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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

CES 2020

CES 2020: Inirv Can Control Your Stove Remotely, and Turn It Off In Case of Fire

CES was full of safety tech, especially focused on home and auto security. But there was also one solution aiming to create a safer kitchen environment.

Inirv React’s first product is a retrofit knob and detector system. The temperature and motion detectors communicate with the IoT-enabled knob and allow you to monitor and adjust stove temperature to prevent you from accidentally burning your dinner — or burning the house down. Inirv was actually part of our 2016 SKS Startup Showcase. As we wrote back then:

The Inirv knobs give you remote control of your burners via the smartphone app so you’ll never burn your food – but the sensor will actually remind you if it senses a lack of motion around the stove for too long and left your food unattended.

Inirv React doesn’t just alert you if there’s something burning at the stove. You can also use it to control your burners remotely, adjusting the heat in accordance with a recipe. You can even set cook times/temperatures via the app and the knobs will automatically adjust to the correct level at the right time.

The Durham, NC-based company was originally planning to ship its smart stove system in 2017 after a successful Kickstarter campaign, but clearly that didn’t happen. They ended up continuing to crowdfund, eventually raising $175K via Kickstarter by the end of 2019.

Past struggles aside, the Inirv team at CES seemed confident that it can hit its new estimated ship date of March 2020. One unit (AKA knob) will cost $99, or you can buy four for $279. An Inirv rep on the CES show floor said that it has already pre-sold 30,000 React units.

This may seem like an overly-intense solution to leaving the stove on, but house fires are a serious business. Cooking fires account for nearly half of all in-home fires. According to the U.S. Fire Administration, from 2014-16, cooking fires led to 195 deaths and $463 million in property loss in the U.S. alone. Smoke alarms can alert you once there’s already a problem, but Inirv claims it has the benefit of preventing an issue before it happens.

Since cooking fires are so common, it’s no surprise that Inirv isn’t the only company trying to get in on stove safety. iGuardStove and Innohome (two more SKS Startup Showcase finalists!) also make devices to turn off stoves and prevent cooking fires. Innohome (sold under the SmartRange brand name in North America) is the more common. Its device is cheaper than Inirv — $199 for four-burner coverage — but it doesn’t have the same nifty heat-control capabilities; it can only shut the stovetop completely off.

Innohome’s products are already shipping and Inirv is still relatively untested, so it’s too soon to say if the latter’s system will a) go to market, and b) work as planned. But it’s safe to say that we’re intrigued by the future of kitchen safety solutions.

Future Food: Impossible’s Plans Post-CES and Snoop D-O-Double G Sandwiches

This is the web version of our weekly Future Food newsletter. Be sure to subscribe here so you don’t miss a beat!

Anyone who follows the alternative meat space even a little knows that last week Impossible Foods unveiled its latest product — plant-based ground pork — at CES 2020.

You can read our post (including a taste test) on the event here. But during the ensuing press conference with Impossible CEO Pat Brown, several interesting tidbits about Impossible’s strategy — regarding R&D, expansion, mission, and more — came to light. Here are some of the most intriguing plant-based nuggets from the evening:

Impossible goes international
“International markets, as they grow, will be a very important part of our future,” Brown told the crowd at CES.

One market in particular: China. Brown has already stated that Asia — and China specifically — is a major area of focus for the company. And how could it not be? After all, China is the world’s largest consumer of meat and is struggling as the African Swine Fever is causing pork prices to skyrocket.

The scene is set for plant-based pork to make its move, but Impossible isn’t the only one making its move. Omnipork, based in Hong Kong, just began selling its plant-based pork on the mainland, including in several Taco Bells.

I’ve tried both Omnipork and Impossible Pork and have to say that I preferred the Impossible version; it was juicier and fattier with a bit more flavor. However, Omnipork’s alt-pork was developed specifically to the tastes of Asian consumers, which could give it an edge over Impossible when both begin selling in China.

