-another piece of tech, and one they can’t even put their hands on. Page doesn’t seem terribly concerned about this, however. As she sees it, the benefits of “not having to take your eyes off the dining room and not having to take your eyes off the guest” will prove valuable enough to the customer to justify making voice tech a central part of a restaurant’s guest management system.

The Week in Restaurant Tech: It Was Mostly About McDonald’s

McDonald’s grabbed multiple headlines this week, and honestly if the chain keeps adding tech-forward initiatives at its current hell-bent pace, I’m gonna have to rename this column “The Week in McDonald’s Tech.”

As we covered earlier in the week, the company broke its longstanding silence on plant-based burgers by announcing the soon-to-launch P.L.T. (“plant,” “lettuce,” “tomato”) sandwich for menus in Canada.

But the possibly ill-named patty wasn’t the only bit of news to come out of the mega-chain’s headquarters. Lately McDonald’s seems to be taking a page from Domino’s playbook; which is to say, the chain is fast becoming as known for its tech initiatives as it is for its burgers.

Image via McDonald’s.

“Alexa, Get Me a McDonald’s Job” Is Now a Thing
This week, McDonald’s also announced it is working with Alexa to let potential new hires apply through a voice-initiated application process. Dubbed “McDonald’s Apply Thru,” the skill works on both Alexa- and Google Assistant-enabled devices. Users can simply say, “Alexa, help get me a job at McDonald’s” (or the Google equivalent of that statement) and answer a few basic questions via voice before getting sent a link to complete the application process.

It’s a neat trick . . . I guess. But you have to wonder if bolting voice capability to the front of the application procedure will actually make getting a job at McDonald’s faster and easier, or if it’s just tech for the sake of tech. Obviously it’s early days for these kinds of voice-activated initiatives. It’s not, as Restaurant Dive pointed out, a totally seamless process yet. McDonald’s will need to refine it if it wants to make the voice-enabled application process a long-term facet of its hiring process.

More Tension With McDonald’s Franchisees
But not everyone in McDonaldsland is thrilled about tech for the sake of tech, or the pace at which McDonald’s is aiming to overhaul its locations, of which there are more than 37,000 worldwide. This week, a Bloomberg article delved partly into some of the concerns and frustrations franchises face as its McBoss continues to mandate various tech initiatives.

You should read the full article, which is a fascinating look at how CEO Steve Easterbrook turned the company’s lagging sales around with tech. But franchisees are balking at the expectations around revamping their stores for this “Experience of the Future.” As Bloomberg noted, “They object to the enormous costs of the project, which, for owners of several locations, can run into tens of millions of dollars, even with McDonald’s offering to subsidize 55 percent of the capital for the remodels.”

This is not a new story. Friction between HQ and franchisees has been steadily growing for a while now. And with AI in drive-thrus and voice-recognition now part of the McDonald’s tech tool box, in all likelihood, the McSaga will get more intense in the coming months.

DoorDash Data Breach
DoorDash said in a blog post on Thursday that 4.9 million customers, merchants, and drivers had their information stolen by hackers. That includes names, email addresses, delivery addresses, passwords and, for some, the last four digits of their credit cards. DoorDash pointed out, in bold-faced type, that full payment info was not accessed and that “the information accessed is not sufficient to make fraudulent charges on your payment card.” The breach happened all the way back on May 4, 2019. DoorDash said customers, merchants and Dashers who joined after April 5, 2018 are not affected.

New Deals in Third-Party Delivery
Not that a hack enough to slow down the growth of restaurant delivery via third parties. This week, a few more chains announced deals with various delivery services. Postmates added two new partners, O’Charley’s and restaurant company Kahala Brands, who owns chains like Pinkberry and Blimpie. Meanwhile, Sweetgreen struck an exclusive deal with Uber Eats. That’s a win for the latter, who took a bit of a blow earlier this year when its exclusive contract ended with, yup, you guessed it, McDonald’s.

If you’re still reading and want to learn more about restaurant tech, join us in Seattle on Oct 7–8 for The Spoon’s annual Smart Kitchen Summit. Grab tickets here.

The Food Tech Show: Is The Smart Kitchen Dumb? Discuss.

The Spoon gang got together this week to discuss some of the stories we’re reading and writing about.

In this episode of The Food Tech Show, Chris, Jenn and myself talk about:

That it. As always, take a listen to this episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. You can also download it directly to your device or just click play below.

