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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Amazon Dash

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.

Video: Can You Sell Things in the Smart Kitchen Without Being Annoying?

Most of us have heard the adage that the kitchen is the heart of the home. But it’s also a space that’s ripe for commerce, especially with all the new appliances, software, and services rolling out as the kitchen gets smarter.

In this video from the 2018 Smart Kitchen Summit, Richard Gunther of Digital Media Zone speaks with Iri Zohar of Freshub, Benton Richardson, of Amazon Dash, and Shawn Stover of GE Appliances about the future of in-kitchen commerce models: be that automated grocery replenishment, personalized suggestions, or shoppable recipes.

But how do you sell things to people in their kitchen in a way that, as Gunther put it, “isn’t annoying?”

Watch the full video below to find out.

Kitchen Counter Point of Sale: Analyzing In-Kitchen Commerce Models

Look out for more videos of the panels, solo talks, and fireside chats from SKS 2018! We’ll be bringing them to you hot and fresh out the (smart) kitchen over the next few weeks.

Amazon’s Small $60 Microwave Could Actually be a Big Deal

As rumored, Amazon today announced its own brand of microwave with Alexa voice control built right in. The AmazonBasics Microwave will cost a measly $60 and shows how the company will use voice to better understand customers (and sell to them), as well as stave off smart assistant competitors from encroaching on the kitchen.

The microwave is on the small end, with 0.7 cubic foot cavity, has only 700 Watts of power, and features an Alexa logo button on the touchpad. I was a bit of a negative Nancy when I heard about an Alexa-powered microwave, but am ready to eat a bit of crow if this works as promised. From the press announcement:

With AmazonBasics Microwave, ask Alexa to reheat, defrost, or microwave for your desired cook time and power level. Plus, use a variety of quick-cook voice presets such as, “Alexa, microwave two potatoes” or “Alexa, reheat a cup of coffee” and the AmazonBasics Microwave takes care of the rest. Since Alexa is always getting smarter, new quick-cook voice presets will be added regularly.

What it also does is have users voluntarily tell Amazon what food they are microwaving, when they microwave and how often. As pre-sets are added, Amazon will have an even more granular understanding of what we are cooking, and will most likely notify users of specials and sales happening at Amazon Fresh or a Whole Foods nearby.

The Amazon microwave seems to stick it a little to the recently released GE Alexa Microwave with scan-to-cook technology. Depending on the pre-sets that are added, it removes the scan step (which requires using your phone) and makes cooking that much faster. It also allows for pre-set cooking of items that don’t have barcodes (see: potato).

The Amazon microwave also connects with a nearby Alexa for other voice commands. Press the Alexa button on the microwave and a paired Echo device wakes up to listen for a command like “two minutes and thirty seconds on medium” and the microwave will do just that (no need to say “Alexa” or “microwave”). While I haven’t seen it in action, this seems like more work than pressing 2, 3, 0, especially given the number of times Alexa mishears me.

There is also Dash Replenishment built into the Amazon Microwave that will re-order, ummmm, popcorn, when you… run out of popcorn. And that’s it for now. I guess. Huh. OK. To be fair, that re-order functionality will assuredly get more robust and add more microwaveable items to be replenished. But still, it seems like an add-on as we’ll already be telling the microwave what we are cooking. And if we order a four pack of Hot Pockets from Amazon, and we cook three of them, it will know I need more. Ideally.

As the company states in the press release, its new microwave is also a way for Amazon to show how other appliance makers can use the new Amazon Connect Kit to create smart devices. By getting appliance manufactures on to the Alexa platform, Amazon can better box out rival Google in the kitchen and slurp up all that data for itself.

In the end, the Amazon Microwave is a small device that actually could have big implications for the kitchen. We’ll get one in November and tell you how it works in real life.

WePlenish Launches Kickstarter For Amazon Dash-Powered Grocery Reordering Container

You know that searing anger and frustration you feel when you think you have one more coffee pod (or energy bar, or teabag) left, but instead you’re greeted with an empty container? Meaning you either have to a) do without, or b) hightail it to the store and hope you’re not late for work?

WePlenish wants to make sure that terrible experience never happens to you again. The Fort Lauderdale, Florida-based startup has developed an IoT-enabled container which uses sensors and WiFi to automatically reorder pantry staples through an integration with Amazon’s Dash Replenishment service platform. Yesterday they launched a Kickstarter to try and raise $50,000 for their minimum viable product (MVP), dubbed ‘the Java Smart Container.’