That said, with a population of 1.4 billion and the African Swine Flu still looming, there’s ample opportunity for multiple plant-based pork options to court Chinese audiences. (Beyond Meat, time to make your move.)

The Impossible Cheesesteak [Photo: Impossible Foods/LIveNation.]

What’s next?
Last year at CES Brown told us in an interview that next up the company would develop “whole cuts of meat,” AKA steak.

I’m sure Impossible scientists are hard at work on that right now, but steak ain’t all they’re making. “If it’s a food that comes from animals today you can be sure that people on our R&D team are working on a more delicious, healthier, and vastly more sustainable plant-based alternative,” Brown said during the Impossible Pork conference this year.

He mentioned steak, fish, and, a crowd favorite, bacon. “We’ve already played around with it,” Brown said. But he added that they wouldn’t release a product until it was so good that even “the most hardcore bacon worshipper thinks it’s awesomely delicious.”

Considering that bacon presents a much harder textural challenge than ground meat, like beef and pork, that could be a while. Especially since bacon requires differing strips of meat and fat, which cook to distinct textures. But once they do achieve it — and considering their massive warchest and heavy R&D focus, I really think they will — Brown mentioned another first for the company: “the world’s first kosher bacon cheeseburger.”

Meatballs made with Impossible Pork at CES [Photo: Catherine Lamb]

Mission: Impossible?
Brown has often repeated Impossible’s lofty and very ambitious mission: to make animal agriculture as food production technology obsolete by 2035. The company is trying to do that by replacing animal meat with plant-based in flexitarians’ diets. “A sale for us only counts if it comes at the expense of the animal-based food production industry,” Brown said at the press conference last week.

There’s no question that Impossible is selling a significant amount of its plant-based meat; it’s available at over 15,000 restaurants globally, including more 7,000 Burger Kings (some of which will soon begin selling Croissan’wiches made with Impossible pork sausage). It’s also sold in retailers in eight regions.

But does Impossible’s rise actually take away from meat sales? Sure, if a flexitarian decides to buy an Impossible burger instead of a beef one, that’s one less burger consumed at that juncture.

However, meat consumption is at an all-time high and projected to rise, especially in developing nations (where, admittedly, plant-based meat is not widely available). In short: just because consumers are demanding more plant-based options doesn’t mean they are necessarily using them to replace meat. We don’t have the data on how rolling out Impossible Whoppers impacted Burger King’s beef sales, but it’s something to keep an eye on.

As the dangers of climate change loom, it’s hard not to root for solutions, like Impossible’s, that can reduce our environmental impact — especially if they taste d**n good. But the statistics are daunting. If Impossible has a prayer of achieving its goal by 2035, it’ll have to double down on production capacity and keep forging new retail & foodservice partnerships, especially in fast food.

And get to work on making bacon, stat.

Photo: Sweet Earth Foods

Protein ’round the web
– Nestlé-owned Sweet Earth Foods, maker of the plant-based Awesome burger, has announced its inaugural national restaurant partner: Ruby Tuesday.
– Select Tim Horton’s locations in the U.K. will begin selling sandwiches made with meatless sausage from company Moving Mountains (h/t VegNews).
– This, a U.K. startup that makes plant-based chicken and pork (including bacon), just raised £4.7 million ($6 million) in seed funding (via Agfunder News).
– Good Catch Foods, maker of plant-based seafood including fish-free tuna, announced its $32 million Series B.

Photo: Beyond Meat

Finally, if you live near a Dunkin’ and do not care about your arteries, you might want to try the new ‘Beyond D-O-Double-G Sandwich,’ which consists of a Beyond sausage patty, egg, and cheese served on a sliced glazed donut. Then please tell me how it tastes so I can live vicariously through you.

The Food Tech Show: The CES 2020 Food Tech Wrap-Up Episode

We’re back from Vegas after a week scouting out everything food and kitchen tech at the Consumer Electronics Show!

