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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

CES 2019

CES 2019 Video: SeedSheet Launching Sensor for Idiot-Proof Home Gardens

Much as I love the idea of home gardening and picking fresh herbs from my windowsill to sprinkle over a pasta dish, anything I try to grow at home usually ends up dying within a few weeks. I either forget to water my plants, or else they perish due to weeds or lack of sunlight.

Maybe I should give Seedsheet a go. We wrote about this startup, which makes sheets that have pods of seeds embedded in a weed-blocking fabric, back in 2017, just a month after they got half a million bucks from Shark Tank investor Lori Greiner. Basically, it’s an idiot-proof garden.

And soon it will become even more easy to manage: in June, Seedsheet will launch a bluetooth sensor which you can stick in your Seedsheet-covered pot to give real-time data about ambient light, soil moisture, and more.

We caught up with Seedsheet CEO Cameron MacKugler on the CES floor to talk about what’s next for his company and the home gardening space in general. Give it a watch below:

The Spoon Talks to Seedsheet At CES 2019

The Bartesian Home Cocktail Robot Will Ship in March

Sometimes a good cocktail takes a while to make.

And a good home cocktail robot? That can take almost half a decade to get things just right, at least if you’re Bartesian.

Of course, taking a long and circuitous route to market wasn’t originally part of the business plan for this Canadian startup. Like many companies who have initial Kickstarter success, Bartesian came out of the gate strong with plans to ship their hardware and capsule-based cocktail machine in a year. But, as is the case with so many Kickstarter hardware campaigners before and after, the original ship dates came and went as the company was hit with the hard reality of getting the product into production.

Over time, however, the company realized that their secret sauce – or rather, liqueurs, bitters and juices – was their capsule delivery system and not the robot itself. So last year,  the company decided to hand over manufacturing to an established housewares brand in Hamilton Beach as part of a three year manufacturing agreement.

“It was soul searching time” said Bartesian CEO Ryan Close last year when asked about the deal. According to Close, the company had to ask themselves, “Do we want to be an appliance company or a CPG company?” Eventually they decided to focus on the capsules after realizing doing both a replenishable and hardware would too difficult.

However, the decision to sign a manufacturing partner came only after the company had spent nearly three years working on getting a product ready to ship to Kickstarter backers. Because of this, the company made the interesting decision to hand assemble over 300 units and send them to their backers and – once manufacturing started – send the same backers an additional Bartesian when final production units were available.

“Our Kickstarter backers have been incredibly patient and supportive while we battled through the R&D and production of launching both innovative hardware and customized CPG’s,” said Close in a June 2018 interview with The Spoon. “They will each keep the KS unit, the retail version is an extra and all about gratitude for being with us from the start – extreme patience – and cheering us on from the sidelines.”

And so now in early 2019, the company is finally ready to ship production units to backers and into retail this March. According to Close, the retail price will be $299 and capsules, which are purchasable through the website, will go for $14 per six pack.

You can see the Spoon’s interview with Ryan Close at last week’s FoodTech Live @ CES below.

The Spoon Talks with Ryan Close of Bartesian (a home cocktail robot)

CES 2019: Sweet! Chocolate 3D Printing Moving Closer to the Masses

Roaming the vast halls of CES, you realize the show isn’t just about the brightest TVs or the fastest drones. It’s also about deliciousness. As you’ve probably seen from our numerous dispatches from the show , we found a bunch of cool startups developing new ways to make tasty treats, and perhaps the sweetest were the 3D chocolate printers I saw in action.

Hailing from the Ukraine, Flasty makes the Chocola3D printer. It looks like a typical 3D printer, and extrudes chocolate into all kinds of fun shapes and patterns. At $1,800, the device isn’t cheap, but company reps told me they’ve already sold of number of them to restaurants across Europe. You can check it out in action in this video.

Flasty Chocola3D Printer Printing Chocolate Designs

JER Education has its own countertop food 3D printer that’s aimed more directly at the consumer market. It has an LCD screen to display parameters like temperature and speed, and lets you print pre-programmed shapes, doodles, or even uploaded pictures via the accompanying app. In addition to chocolate, the JER printer can print out cheese, jam, mashed potatoes and more.