When you receive a smart container, you’ll download the WePlenish app and enter in your chosen product for the container — anything from K-cups to snack bars is fair game. WePlenish then uses their patent-pending volume measuring technology to keep track of how full the container is at all times.

When the supply drops below 25%, they send you a Push notification to make sure they’re good to go ahead and reorder. At this point, you have a choice to stop the order or add extra items to your delivery.

As you use it, the smart containers also use a Nest-like algorithm to learn your consumption patterns. But WePlenish does have safety nets in place, so they can trigger an order even if you have relatives in town who are depleting your coffee supply at a much faster rate than normal.

So are WePlenish’s smart containers that much more useful or efficient than other grocery reordering methods? Using Amazon Dash buttons and voice assistants is easy, sure — but you still have to do something. “They require the user to take action, to remember to place the order,” WePlenish co-founder Ro Grosman told The Spoon. The Java Smart Container takes you out of the equation entirely.

“We believe that the smart home technology should work for you. The automation should be seamless,” said Grosman. Which means, if their product works well enough, customers won’t have to think about it at all. “We want people to almost forget about it and let it order for them,” he emphasized. 

Of course, seamless automated ordering is what Amazon had in mind with their integrated, in-device replenishment platform.  The question is — for WePlenish and Amazon’s Dash platform — do you need an IoT-powered device to reorder for you, or would it be better to simply create a “subscription” through Amazon or other providers to ship to you on the regular (Amazon being Amazon, they have both bases covered).

Some will remember WePlenish from a 2016 Amazon announcement about a new crop of Dash Replenishment Service partners. The company was one of a handful of companies that Amazon had signed up to integrate Dash, and while Amazon has since put much of its focus in the intervening time period on voice ordering with the runaway success of Alexa, there are companies like WePlenish still pushing forward with Amazon’s integrated re-ordering platform.

WePlenish is Grosman’s second startup. Prior to WePlenish, Grosman founded a company called GoDataFeed in 2007, which is an ecommerce multichannel marketing platform. He still serves as executive chairmen. WePlenish and GoDataFeed are closely tied through a technology backend as well as through some employees; according to Grosman, he started WePlenish with a few GoDataFeed employees and has since grown the newer company to about 20 employees.

WePlenish isn’t the only food tech startup edging in on the grocery replenishment space. British company Pantri (finalist in the Smart Kitchen Europe startup showcase) is developing a maker platform to connect smart appliances with grocery delivery companies, and PantryChic (a SKS 2015 Startup Showcase veteran) has a patented system which stores, dispenses, and reorders dry pantry goods like flour and sugar.

Despite the name of their inaugural product, Grosman says they anticipate that their containers will be used for a lot more than just coffee. “Our goal is to moderate the entire pantry,” he said — and beyond. Grosman told The Spoon that WePlenish plans to eventually offer in-fridge grocery ordering. 

The Java Smart Container, which has already entered into production (a good sign for those leery of Kickstarter hardware fails), will be available on Amazon this fall for $39.99, but early backers can snag one for $20 through Kickstarter. According to Grosman, WePlenish has about twenty total employees and is largely self-funded, but he did say the company has taken an undisclosed amount of private investment.

Meet Fetch, Target’s Smart Home Powered Replenishment Service

If you’re like me, when it comes to home staples like paper towels and soap, you tend to buy the same brands over and over on fairly predictable replacement cycles.

This is something Amazon realized a couple years ago with the launch of the Dash replenishment platform and product subscriptions, and now Target is getting in on the replenishment game themselves with Fetch.

So what’s Fetch? It’s a new smart home powered replenishment platform developed by Target’s Open House innovation team that enables Target customers to subscribe to home consumables and then have them auto-ordered when they run out. What’s interesting about Fetch is it uses three sensor-enabled smart products – including a paper towel dispenser, a soap dispenser and yes, a toilet paper spindle – to figure out when a consumer is out of a given product and hit the reorder button. Fetch uses algorithms to predict when you’ll run out of product and, when it reorders, send a notification to your smartphone.

According to the product’s Indiegogo video (see below), the Fetch campaign is launching on May 1st. One obvious question I had is why is it being intro’d via Indieogogo? While I’m not entirely sure (we’ve reached out to Target to ask), my guess is this is a way for Target to essentially roll out a beta of the service before it’s rolled out to a wider audience.