 

Discovery Announces Food Network Kitchen, a New Content, Recipe, and Grocery Platform

Have you ever watched Alton Brown or Ina Garten on Food Network and thought, “Wouldn’t it be great if these chefs were in my kitchen, walking me through the cooking process themselves, preferably over a glass of Chardonnay?”

You’re in luck, minus the Chardonnay. At today’s Amazon event in Seattle, Discovery, Inc., which owns Food Network, announced the impending launch of the Food Network Kitchen. The multi-faceted platform will offer 25 weekly live interactive cooking videos featuring celebrity Food Network chefs, as well as over 800 cooking classes and 3,000 instructional videos. It’s a separate, additional service from Food Network itself, which requires a cable subscription to watch.

Food Network Kitchen will launch in late October 2019 in select (unnamed) U.S. cities. The service will cost $7 per month. Subscribers will be able to access the content through voice control with Amazon Alexa and Echo devices, Amazon Fire TV, and iOS and Android mobile devices, with more device integrations to come in 2020. The platform also offers grocery delivery through Amazon Fresh.

In a press release sent to the Spoon, David Zaslav, President and CEO of Discover, Inc. called the Food Network Kitchen “not just another entertainment service” but something closer to “the ‘Peloton of Food.'” Like the fitness company’s streaming service, Food Network Kitchen will give users access not only to pre-recorded videos but also live instructional classes.

A lot of folks, myself included, watch Food Network not for actual cooking instruction but purely for entertainment. So I’m not sure how many people will want to cook along to Guy Fieri making chicken wings at 6 p.m. in their kitchen. However, the live aspect certainly has potential, especially if the Food Network includes a way for users to ask questions and have them answered via the chef in real time.

I’m also skeptical about whether kitchen purists who love watching chefs cook meals from scratch would also embrace next-gen technologies in the kitchen, like using Alexa to access recipes or ordering groceries online. Then again, kitchens are getting more and more connected as things like voice integration and grocery delivery grow more commonplace. As these connected tools become more frictionless, it’s likely that more traditionalist home chefs will embrace them, too.

Really though, this new platform demonstrates that Food Network is trying to evolve from just a television network and recipe hub to a more interactive, connected platform that meets consumers not on their couch but in their kitchen. Food Network Kitchen is the food and cooking brand’s first big push to go beyond the static screen and interact with consumers in this dynamic way — and I doubt it’ll be their last.

Amazon’s Ben McInnis on How Voice Control in the Kitchen Can Make Your Bacon Better

Ever since companies first started coming out with voice assistants, we’ve speculated over what their role will look like in the kitchen. Guided cooking? Grocery shopping? Or just simply setting a timer when your hands are dirty?

That’s one of the questions we’ll dive into with speaker Ben McInnis, Senior Manager of Amazon’s Alexa Connect Kit, at the Smart Kitchen Summit {SKS} in Seattle next month. To get a sneak preview of what’s to come, we chatted over email with McInnis about Amazon’s roadmap for voice in the kitchen and how Alexa can make your bacon taste exactly the way you like it.

Check out the Q&A below and don’t forget to snag your tickets to SKS — they’re going fast!

Note: This Q&A has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Tell us about the Alexa Connect Kit.
Alexa Connect Kit is a new way for device makers to create Alexa-compatible smart devices more easily and quickly than traditional smart device development. Through this program, device makers integrate an Amazon-managed hardware module and the provided software development kit into their product. This module, which is also a Wi-Fi/Bluetooth chip, securely connects to Alexa and other Amazon services like Dash Replenishment.

All devices built with the Alexa Connect Kit also feature Amazon’s Wi-Fi simple setup technology, which makes it easier for customers to set up devices in fewer steps. Device makers that using the Alexa Connect Kit don’t need to maintain a cloud service, create an app, write an Alexa Skill, or invest in things like a device setup experience. We also offer the Alexa Connect Kit for a single, per-device fee. So, unlike with more traditional models of device development, device makers have certainty about their costs, no matter how much customers use their product.

The Alexa microwave is already available. What other kitchen appliances do you think would take well to pairing with voice assistants?
The best thing about working with so many device makers and developers is that they’re always thinking of creative new products. Our partners Hamilton Beach, P&G, Spectrum Brands, and others have already announced devices built with the Alexa Connect Kit, and I expect that almost all the devices we commonly use will be connected eventually.

Voice control is a big part of what’s driving the growth in smart kitchen device popularity, but simple control is really just the beginning. Devices are integrating with Amazon Dash Replenishment Service to enable automatic reordering of consumables and developers are now able to add new recipes and presets to their devices entirely from the cloud.

