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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

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LANG Launches Home Mineral Water Machine to Break Your Plastic Bottle Habit

So, it turns out that maybe all those plastic bottles you’ve thrown into the recycle bin to be, you know, recycled…. aren’t. America is facing a recycling crisis and one easy way to help is to not buy that plastic bottle of water at all.

That’s part of the pitch LANG Switzerland is making today with the official launch of its eponymous countertop drink system that creates filtered mineral water as well as flavored drinks — sans single-use bottle.

First, the LANG uses a triple filtration system that includes a 1-micron sediment filter, an activated carbon filter and a reverse osmosis filter. Once filtered, the company’s removable LANGPAKS add salts and minerals like potassium, calcium and magnesium back into the water. Additional LANGPAKS can add flavor like lemon to your water, or make hot black or green tea. The company says the LANG will create a drink in less than four minutes.

Plastic is certainly top of mind for a lot of people and companies around the world right now as people wake up to the fact that single-use plastic waste is huge problem. Cities are banning plastic straws, plastic-free grocery stores are popping up, and corporate giants like Nestlé and Unilever are experimenting with reusable containers for their products. So LANG is certainly striking while the ethical iron is hot.

But LANG isn’t the only company in the bottleless, countertop mineral water device game. Mitte, also based in Europe, has its own machine, though it only filters and re-mineralizes water (no fruity flavors), and won’t be shipping until June of this year. Additionally, Mitte has been open about its plans to move beyond the countertop and integrating its technology into existing appliances like fridges or faucet systems.

The LANG, however, is shipping now, and the device itself will set you back €499 (~$566 USD). LANGPAKS will cost anywhere from €19.95 (~$22.65 USD) to €24.95 (~$28.33 USD). The mineral LANGPAKS will create 250 liters of mineral water, while the flavor packs will deliver 300 cups. The filters will last two years, according to the company, and the machine is self-cleaning.

Anecdotally, here at The Spoon, we aren’t sure how much demand there is for a machine that just mineralizes water. But it might be more telling that both LANG and Mitte are based in Europe, where such a device could be more welcome.

Sure, you still have to clean the cups and glasses you use, but that’s better than buying a one-time plastic bottle that winds up never getting recycled.

Whirlpool Buys Yummly In Effort To Bolster Smart Kitchen Strategy

This week Whirlpool announced their intention to acquire Yummly, one of the Internet’s biggest food and recipe sites.

The acquisition comes as part of Whirlpool’s effort to accelerate its development for the smart kitchen of the future. At CES this year, the company announced new cooking automation features for its lineup of smart appliances, including new Alexa skills, scan to cook and guided cooking. This just a year after the company showed off a number of connected kitchen efforts at CES 2016, including Amazon Dash integration.

The guided cooking feature announced in January is particularly interesting in light of the Yummly deal.  The new feature enables users of the Whirlpool Smart Kitchen Suite app to send a recipe directly to a Wi-Fi powered appliance such as an oven, which will then follow the cooking instructions. It’s easy to envision how this cooking automation capability could be coupled with Yummly’s massive database of recipes.

This Is About Smart Kitchen Self-Sufficiency

Making the deal more interesting is the fact that Whirlpool recently parted ways with Innit, a smart kitchen platform company that had started working with the company’s Jenn-Air division in 2016. As I wrote in March, the breakup was in part due to Whirlpool’s decision to start forging its own technology path as it saw the smart kitchen becoming a reality over the past year:

With 2017 rolling around and the company viewing the market for connected kitchen products as more viable, it decided to more actively develop and expand their own connected product technology.  As one source told me, “if a startup can do with a few million dollars, why can’t the world’s biggest kitchen brand do it?” 

In other words, Whirlpool had decided it wanted to determine its own technology destiny rather than relying too heavily on external partners to forge a path forward. What the Yummly deal shows is that the company will not hesitate to acquire others as part of its effort to realize smart kitchen self-sufficiency.

And this deal does just that by bringing Yummly’s smart kitchen technology platform in-house. As Brett Dibkey, Whirlpool’s vice president of Integrated Business Units, said: “Yummly brings an outstanding platform on which to begin building our digital product offering.”

A Year Of Change For Yummly

For Yummly, the acquisition by Whirlpool comes after a year of management change. In October of last year, the company’s Chief Revenue Officer Santiago Merea left to start a baby food startup, and then in November the company’s head of product, Ankit Brahmbhatt, left to become Innit’s head of product (yes, Innit, the company who parted ways with Whirlpool this year).  Yummly also saw its CEO David Feller step back and hand the reigns to Brian Witlin, who in a previous life was the cofounder of Shopwell, a company recently acquired by…you guessed it…Innit.

Both Merea and Brahmbhatt came to Yummly through Yummly’s acquisition of Orange Chef, a smart kitchen company who had built it’s own connected scale, and had started to build  smart kitchen operating system and platform for appliance companies. For whatever reason, Yummly never partnered with any appliance companies, which could in part explain the departure of Merea and Brahmbhatt last year. It looks as though the Yummly-powered connected kitchen will finally be built, only now as part of the world’s biggest appliance company.

Whirlpool Becomes A Content and Community Company With Yummly Deal

Lastly, one important aspect of this deal is that it gives Whirlpool a massive infusion of cooking content and community. As newer companies in the connected kitchen like ChefSteps have shown, having strong recipe content and an associated community can create fertile soil upon which to launch new hardware products. With Yummly, Whirlpool now has a built-in community to tap into as it expands is smart kitchen product lineup in the coming years.

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