There’s no question that this is an answer to Amazon’s Dash and subscription platforms. What’s interesting to me is Amazon seems to have moved away from the Dash button and replenishment platform and increasingly emphasizing voice (“Alexa”) and subscription ordering (including virtual Dash buttons). That said, I do think it makes sense for Target to start to think about ways to allow customers to subscribe to products online as more consumers transition to online shopping. Combine Fetch with Target’s same day delivery service, Shipt, (which is expanding to more cities) and it’s easy to imagine never running out of paper towels or any of the household basics.

Analysis: Go is Amazon’s Latest Attempt To Control The Consumer Meal Journey

On Monday, Amazon’s store of the future finally opened its doors to the public.

By now you’ve probably read about how weird it feels to simply walk in, pick up stuff and walk out. It’s all true. When I finally did visit Amazon Go on Wednesday night, I found cashierless shopping a simultaneously disorienting and freeing experience. My 13-year-old daughter, who at first rolled her eyes at the idea of going to a new store (did I tell you she was 13?), couldn’t get over the grab and go experience and suggested we do all of our shopping at Amazon Go from here on out.

Ever since shopping at Go, I’ve been thinking about where this goes from here and the implications for the broader grocery and food retail marketplace. Here are my thoughts…

Amazon Go Doesn’t Get Rid of Humans, Just Better Allocates Them

One thing that instantly struck me were there were more employees stuffed in this 1,800 square foot retail store than any convenience store I’ve ever seen. Like Chris described in his review, it was as if Amazon had placed employees throughout the store to act essentially as walking-talking FAQs.

One could argue that Amazon isn’t getting rid of humans, but is instead reallocating them to areas where their unique skills are better suited. The same thought occurred to me on on Tuesday when I was in another highly automated store, Cafe-X. Ok, there was a robotic arm slinging cups around in a big glass cage, but the two friendly humans helped me out as I walked into Cafe-X made it seem more welcoming than a typical Starbucks.  Same when I went to Eatsa, where a friendly host with a clipboard welcomed me and answered questions.

By putting humans up front to onboard customers as they come in and answer any questions they may have, the experience was an overall much better one at Amazon Go (as well as Cafe-X and Eatsa). At Amazon Go, I also noticed the person manning the alcohol section (who checked IDs when you wanted to go in) would instantly reorder and straighten the bottles and cans every time someone walked in an grabbed something. I don’t think I’ve ever seen this at a normal grocery store.

Amazon Go Was Already Catalyzing Change Across Grocery. That Will Only Accelerate Now.

When Amazon announced Go in late 2016, execs at big grocery sat up in their chairs and started paying attention. When Amazon announced they planned to acquire Whole Foods, big grocery execs jumped out of their chairs and ran into strategy meetings and probably haven’t stopped looking at whiteboards with plans about what they should do ever since.

As with every large-scale shift, things seem to come quickly to casual observers, but the reality is IoT, machine learning, big data, robotics and other technologies have been slowly descending on the grocery and retail markets for some time. It just sometimes takes someone like an Amazon to accelerate change and force others to move more quickly.

Some have speculated that Amazon might treat its Amazon Go tech like it does cloud computing and let others us it. I don’t think that’s quite right.  Amazon already offers some of its AI technology like image recognition through a PaaS model at AWS, but I think its the magical combination of these that Amazon has perfected and likely will use in its own points of presence (Whole Foods, Amazon Go and, maybe, another retail chain through acquisition).

But, that doesn’t mean there aren’t other companies – big and small – already doing interesting stuff here. AIPoly’s technology is similar to the tech that Amazon Go has that enables grab-and-go shopping, and there are other efforts happening inside bigger companies to tackle this.

Amazon Understands The Meal Journey Could Be Way Smoother And Is Building A Low Friction Path To The Future

Consumers are complicated when it comes to food decisions. Some plan out their week and know what’s for lunch and dinner every day; others make decisions when their stomach starts growling and call out for pizza, search the freezer or head to a restaurant.

If you’re like me, you may be a meal planner and hangry meal-searcher depending on what your day or week’s been like.

Amazon knows this and wants to be there either scenario and all the points in between. While many often are looking at Amazon Go and on the elimination of the friction within the store, I think Amazon’s assembling a basket of technologies, products and services to eliminate consumer friction across the entire meal planning experience.