Amazon’s Super Bowl ad last year listed out “failed” Alexa integrated products (toothbrush, dog collar, etc). How do you decide which products will actually be improved with voice control?
Obviously, we’re poking fun at ourselves a bit but the meta point is very true. We’re convicted about the idea that an ambient intelligence with a voice interface can add enormous utility for customers by making devices and services easier to use. That utility takes many forms and varies by device type and the customer’s context, but our default is that whenever we can make something more convenient or valuable for customers by adding voice control, it’s worth investigating.

How do you think that voice technology will change the way we buy and cook food?
Customers already use Alexa to order food and; with Dash Replenishment-enabled devices, this is sometimes automated, too. Similarly, there are many Alexa-compatible cooking devices in customers’ homes already and, mostly, people use Alexa to control those devices.

For example, you might ask Alexa to set your Instant Pot to a given program, to check on the status of something cooking in your June Oven, or to reheat a cup of coffee in your AmazonBasics Microwave. Going forward, you’ll see more devices that take advantage of their connection to Alexa to do things like add new recipes, fine-tune the performance of a preset with data about your specific preferences, or work across many connected devices to execute a complex dish.

It’s useful to ask your oven to preheat to cook some bacon. But having it know that you like bacon extra crispy is even better.

Keep an eye out for more speaker Q&A’s as we ramp up to our fifth year of SKS on October 7-8 in Seattle! We hope to see you there.

Walmart Tries to Challenge Amazon’s Grocery Supremacy through Voice Ordering

I’m not one to get excited about sporting rivalries, but I do get excited about grocery rivalries. And Amazon V. Walmart is shaking out to be the matchup of the decade.

Today Walmart made moves to challenge Amazon in the game of voice-controlled grocery ordering by announcing Walmart Voice Order. It’s a new voice-ordering capability the company is launching with Google. Starting this month, you can tell your Google Assistant (or Android or Google Smart Display) something like, “Hey Google, talk to Walmart” and then list grocery items you’d like to add to your cart. This function just keeps track of what items you want to order, though; to actually purchase them, you’ll have to give Google specific instructions to do so (though the release didn’t specify what those instructions would be).

Interestingly, Walmart actually partnered with Google Express, Google’s online shopping tool, two years ago. However, they broke off the partnership in January of this year, presumably to make way for this new voice platform.

One cool thing is that the new service will remember your frequently ordered items. So, for example, if you have a specific brand of plant-based Greek yogurt you like, you can simply say “Add yogurt to my cart” and Google will know which brand you’re talking about.

The added step of saying “Hey Google, talk to Walmart” is a little annoying, especially considering you can just say “Alexa, order yogurt” to get it directly through Whole Foods, or “Alexa, add yogurt to my shopping list” to save it for later.

The extra step of saying “Hey Google, talk to Walmart” may be a minor annoyance, but it does leave more opportunities for the voice assistant to get confused or mishear you. However, small UI nuances like that likely won’t give Walmart or Amazon an edge in the voice-ordering grocery game. Instead, it seems like the voice victor decider will come down to one thing: whether or not you have Alexa. Walmart might partner with other voice-ordering services down the road, like the Microsoft Cortana, but Alexa is likely off-limits since Amazon and Walmart compete so closely.

This could end up being a big disadvantage for Walmart simply due to Alexa’s sheer reach. Amazon owns 66 percent of the smart speaker market, according to eMarketer. And all those Alexa’s aren’t going to sell you Greek yogurt from just anywhere — they’ll push you towards Whole Foods. Which means that Amazon has a captive audience of consumers who it can easily nudge towards its own grocery purveyor, leaving Walmart out in the cold.

As of now, voice ordering still isn’t a huge sales channel for grocery. In fact, only 16 percent of Americans even order their groceries online, period. But as our world grows more connected voice technology becomes more integral in our day-to-day life, I imagine that will change. Maybe someday people will even choose to buy a Google Assistant or Alexa based off of whether they prefer shopping at Walmart or Whole Foods.

According to TechCrunch, Walmart’s Google voice shopping for in-store pickup will be offered at more than 2,100 Walmart stores and for online delivery at over 800 stores.

The Walmart news came just hours after Amazon announced a new wave of price cuts at Whole Foods in an attempt to make the natural grocery outlet more wallet friendly. By cutting costs, they’re hoping to do away with their nickname of ‘Whole Paycheck’ and attract a wider swath of consumers — including ones who tend to shop at more budget grocery chains, like, ya know, Walmart.