In this episode, Mike, Catherine, Chris and Jenn talk about everything we saw, tasted and who we talked to in the world of food tech for the big show.

In this episode we discuss:

If you enjoy this episode, make sure to subscribe in Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcast. While you’re at it, give us a review because every single one helps!

You can listen to this episode by downloading direct, or on Apple or Spotify.

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Food & Drink Pods Were Everywhere at CES, but Do Consumers Want Them?

If you were seeking out food tech at CES last week (and believe me, we were), you might have noticed an awful lot of one thing: pods. I was surprised by how many companies I saw demo-ing pod-based food or beverage system. Here are just a few:

Fresco’s olive oil press

Fresco
Tucked into the Italy pavilion at Eureka Park I stumbled across Fresco, the maker of a “Keurig of Olive Oil.” Insert frozen pods of olive oil into the EVA device (which is about the size of a French Press), press a button, and in five minutes you can collect your cold-pressed olive oil. You can select different varietals of olive oil and even choose infused flavors, like chili or basil.

When I saw this I instantly flashed back to the Juicero debacle — do you really need a device to thaw pods of frozen olive oil? According to the reps at the booth, though, you kind of do. The EVA heats olive oil to its ideal temperature, between 20 to 25 °C (77 °F), where you can taste all of its flavors.

The machine costs €79 ($87) and each frozen pod is around €1 ($1.11). For now only Italians can order Fresco, but the company is trying to move into the U.S. While Italian cucinares (cooks) might shell out extra euros to get optimally extracted olive oil, I’m not sure American home cooks will have the same level of devotion. Especially when they could just buy fancy olive oil from their local co-op or farmers market.

CES 2020: N2FALLS' portable nitro coffee

N2FALLS
You’ve probably heard of (or tasted) coffee pods, but nitro cold brew is a new entrant to the pod-based caffeine space. Korean company N2FALLS makes small cylindrical pods which, when inserted into the partner drink lid over a glass of water, expels compressed nitrogen-infused coffee concentrate. Voila — a nitro cold brew. Or if you do it over milk, a nitro latté! The company also makes pods for tea, juice and even booze-free wine.

Coffee prices vary by quantity but average to about $3 per capsule. For now N2FALLS is only available in Korea, but the company is in the midst of planning a U.S. expansion. Initially they’ll sell their pods in brick & mortar shops (the rep I spoke to named Amazon Go as a target) before selling online.

Tigoût
Argentinian startup Tigoût is a pod-based machine that bakes up wee single-serve desserts (think: Belgian chocolate cake or a white chocolate blondie). Insert a pre-prepped frozen pod (or two) into the machine, press start, and in a couple of minutes you’ll have a piping-hot sweet treat. Tigoût has a connected app so you can monitor your bake remotely and reorder capsules as needed.

The device itself costs $400 and each pod is $1.50. Right now there are 12 options, including six savory offerings. Tigoût’s founder and CEO Rodrigo Córdoba, who showed me the machine on the CES show floor, plans to launch the company officially in December of this year.

CES 2020: A Demo of Drinkworks, the Pod-based Cocktail Robot

Drinkworks + Bartesian
Adventurous CES goers could sample the hard stuff thanks to a few pod-based machines. Drinkworks and Bartesian are both cocktail-mixing robots which rely on flavor capsules to make classic drinks.

Drinkworks, which is the result of a joint venture between Keurig Dr. Pepper and Anheuser-Busch, is a countertop appliance which turns pods into cocktails, ciders, and even beers. Just pop a capsule — which already contains alcohol — into the machine, press a button, and out comes your drink of choice. You can see it make me a Moscow Mule at CES in the video above (which, yes, I drank at 10am cause Vegas). Drinkworks is available in select states for $299 and the pods cost around $3.99 each, depending on the drink.

Like Drinkworks, Bartesian is also a pod-based cocktail robot. It uses capsules filled with juice, bitters and other mixers. However, unlike Drinkworks, however, Bartesian users have to provide the spirits themselves — which allows for more customization but also adds an extra step (and expense) to the process. Bartesian devices are currently available at retailers around the country (and online) for $349.99.