Think about all the various irons fire Amazon has targeted at the meal journey:

Amazon Fresh grocery delivery: they’ve been working on this for a decade. Whole Foods acquisition significantly improves their reach and ability to get to consumers homes.

Amazon Restaurants: A GrubHub like offering that allows you to order meals from local restaurants shipped to your home.

Amazon Meal Kits: The company’s same-day delivery answer to Blue Apron and other meal kits offerings.

Amazon Fresh Drivethrough Pickup:  Part Insacart, part McDonalds drive through. You can order your groceries, and an Amazon employee assembles your order, and you can pick up at a drive-through. Currently only offered in one location.

Amazon Dash: Amazon’s in-home commerce solution for ordering staples. The buttons are what got the press, but Amazon is moving the platform into appliances.

And, of course, now we have Amazon Go and Whole Foods.

Below is a quick and dirty graphic I put together to show the different “platforms” Amazon is working on to make sure they got you covered.

As you can see, Amazon is making bets along every part of the meal journey; whether that’s one of those hangry “feed me now” moments or helping you plan out the family dinner for the next week, they have you covered. Add in efforts around the edges like programmatic, shoppable recipes, smart fridges, drone delivery and even intelligent garden systems, and you can see how Amazon has quietly assembled a holistic basket of platforms for consumers no matter how long or short their decision making time horizon may be.

The bottom line is they want to make feeding yourself through an Amazon platform so easy and friction-free you almost have no choice. While Amazon Go is just the latest and most visible sign of Amazon strategy, the company has clearly been positioning themselves to capture as much of the $5 trillion food retail marketplace for the last decade, and now they have all the pieces to be there at every step along the meal journey.

And that should be the scariest thing of all for any company in the food retail or delivery marketplace.

Amazon Looks At Food Tech To Make Packaged Food Better

Amazon continues to explore ways to dominate the $700 billion grocery market, and this time the commerce giant is turning to military-grade food tech to gain an edge on competitors. Reuters is reporting on Amazon’s interest in a partnership with 915 Labs, a startup based in Denver that’s commercializing a technology known as MATS – or microwave assisted thermal sterilization. MATS is a process that takes prepared food and using a specific heating technique, eliminates food pathogens and microorganisms that cause spoilage.

According to Reuters, the process involves taking “sealed packages of food in pressurized water and heating them with microwaves for several minutes.” A sort of sous vide on steroids, the technique was developed at the University of Washington and received FDA approval in 2012 as a safe way to preserve fresh foods.

MATS replaces traditional preservation techniques which often entail heating foods at high temperatures for up to an hour, significantly damaging the quality and taste of the food. 915 Labs, the startup that’s trademarked MATS, says to solve the problem of damaged foods, companies add things like “salt, flavor, texture and color enhancers, and other unnatural ingredients” to make the foods edible again.

MATS-Made Foods and Beverages

Packaged food has to have a long shelf life in order for dry goods companies to make money – but the game changing element is taste. With MATS, companies could potentially make packaged food appealing again, in an era where the heavy consumer focus is on healthier, fresher options. Which brings us to Amazon.

With Amazon Pantry, Dash replenishment services, the purchase of Whole Foods and the use of machine learning and AI to run next-gen stores, Amazon is all in on the grocery game. And while the company is still working on ways to compete in the fresh foods game, Amazon is taking prime real estate in the middle of the grocery store with dry goods.

And besides boxed snack foods and household items, what lives in the middle of the grocery store? Prepared and packaged foods. From frozen dinners to soups, pasta mixes and “just add water” foods, the center aisles are generally filled with sodium-laden offerings that can be bought and sit in pantries for months.

As Amazon looks at building its own meal kit delivery service(see Mike’s Amazon meal kit review), there’s a clear interest in developing its own line of foods that take advantage of Amazon’s massive e-commerce infrastructure but also don’t require the large investment that fresh food transportation and storage often do, particularly in the form of refrigeration.

And without additives and sodium, MATS produced packaged foods could still stay on the shelf just as long but taste much better and be comparatively healthier than their traditionally preserved counterparts.

The research that led to the development of MATS was funded by several large food companies, including Nestle, General Mills, Delmonte and Pepsi, all of whom also play a big role in dry goods and groceries. But now 915 Labs owns the exclusive rights to MATS and its sister process, MAPS or microwave assisted pasteurization sterilization which is a faster way to pasteurize foods like dairy and baby food.