If you’re looking for a little more portability in your chocolate printing, then perhaps the JER chocolate 3D printing pen is for you. Load it with choclate chips and scrawl your own chocolate delight. The pen wasn’t available for demos when I stopped by, but it looked like it had worked previously. I just wonder if stores will accept my checks if they are signed in chocolate, as I plan to carry this pen everywhere.

JER didn’t provide any pricing or specific release information on its products, but if we could see them on store shelves before the end of the year, that would be pretty sweet.

Beko Shows Off Grundig Smart Wall Oven that Blasts Water Inside to Clean Itself

Amidst all the faces on cookies, cheese making robots and world champion pizza chefs packed into a Las Vegas casino ballroom last Tuesday evening for the inaugural FoodTech Live @ CES , a new smart wall oven from one of Europe’s largest appliance makers made its US debut.

Called the Gourmet Chef Oven by Grundig, the new built in connected wall oven unveiled by Turkish appliance giant Arcelik (Beko is the US brand for Arcelik) has some interesting features, with one in particular that had the crowd at FoodTech Live buzzing with interest.

Beko unveils Grundig built-in smart wall oven at FoodTech Live at @CES 2019

As can be seen above, the Gourmet Chef not only comes with many of the capabilities you’d expect from a smart oven such as food recognition and guided cooking, but also has a unique self-cleaning feature that includes an internal water spray and special detergent dispenser.

“It cleans, it washes, it dries,” said Sazi Bugay, Product Director for Beko US. “Every time you use it, it gives you a clean interior.”

Admittedly, watching water splash around the inside an oven is a bit discombobulating at first, making one half-wonder for a moment if this is a dishwasher or a cooking box. It also made me ask myself how frequently one would need to wash their oven (raise your hand if you clean your oven pretty much never). That said, self-cleaning features may become a necessity in the age of smart ovens in order to ensure those internal cameras that identify food and enables cook-session monitoring stay relatively clean.

In the end, the self-cleaning feature plus some other nice-to-haves like a dehydration capability, steam oven and baking plate for pizzas make the Gourmet Chef an interesting and differentiated addition to the smart oven space. The Gourmet Chef (as well as Whirlpool’s new offerings which debuted at CES) also underscores the acceleration of a trend I highlighted in my 2019 outlook: the entry of big appliance makers into the smart oven market with built-in offerings that help move the segment beyond just the countertop.

According to Bugay, Arcelik’s new oven will be rolled out in Europe by the end of 2019 and should enter the US market in 2020 under the Beko brand. Pricing has not been disclosed.

Meet Fromaggio, a Countertop Cheese-Making Robot

For most of us, making cheese at home seems almost laughably unattainable, something for the Martha Stewart’s of the world, not the average (or even above average) home cook. A simple ricotta, maybe, but a blue cheese or a cheddar? No way.

A new device claims it can make even the most hapless cook into a cheesemaker. Fromaggio, which debuted at CES 2019, is a smart countertop appliance that takes the guesswork out of making any kind of cheese. Just add the right type of milk (sheep, cow, or goat), pop in a pod of cultures, and press a button. In 48 hours or less you’ll have a round of cheese. (Admittedly, for hard cheeses like cheddar you still have to age it.)

We caught up with Fromaggio founder Dr. Glen Feder on the floor of our Food Tech Live event to get a hands-on look at the machine that will make everyone (yes, even you) a cheesemaker. And to eat our weight in cheese samples, of course.

The Spoon looks at Fromaggio, a smart home cheese maker

CES 2019 Video: I Eat My Face on a Selffee Printed Cookie

Definitely one of the biggest hits of our Food Tech Live event last week was the Selffee station. People were clamoring to eat their faces off. Literally.

Selffee uses a proprietary technology to print pictures of you (or anything really) in edible ink onto just about any type of food: Cookies, marshmallows, beer foam etc. The result is basically a Polaroid you can chow down.

