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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Alexa

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.

RIP, Plastic Amazon Dash Buttons

So long, li’l Dash button, your one-press re-ordering is no longer needed, and Amazon has stopped selling you (hat tip to CNet). You’ll now join other endeavors Amazon pulled the plug on, like the Fire phone and a New York City headquarters.

Actually, that’s not entirely fair. Amazon Dash had a good run and was good at what it did. It’s just no longer necessary in an Alexa-powered — and increasingly connected — world.

For the uninitiated, in its first iteration, Amazon Dash was a small, five dollar, internet-connected device with a single button that could do one thing: re-order a particular product. Running low on Bounty Paper Towels or Tide laundry detergent? Press the Bounty button or Tide button to automatically order more from Amazon.

Back when Dash debuted, there weren’t nearly as many connected devices in the house, so the idea of replenishing often-used items with the touch of a button was actually pretty useful. We liked the simplicity of the Dash back in the day. In 2016, The Spoon’s Mike Wolf wrote:

Introduced a day before April Fool’s Day in 2015, it turned out the button was no joke, as the button (and the associated Dash Replenishment Service) represented an effort by Amazon to bring point-of-consumption ordering to the home and into the kitchen. ‘Why wait for consumers to go to the Amazon website?’ Amazon seemed to be asking with the Button, when they could move the point of replenishment and reordering to the actual point of consumption?

But now Amazon has built Dash Replenishment Services into a lot of different appliances (including the Amazon microwave) and rolled out virtual Dash buttons, not to mention the fact that you can simply ask Alexa to order your stuff — no button needed.

The other problem is that each button was brand specific, so if you outgrew the need for diapers or no longer liked a particular drink, you were stuck with a useless button stuck on your pantry.

But it wasn’t too long after our initial writing of the wonder button that we realized the jig was up for the Dash. In January of 2017, Mike Wolf updated his Dash assessment with:

The quiet CES for Dash replenishment makes me wonder if Amazon is beginning to look towards voice-assisted purchasing as the future for kitchen and smart home commerce. The company is making more things available to buy through Alexa, not altogether surprising give how focused the company is on sustaining its early lead in voice assistants.

Amazon is going to stop selling Dash buttons globally, but will continue to support orders through existing Dash buttons as long as people are using them. (Poetically, this seems to be the equivalent of the two times people die, the day of their actual death, and the last time someone says their name.)

Don’t cry for Dash, it had a good run and helped usher in a more connected home.

Drop Wades Into Kitchen Appliance Voice Control with Siri Integration

Kitchen tech company, Drop, announced today that it will be launching its first foray into voice control of kitchen appliances via its new Siri integration.

Voice control is a particularly interesting interface in the kitchen, where sticky fingers and loads of wet ingredients aren’t great for touching devices like iPads and smart screens. Being able to “talk” to your oven or your sink while knead-deep in dough, promises to make cooking more efficient.

To that end, Drop, which up to now has offered guided cooking recipes and remote control of select appliances via phones and tablets, has started the process of adding voice control. Interestingly, the first voice integration isn’t with the omnipresent Alexa, or even Google Assistant, it’s with Apple’s Siri. A Drop corporate blog post explained the decision, saying that the company had previously worked with and had good experiences with Apple and that Siri’s voice command recognition was superior to either Google or Alexa’s.

The blog post also explained that user and data privacy was a priority for Drop, with the company even invoking GDPR:

Also, unusually among big tech companies, Apple has maintained a firm standpoint on user privacy. Whereas assessing and analyzing user data from the cloud allows other companies (most notably Google and Facebook) to improve their AI capabilities, it does so at the expense of user privacy. With Apple, all processing of Siri shortcuts is implemented directly on the device, rather than by sending sound-bytes from our homes out to the cloud.

Security is something which has been, and will always be, of utmost importance to us at Drop. An example of this was achieving GDPR compliancy well ahead of schedule, going to great lengths to restrict data collection and access internally. We also have a rigid approach to building infrastructure and implementing and enforcing security measures.

In addition to rolling out on just one platform, at first Drop’s voice control will only make you coffee, and that coffee has to be made with Bosch Coffee Machines equipped with Home Connect technology. As you can see from the video below, once set up, you can just have to say “Hey Siri, make me an espresso” and it automatically fires up the Bosch coffee maker. Drop said it will be adding voice controls to more recipes that will work with more appliances.

Drop Test Lab: Making an espresso with Drop Recipes and the Bosch Coffee Machine

While it probably won’t go mainstream this year, voice control is becoming more central to the kitchen experience. GE Appliances and Electrolux expanded their Google Assistant capabilities last summer, LG’s Thinq appliances work with both Alexa and Google Assistant, Drop rival, Innit is working with Google, and Amazon built its own Alexa-powered microwave. Drop’s adoption of Siri is a nice feather in the cap for Apple’s assistant, and further evidence that voice control will soon become ubiquitous in our appliances and apps and throughout our homes.

Moar Data! Amazon Buys Smart WiFi Company Eero

Amazon announced today it is acquiring home mesh networking and WiFi router company Eero. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Eero is popular thanks to its smart mesh routers, which make setting up and connecting devices to your WiFi easy. But Amazon isn’t just buying Eero because of its sales. By owning Eero, Amazon will also get more data at the network level as to how consumers are using their internet-connected devices. Is your Roku gobbling up most of your data usage? Why don’t you check out an Amazon Prime Video free trial! And as my former colleague, Stacey Higginbotham of the Internet of Things Podcast pointed out, the opposite is true as well. Amazon can see which devices are inefficient, then build its own, ideally better, solutions.