Reuters reports that consumers are unlikely to see MATS-created packaged foods from Amazon until 2018 – and maybe even later depending on how the company decides to integrate the technology with its current offerings. It’s clear that the omnichannel retailer has big plans for food domination in the future.

How Alexa’s New Developer Tool Will Power Voice-Assisted Food Delivery

Last week, Amazon debuted a new device location API that gives Alexa skills access to the location data in a consumer’s device settings, a move which could unleash a new wave of skill-powered food delivery services.

According to the developer documentation, the new API (application programming interface) will require that the user to give consent for the data when the request is made for the data. There are two levels of data granularity available: the full address (street location, city, state, zip) or country and postal code only. When a user enables a skill that requests access to location data, they will be prompted to give approval in the Alexa app (it cannot be done with voice alone), an extra step that provides an obvious safeguard to ensure the privacy of the consumer.

There’s a good chance the new location API could help add some excitement to what appears to be some pretty bare shelves when it comes to skill-powered food delivery. While there are approximately 268 or so food and drink related skills available to US users of Alexa, only 13 of these today are related to food delivery, and most of those are for things such as pizza delivery or Amazon’s own restaurant delivery service. With the new location API, it’s conceivable that a new wave of third party food delivery service related skills will be born.

Amazon gave early access to the new device location API to Just Eat, a UK based food delivery service provider with 27 thousand restaurant partners. By using the device location API, the Just Eat Alexa skill will be able to better optimize restaurant selection based on the customer’s location.

Alexa’s new Skill Dashboard

In related news, Amazon also announced a new skills dashboard, which will allow skill developers to better analyze trends, visualizations and pull away insights around aggregate skill usage.  One of those new data sets they will be able to analyze in the future will be location trends, which would be useful for food delivery companies which want to know what neighborhoods are more likely to use Alexa skill ordering vs more traditional methods.

All of this fits into my theory that Amazon is shifting its connected home commerce focus towards Alexa and away from Dash, which seems to have stagnated in terms of new adopters. More thoughts on that later.

After Years Of Development, PantryChic Smart Dispense System Nears Production

Like many parents, I encourage my kids to get into the kitchen to try their hand at baking cookies, cupcakes or other pastries every now and then. While the benefits of raising young cooks far exceeds any downsides, one of the few complaints I have about my kids’ culinary exploration is the mess of ingredient bags and measuring cups left in their wake, at least until I make them grudgingly head back into the kitchen to clean up after themselves.

All of which has often had me wondering why we haven’t come up with a better way to store and manage ingredients.  In some ways, ingredient storage and management has been stuck in time, benefitting from arrival of low-cost and handy storage systems from the likes of Tupperware and OXO, but yet to benefit from the application of modern technology to streamline the dispensing and measurement of ingredients.

But that will change if Nicole and Christopher Lee have any say in the matter. The married couple have been busy working on the PantryChic storage and dispense system for the past four years, and after a number of starts and stops that included product tweaks, raising funds and the arrival of twins (and a new baby on the way), they are finally pushing the product into production and expect to ship it this year.

I caught up with Christopher at the Housewares Show in Chicago this week to get a tour of the PantryChic system and get an update on the company. According to Christopher, the PantryChic company has had two patents issued and has two more on the way. He also said they are getting significant interest not only retailers and potential consumer product companies who want to license the PantryChic technology, but also from companies specializing in professional and industrial applications who see the PantryChic as a way to enable precise measurement and inventory management of sensitive materials like pharmaceuticals.

As the PantryChic nears production, the company is working on fleshing out the product’s fuller story, including developing an app that guides users through a recipe, as well working on third party platform integrations to enable replenishment of ingredients.

Those looking to get their hands on a PantryChic won’t have much longer to wait. Christopher told me they’ve secured funding and found a manufacturer and expect the PantryChic to ship this year.

You can check my video interview with Christopher above.

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Forget The Fridge: GeniCan Moves Shopping List Smarts To The Garbage Can

One of the main selling points of a connected refrigerator is it allows a consumer to keep track of their food, manage shopping lists and even order groceries from the fridge itself.

But here’s the problem: continuously updating inventory and shopping via your fridge requires a significant behavior change on the part of consumers. Whether it’s scanning a barcode, manually logging a product or some other way of digitizing your inventory of foodstuff and home supplies, it’s just not the type of behavior most consumers have shown an eagerness or affinity towards doing.