Selffee has a couple of lines of business. They can set up an on-site photo booth for instant edible delectables at events (like ours), or you can upload a photo to Selffee’s online site and order cookies for delivery.

Honestly, the cookies taste okay; they are pretty standard sugar cooking with hard frosting. They’re also not cheap: it’ll run you $40 a dozen to put your mug on a cookie. But this is the type of branding thing that companies go gah-gah over, and judging from the reaction and long lines at our event, people will pony up for the opportunity to eat their face.

How’d mine come out? Check out this video I did with Selffee Co-Founder, David Weiss, to see for yourself.

The Spoon's Chris Albrecht eats his face on a Selffee Cookie

CES 2019 Video: Zero Mass Water Makes H20 Out of Thin Air

At a conference known for flashy (and admittedly super cool) technology gadgets like self-operating lawnmowers and foldable TV’s, it’s refreshing to see a company that’s leveraging tech to solve global environmental issues.

One example is Zero Mass Water, a Scottsdale, Arizona-based startup that showed off its system which turns air and sunlight into potable water.

Here’s the basic premise: solar-powered hydropanels capture humidity in the air, which is distilled into water and combined with minerals for taste. Apparently, the standard two-hydropanel setup can make 300-600 bottles of water every month. In a world where we’re quickly running out of clean water, that can do a lot of good.

We caught up with Kaitlyn Fitzgerald, Zero Mass Water’s Head of Marketing & Communications, on the CES Digital Experience floor to learn more about how their tech is working to solve the world’s water crisis using only sunlight and air.

CES 2019: Zero Mass Water Makes Water Out of Sunlight and Air

Cheers to the Future: Five Cool Beverage Startups at CES’ Eureka Park

Sure, the towering installations, self-driving cars, and elaborate smart home setups at CES are fun to see. But my favorite part of the show is wandering through Eureka Park, the gigantic open room filled with over 1,200 startups all hoping to make a name for themselves. Meandering up and down the aisles of this room is one of the best ways to discover companies that are hidden gems.

Interestingly, some of this year’s coolest startups involved beverages. From coffee alarm clocks to wine sensors, here are five that caught my eye amid the chaos of Eureka Park.

Capsulier
Making your morning espresso with a coffee pod is super convenient, but those plastic pods are a blight on the environment (unless you mail them back to Nespresso), not to mention, expensive. Atom Xquare Limited’s Capsulier device is out to free you from the pod with their countertop machine which lets you make your own custom coffee pods for Nespresso machines. Just put a scoopful ground coffee (or loose-leaf tea) in the top of the device, pop in the reusable stainless steel pod, and pull the lever to pack your own pod. You can use it in your Nespresso machine, then wash it out and then reuse.

There are already refillable Nespresso capsules on the market, but Capsulier promises to precisely measure and pack your coffee so there’s no mess or guestimating. As of now the Capsulier only makes pods that fit into Nespresso machines, so if you use a Keurig you’re out of luck. The device retails for $99 on Atom Xquare Limited’s website, and you can purchase additional pods for $36 each.

 

TeaRado
TeaRado Tech‘s smart, self-heating tea tumbler can brew up to two cups of tea on the go. To make the tea, fill the interior basket with loose leaf tea, pour room temperature water into the tumbler, and set the brew time and water temperature on the TeaRado app. In 12 to 15 minutes, the water will heat up to 170 °F and brew the tea via an automated French Press-like movement. You can either brew by setting the tumbler on a charging pod and plugging it into the wall, or attaching it to a battery pack to brew on the go.

TeaRado’s brewer will retail for $150, and users can also purchase tea through the connected app. TeaRado will launch on Kickstarter on April 15 and is expected to ship in December of this year.

 

Photo: Catherine Lamb

MyOeno Scan
Unless you’re a sommelier, figuring out the composition of wines — and which types you like — can be a daunting challenge. MyOeno Scan has a small device (roughly 4 inches long) which, when inserted into a glass of wine, will display a breakdown of its levels of tannins, acidity, and strength on the MyOeno app. Afterwards, you drink and rate the wine, so the app learns what type you like. Once you’ve established your taste profile, you can search for compatible wines on the MyOeno app and see where they’re available to purchase.