Pod people?
Clearly food & bev companies have seen the success of Keurig and Nespresso and decided that pods = the future. And there’s some validity to that. Pods offer near-instant gratification (assuming you remember to reorder them) and a high level of consistency. They also give consumers the option to switch things up according to their mood — if you want a hazelnut espresso one day and a vanilla one the next, no problemo — and provide hardware makers recurring revenues.

But while pods do allow some level of wiggle room, their very nature means that they still end up trapping consumers. You may be able to choose the flavor of your cold brew/dessert/cocktail pod, but you’re reliant on the pod itself to get the finished product — and that means you’re beholden to a specific appliance manufacturer. Consumers can chafe against being locked into food ecosystems. Pods also don’t give you wiggle room to tweak a recipe — for example, if you like a slightly less boozy cocktail or a sweeter cold brew.

There’s also the negative environmental aspect to consider. While some pods are technically recyclable, most end up in landfills. That could become a bigger issue as consumers begin to prioritize sustainability more and more.

Despite their obvious convenience, will the cost of pods — both literal and environmental — keep consumers away? Clearly a bunch of companies at CES don’t think so. But I’m not so sure that the pod-volution of food and drink will take off — especially for more niche products, like olive oil.

Instead, I think we’ll see a growth of smart devices like the Picobrew, which can work with the company’s Picopacks or let consumers add their own ingredients. Even Keurig is getting on-board. You can buy the company’s proprietary pods, but many machines also let you buy reusable pods and add your own coffee for more of a customizable and waste-free twist. The DIY aspect still keeps consumers within the hardware device’s ecosystem, but allows them more flexibility (and sustainability). That’s the type of tech I’d like to see more of at CES 2021.

The Complete CES 2020 Kitchen Tech Report

At this year’s big tech show in Vegas, there was no shortage of food tech. Everything from Impossible Pork to robot cooking assistants were on display, and so after spending five days in the desert checking out the latest and greatest, here’s my wrap-up of everything I saw in kitchen tech at the show:

Lots of Smart Fridges

It may be hard to believe in 2020, but Internet connected fridges have been showing up at CES for two decades. Of course, with powerful machine vision and food inventory tracking systems, today’s smart fridges are a lot more useful than these attempts from yesteryear even if they’ve yet to be widely adopted.

Some of the companies showing off smart fridge tech at this year’s CES included LG, Samsung, Bosch and GE. Bosch showed off a two-camera smart fridge powered by Chefling, a partnership that shouldn’t be all that surprising given BSH Appliances’ investment in the smart kitchen software startup.

LG’s latest smart fridge, which includes the popular Instaview transparent front door feature, now reorders food when inventory gets low. Samsung’s latest smart fridges use Whisk technology (a company they acquired last year) to suggest recipes based off of your in-fridge inventory. Smarter was also in Vegas at FoodTech Live showing off their retrofit fridge cam.

Home Grow Systems Get a Look

For the first time at CES, big appliance brands showed interest in allowing home grow systems to take root in the kitchen. Both Samsung’s BeSpoke grow system and the LG’s system were evolved proof of concepts that utilized sensors and allowed the home gardener to monitor the status of their plants within the form factor of a standup fridge.

GE’s Home Grown took the home farm out of the fridge and made the entire kitchen a multilayered food grow system. You can watch a video of a booth demo of the concept below:

CES 2020: A Tour of 'Home Grown', the GE Appliances Garden Kitchen Concept

All of the grow systems on display by big appliance brands were more proof of concepts than shipping products. I’ll be interested to see if any of them roll out these products in the next year. Of all the systems, the Samsung Bespoke home grow systems seemed to be the closest to a market-ready product.