But what if you moved inventory tracking and reordering to the point of disposal? In other words, instead of logging a product and putting it on the shopping list when you bring it into the home, you put it in the queue and get it teed up for same-day delivery from Amazon when you’re out of the product.

That’s exactly the vision NewTown, Connecticut startup GeniCan has in mind. The company, which was founded two years and a half years ago, has created an scanner that allows you to scan products as you dispose of them. It also lets you add things to the shopping list via voice by waking up the scanner as you throw things out. Hold a piece of lettuce or steak scraps in front of GeniCan and it will ask you “what may I add to your list?”

Another benefit of GeniCan is the ability to track dry goods.  Fridges are where you put the fresh food like milk, meat and eggs, but tracking all that stuff in the pantry is not a natural fit for the smart fridge.

The GeniCan has integrated with the Amazon Dash – one of the few announcements around Dash at CES this January – and the company is talking to other food replenishment and delivery platform providers about adding their functionality to the device. By integrating with Dash and adding voice capabilities, the GeniCan becomes in a way a strategically placed Dash Wand, Amazon’s original kitchen scanner.

So, will GeniCan get consumers to forgo that smart fridge to track their inventory at the point of disposal? Possibly. I know I often put things on the shopping list when I run out of things rather than when I bring them home, so inserting technology at this point of the consumption cycle makes a lot of sense.

The GeniCan is available for preorder for $149 from the company’s website and they expect to ship the product this year.

You can hear how the GeniCan works by watching my interview with GeniCan cofounder Dave Pestka above.

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Research: People Prefer Grocery Stores To Automated Delivery…For Now

You know those time when you’re standing at the fridge,  pulling out the things to prepare dinner, and realize you’re missing a key ingredient?

Frustrating, right?

But here’s the thing: nowadays all this could have been avoided with a little planning and the automated delivery services now available.

And make no mistake: grocery delivery services are popping up everywhere. Some of straightforward online grocery services, while others are increasingly relying on order automation enabled by subscriptions, while some replenishment programs are starting to use scanning devices to monitor use/replacement needs.

But as online replenishment services become more commonplace, the question is will people using them? The answer for now is…maybe not so much. According to a recent survey of over one thousand US Households conducted by NextMarket Insights and The Spoon, it appears most people at this point still prefer the old standard – the grocery store – to procure the groceries they need.  In fact, when asked why people are not using  some form of automated delivery, over half (56%) of respondents said it was because they would prefer to go to the grocery store.

So why would a person prefer going to the grocery store over the clear convenience of automated delivery?

The short answer is a lack of familiarity with new services that are different than traditional services. According to the NextMarket Insight survey,  consumers cite privacy concerns (21%) over having companies using  in-home sensors such as those used with Amazon’s Dash.  Many also feared being charged for unwanted products (11%).

Concerns over automated services do differ by age group.  Respondents under the age of 30 were most concerned about money—having to pay for items they didn’t want.  Older respondents (60+) said privacy was more of a concern, that they felt uncomfortable with sensors in their home being monitored by some company.

The good news is that while consumers may still be unfamiliar with these services, comfort levels can change.  As automated delivery services become more widespread, more common, comfort level will rise.  As with many things that technology brings us, at first there is a great deal of skepticism and hesitancy.  If the product or service, however, is shown to improve on some aspect of our lives, then it will transcend that skepticism and achieve wide scale adoption.  The challenge for automated product delivery services will be to streamline the grocery procurement process, delivering the right goods, when needed, and at minimal cost to the consumer.

Amazon Dash At Over 250 Buttons, But Is Voice The Future of Kitchen Commerce?

Amazon added 50 new Dash Buttons this week, including such names as Colgate, Kingsford, and Rogaine. These new additions bring the total to over 250 buttons almost two years after the launch of Amazon’s connected commerce platform.

The company also recently rolled out “virtual buttons” for Dash, which are on-screen versions of the button that pop up as a shortcut on Amazon.com for things you buy on the regular. Amazon auto-generates buttons for certain high-frequency purchases and also allows you to create your own custom buttons.

This news comes after what was a relatively quiet CES for Dash replenishment service, the built-in version of Dash that companies like Whirlpool touted as part of their smart home rollouts at last year’s CES. Outside of a smart garbage can with Dash inside, there wasn’t a whole lot of news for Amazon’s push-button commerce effort as the company and its partners focused on touting Alexa at the big consumer tech show.

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.

I have a feeling we should know by next year’s CES.