The device retails for €89 ($102 USD) and is available on the MyOeno website and through Amazon. Fun fact: MyOeno can also be used in milk to detect if it contains any water or detergent, a service which the team told me is mostly used in Asia.

 

Photo: Catherine Lamb

Barisieur
Dragging yourself out of bed in the morning is way easier if coffee is near. U.K. startup Barisieur‘s coffee brewer alarm clock brings the cup of joe to you while you’re still in bed. The night before, fill the drawer on the front of the device with ground coffee (or tea), then set your alarm and indicate whether you want your coffee to start brewing before, during, or after your alarm sounds. It takes 2 to 3 minutes for the water to boil, and a few more for the coffee to brew. There’s even a small chilled compartment where you can keep a wee container of milk or half-n-half.

Barisieur retails for $445 (zoinks!), and is available online and in several large department stores in the U.K. and U.S.

 

DrinkShift
No one likes running out of beer. And while keeping track of your bottle count isn’t exactly rocket science, the new smart beer fridge from Tokyo-based DrinkShift manages your stock for you. The fridge’s server monitors your drinking pace and uses an algorithm to figure out when to re-order more brewskies so you never run out. You can customize beer packages to indicate which ones you want, and they’re delivered to your door via a third party retailer.

DrinkShift debuted their fridge this April; it was immediately bought by Panasonic. It’s not on the market yet, and also doesn’t yet have a retail price — but one of the booth workers told me it will first roll out in Japan.

Eureka Park is huge and I am but one person — did I miss any cool, under-the-radar startups? Let us know in the comments or tweet us @TheSpoonTech!

CES 2019: Robby and Robomart are Bringing Mobile Commerce to the Masses

“We are like Boeing.” This exact sentence was said to me in separate, back-to-back meetings at CES with Robby and Robomart. Both are autonomous vehicle companies, both are at the forefront of the emerging mobile commerce trend, and both want to be like the storied jet maker (more on that in a minute).

We write a lot about the rise of delivery, whether it’s by human, drone, self-driving car or robot. But a straight-up delivery business is different from mobile commerce. Delivery is a one-to-one transaction. You order something, a restaurant or store puts that item in some kind of vehicle that travels to your door, drops it off and then at some point travels back to a central hub empty.

Mobile commerce, on the other hand, puts the store on the road. When an order is placed, the item still arrives, but it comes with a (small) store. This model is appealing for a few reasons. First, there is no down time for the delivery vehicles. They don’t have to travel back to a central hub and refill before making another delivery, so the vehicles are generally always in use.

Additionally, mobile commerce can encourage additional purchases. You may be a student at the University of the Pacific who just ordered a Pepsi by robot, but once it arrives, the container also holds snacks that may you want to impulse buy.

Finally, this store on the go also gives the retailer more data that is closer to the point of use. If you buy a Pepsi at the store, the store has no idea when you will drink it or what you’ll do with it. But if you order a Pepsi to be delivered to you at the library, or buy one from a mobile store outside your home, chances are good that you’ll consume it pretty soon thereafter. It’s not a perfect science, but it provides more data about consumer behavior for retailers and CPG brands.

But let’s get back to Boeing.

The reason both Robby and Robomart likened themselves to Boeing is because they are in the vehicle platform biz. They don’t really care what you want to sell or where you want to sell it, they just want to be the way you get it there. And the two companies are taking very different-sized approaches.

Robby builds small, autonomous rover robots on wheels. It leases the robots and software to brands who want to form a more direct sales channels with their consumers. In the case of Pepsi, the Robby bot has been outfitted with a cold side (using cold packs, not compressors) to keep sodas chilled and a side with no temp control for snacks like chips and snack bars. When an item is ordered, Robby delivers it, and if the consumer takes more stuff out, on-board computer vision keeps track of its inventory and charges that person accordingly.