Intelligent And Adaptive Surfaces

One of the big trends sweeping food tech is personalization, so why not apply the principle of personalization to our physical space as well? GE did just that with a concept called Shift, an adaptable kitchen that, well, shifts to adapt to each person’s specific requirements. The idea isn’t new. The first winner of the Smart Kitchen Summit startup showcase, a German startup called Tielsa (now KimoCon), makes an app-controlled, adjustable kitchen platform that adjusts the height of the surface space to the specific user.

The Wireless Power Consortium had a full kitchen built out at CES 2020, showing off how their Ki kitchen standard using induction heating and wireless charging worked. Speaking of induction, one of the most innovative entries in intelligent surfaces at CES 2020 was from design firm GHSP, who showed off technology for a video-enabled induction cooktop. I know Americans are in love with their fire cooking, but hopefully new ideas like this will generate interest in what is clearly a superior (and flexible) technology in induction. You can check out a quick video of GHSP’s concept below:

Drink Tech Was EVERYWHERE

Drinks have always been a little easier to serve up in the future kitchen than cooking technology, and this year was no different as we saw well over a dozen next-gen beer, booze, coffee and tea machines sprinkled around the show floor.

On the booze front, CES 2020 had offerings from Drinkworks and Bartesian, while on the beerbot side, we saw offerings from PicoBrew, BEERMKR, MiniBrew and INTHEKEG to name a few. Noticeably absent was LG’s HomeBrew, the automated beer making appliance concept they debuted a year ago at CES 2019.

When it comes to coffee tech, longtime Spoon readers shouldn’t be surprised at my excitement over seeing a working production model of the Spinn coffee maker, a product I’ve been covering since I pre-ordered one way back in 2016 (we’ll have a video of the Spinn later this week). Terra Kaffe had a TK-01 on hand at FoodTech Live to demo the machine’s grind and brew (and milk frothing) capabilities, while MoJoe Brewing was showing off its portable coffee making system.

You can watch Chris’s interview with Spinn CEO Roderick de Rode and take a look inside the Spinn in the video below:

CES 2020: A Look at the Spinn Grind and Brew Coffee Maker

DNA & Microbiome Driven Diets

With DNA testing now fast and affordable, it’s not all that surprising to see offshoot concepts that capitalize on the information provided by a person’s profile. One of CES’s most buzzy startups in this space was DNANudge, a French company that is offering a wearable that tells a person whether that CPG product they picked up in the grocery store is a good fit for them. On the microbiome front, Sun Genomics was at FoodTech Live to show off its personalized microbiome kit.

Food Waste Reduction & Sustainability

One area that has traditionally lacked innovation is in the management of food waste in the home. While we still didn’t see a whole lot around food waste prevention tech outside of ever-more-advanced machine vision making its way into our fridges, there was a scrappy Canadian startup was showing off a cool new concept for home composting. The Sepura, made by British Columbia based Anvytech, automatically routes your solids into a food compost bin and disposes of your liquids.

You can see CNET’s video tour of the Sepura composter below:

Food Inventory Management

In addition to a number of food recognizing fridges, there are also a few other products on display showcasing how we could better manage our food. The Ovie smart food tracking system was on display at FoodTech Live, while a new entrant into the smart food tracking space, PantryOn, showed off a new dry pantry tracking system that will notify you and reorder an item when the product is low. While the PantryOn is a bit pricey with a retail price of $900, I am glad to see some companies think about innovating in the pantry.

Smart Schnozzes

Long-term, more intelligent sensors – and the software and AI that stitches together all the information gathered from these technologies – are going to make the kitchen truly sentient, which is why I always make sure to check out the new digital nose technologies every year while at CES.

While there was no shortage of electronic noses at CES this year, one digital schnoz that stuck out Cyrano de Bergerac-style was that from Stratuscent. The company’s technology, originally developed by NASA, can be used in a variety of verticals, but the company’s initial focus is food applications. Company CEO David Wu told me they are currently talking to appliance manufacturers about the possibility of including Stratuscent tech in their products.