The Eero system creates a mesh network by deploying small hardware beacons around your home. Kinda like how you can put multiple Echos throughout your house. The goal of Alexa has always been to replicate the ubiquitous “computer” from Star Trek–an invisible presence that responds to your vocal commands. Seems like adding Alexa functionality to the beacons is probably in the cards to work towards that ubiquity.

The Eero purchase also makes sense when you think about the press conference Amazon held back in November, where it launched “Frustration Free Setup.” Part of that mission was WiFi Simple Setup. As The Verge wrote then:

Now, compatible devices will be able to access the Wi-Fi credentials stored on your Amazon products so that they can automatically connect to the internet within seconds of being plugged in.

Connecting Alexa-powered devices to your Eero-powered network could now be even more vertically integrated, not to mention making Amazon-brand appliances like the Alexa microwave easier to install. If Amazon builds more connected appliances (fridges, dishwashers, countertop ovens, etc.), it could make installation that much easier and even direct Eero owners towards buying them (Amazon noticed you don’t have a fridge connected to the internet, you should totally buy this Amazon-brand one). This of course, would create more lock-in for Amazon’s Alexa ecosystem (good for Amazon, bad for consumers).

Of course, maybe your Amazon house will come with Eero already built in as well.

But the acquisition just happened today, and these are just the standard hot takes and speculation. However, as my other former colleague, Janko Roettgers of Variety pointed out on Twitter:

It’s old hat at this point to say this, but we are handing over not just more, but deeper data about our behaviors to big companies in the name of convenience. Most of us seem fine with that, so don’t expect these types of acquisitions from the big tech companies to stop.

Google’s Not-So-Secret Weapon in the Virtual Assistant Wars: Photos

If the kitchen is the heart of the home, then Google, not Amazon has the upper hand when it comes to building the smart kitchen assistant of choice. The secret weapon of the Google Home Hub isn’t a smarter AI, or better sound quality (it’s definitely not that), it’s pictures.

To understand why pictures are so important to winning in the smart assistant space, think of the iconic Kodak pitch scene in Mad Men. In it, Don Draper explains that the 1960s slide projector didn’t have a “wheel” as the executives described it, but rather a nostalgic carousel.

Mad Men - The Carousel (Higher Quality)

While it was far less dramatic (and fewer cigarettes were smoked), my wife recently explained that she had formed an “emotional connection” with the Google Home Hub, Google’s smart display. This immediately caught my attention because she was more frustrated than anything by Amazon’s Echo Show, but she genuinely loves Google Home Hub. That’s because it is a kind of time machine. Google Home Hub can access the thousands of pictures stored in my Google Photos account. Any time she’s in the kitchen, she sees a picture of our son’s fifth birthday party, or the moment he lost a tooth, or a vacation picture, and it makes her happy.

Google Home Hub is her (and my) carousel, and this type of emotional connection will only get stronger as we get older and the photos from today resurface years from now. We actually demoted our Echo Show to the living room even though we listen to a ton of music and the sound quality of the Home Hub is way worse. Being able to see our photos was more important than the fidelity of Steely Dan’s Aja.

Alexa cannot access my photos and I have no plans to store them on Amazon. I’m pretty deep in the Google Photo ecosystem and I’m not alone. As of May 2017, Google Photos had 500 million users. They make it so easy to upload from your phone that it’s hard to envision a scenario where I switch to Amazon Photos just so I could see them on an Echo Show.

But this isn’t just about warm and fuzzy feelings. There is big money at stake.

As my colleague Mike Wolf has written, kitchen screens are going to be a big deal. The combination of voice control and visuals allow you to quickly find out information, plan your day, access video entertainment, and even help guide you while you cook.

On a very base level, there are billions of dollars at stake from the device sales alone. Strategy Analytics reports that more than 12 million homes will own a smart display by the end of this year, and that number will jump to 100 million homes by 2023. Whoever can grab more marketshare, obviously, makes more direct sales money.

Then of course there is the additional revenue generating opportunity from photo storage. I’ve paid Google two bucks a month for four years for that privledge, and don’t see a time when I’ll stop (hopefully they won’t kill it).

And because we live in the times we do, dominant smart assistants also get access to all that data we generate by asking it questions, controlling our smart devices and playing us songs and videos. That data, in turn, helps perpetuate whomever’s dominance. Right now, Alexa is king in the smart speaker space, but its lead is slipping as Google gains marketshare.

Whoever dominates in the smart assistant space also helps shape the future of the connected kitchen as appliance makers look to incorporate new technologies that have a proven user base. Google was everywhere at CES last week, and more appliance makers are highlighting Google Home integration. GE Appliances showed off its mega Kitchen Hub 27 inch video touchscreen that mounts above your oven. It runs on Android and the company highlighted its Google Assistant integration. Elsewhere, KitchenAid joined other manufacturers like JBL and Lenovo in launching its own Google-powered smart display.

The smart assistant is the tip of the spear to accessing and controlling more of your future smart home. Though the battle has just begun, in the smart assistant arms race between Google and Amazon, it’s not necessarily the brains of the device that will prove to be the winner, but the one that wins over our hearts.