Robby goes 20 miles on a charge and has a swappable battery, so it doesn’t have to be taken offline to charge.

Robomart, on the other hand, is thinking bigger. Robomart made a splash at CES 2018, and has been busy ever since. The company builds self-driving vehicles that are low-speed and smaller than a car (similar to a Nuro pod). They are refrigerated and can be customized to fit particular retail needs. The company says it has signed a deal with an East Coast grocer in the U.S. for a delivery pilot.

The Robomart holds more than Robby, obviously, and uses RFID tags to keep track of inventory and charge people. Robomart says this is because it will be carrying a lot of produce, and computer vision doesn’t work as well with fruits and vegetables. Robomart has a 55-mile range and travels at less than 25 mph. To appease regulators, even though Robomart is autonomous, it will at first be driven remotely by a teleoperator. Its business model also includes leasing vehicles and software to customers.

AutoX is similar to Robby and Robomart, but is taking a more hybrid approach. AutoX has regular self-driving sedans to make grocery deliveries, but it also keeps additional inventory in the backseat of the car in case the consumer wants to buy more.

Even the bigger players are getting involved in mobile commerce. Panasonic showed off its concept SPACe-Ce Mart mobile store at CES this year, and Toyota formed a joint venture with Softbank for a mobile platform that would include stores on the go.

Mobile commerce is poised to be huge, and while it may not go mainstream this year, with all this investment and activity, it looks like 2019 will be the year mobile commerce starts to get off the ground.

CES 2019 Video: Lumen Gives You Personalized Diet Plans with One Breath

There are a bunch of companies offering personalized gadgets at CES this week, from smart mirrors to color-changing jewelry to toilets (for real). But Israeli startup Lumen is applying personalization to what’s going on inside your body. The company’s handheld breath detector measures your metabolism, then builds specialized meal plans based on that information and your dietary preferences.

We spoke with Lumen cofounder Dror Ceder on the CES show floor to learn more about the breathalizer-like device, and why he thinks it can help people diet more effectively and eat healthier.

The Spoon look at Lumen, a handheld breath detector for measuring metabolism

CES 2019: Bob is a Petite Countertop Dishwasher

One of the big hits of CES 2018 was the Tetra countertop dishwasher. Meant for small living spaces, the countertop dishwasher cleans dishes using less water than a conventional dishwasher, and doesn’t take up much space in the process. At this year’s show, a French company called Daan showed off a European cousin to the Tetra dubbed Bob.

Bob is a squat, retro-looking connected countertop dishwasher designed to clean the dishes of one to two people. It’s 33 x 47 x 47 cm, has a color display, and holds a three-liter water tank. Bob uses .35kWh per cycle and will clean dishes in 20 minutes.

The Bob is available for pre-order now for €299 Euros (~$344.23 USD), and will be shipping this summer to European customers. A Daan spokesperson said that they’ve already collected 6,000 pre-orders.

The Bob wasn’t plugged in at the Daan both at CES, so I wasn’t able to see it in action, but we at The Spoon love the idea of a compact dishwasher. Heck, I have a regular sized dishwasher in my home and would consider a countertop one for quick cleans in between full loads. But as we’ve noted, there are a ton of devices being built for kitchen countertops — so many that the typical small apartment won’t be able to fit them all.

Video: Why Impossible Foods Thinks They Can Make Better Meat Than a Cow

On the first night of CES, we hit up the Impossible Foods press conference to try their new and improved burger 2.0. The verdict: juicy, savory, and delicious.

But before the actual taste test began, the Impossible team set the stage with a short panel featuring CEO Dr. Pat Brown, Chief Science Officer David Lipman, and Mary Sue Milliken, owner and chef of Border Grill, who hosted the unveiling and cooked all the delicious food.

Check out the full conversation below to learn why Dr. Brown thinks that food is “the most fundamental and ancient human technology,” one that he and his team is constantly working to improve it. “Unlike the cow, we are going to be getting better every single day from now until forever.” Next up: steak. 

The Full Impossible Burger 2.0 Press Conference at CES 2019