Countertop Cooking

On the counterop cooking front, Anova was at CES showing off its Precision Oven, which is slated to appear sometime this year. The company was demoing the benefits of steam throughout the show, including showing off how steam can help make much better bread. You can watch a walkthrough of the Anova oven from food tech innovator Scott Heimendinger below, who has been helping Anova with the oven.

CES 2020: A Look at the Anova Precision Steam Oven

One product that seemed to get lots of buzz at CES was a multicooker called Julia from CookingPal. The device looks and acts in large part like a Thermomix, with the main difference being a separate touch screen interface in the form of a 8.9″ display. The touch screen has a camera on it that, according CookingPal, will recognize food and suggest recipes. From there, the Julia offers video-powered guided cooking, and afterwards has a self-clean mode.

Cooking Robots

Much like big appliance brands caught home garden fever, many also seemed bitten by the food robotics bug. Chris covered much of what was on display, most of which struck me as futuristic visions of how robotics could be implemented in a consumer or professional kitchen to make our lives easier. Not that futuristic or far off is a bad thing – what seemed crazy ten years ago often seems pedestrian in the present, and I expect at some point some of these products will be commercialized.

One that’s worth a look is the Samsung Bot Chef. While a bit reminiscent of the Moley robot arm kitchen robot, the Samsung bot’s fine motor movements and handling of kitchen utensils was impressive, suggesting that maybe a home robot chef isn’t as far off as I might think.

Samsung Bot Chef first look at CES 2020

Key Takeaways

When I was doing my research on what to expect at this year’s CES for foodtech, I was surprised at some of the big ideas that were debuting at the show.

While CES normally is where gee-whiz technology debuts, this year appliance and home brands seemed to thinking bigger with concepts that could potentially solve real-world problems like reduce food waste or help those with special needs.

There also seemed to be a big focus, generally, on the kitchen as a place to employ cutting edge technologies ranging from AI, robotics, virtual reality and more. Big appliance, it seems, has realized what we’ve long believed: the kitchen is the heart of the home.

Finally, it seems personalization is grabbing hold in a big way. Everything from personalized nutrition to physical cooking spaces to meal plans is on the menu, something that I think aligns well with the broader push towards more personalized worlds in this era of data abundance.

We’ll be continuing the conversation about personalization at Customize, our Food Personalization Summit, in NYC on Feb 27th. Join us!

Plants, Personalization & Precision Cooking: A Look at GE Appliances’ CES 2020 Lineup

Each year, it seems one appliance brand stands out at CES with an interesting new take on the kitchen that intrigues with the possibilities.

At CES 2019, it was Whirlpool, who shocked and awed with the sheer amount of new product concepts they rolled out, including an augmented reality-enabled smart oven.

This year’s CES standout in the kitchen was GE Appliances. Not because the appliance company had a whole bunch of cool products ready to roll out to market, but more because they showcased a bigger way of thinking around solving real-world issues. In other words, rather than create product demos designed as show-off vehicles for new technologies, GE illustrated how these technologies could be employed in a cohesive, systematic way to provide consumers answers to some of their biggest problems.

Here are the three demos I saw at the GE Appliances booth that caught my attention:

Home Grown

While intelligent home grow systems seemed to catch on at CES this year with big appliance brands for the first time, the most interesting conceptualization of an indoor, tech-powered gardening came from GE. The company’s Home Grown concept featured a mix of hydroponics, aeroponics and soil-based grow systems built into the design of the kitchen as part of a cohesive sustainable kitchen workflow.

You can see a full walkthrough of the Home Grown concept below:

CES 2020: A Tour of 'Home Grown', the GE Appliances Garden Kitchen Concept

One thing that struck me about the Home Grown concept is it commanded a lot of space. I have to wonder how many consumers would be willing to give up such a large part of their kitchen counter real estate to growing food, and I can see how brown thumbs like myself would be worried they’d soon have dead plants spread across their entire kitchen.

That said, Home Grown is largely conceptual at this point, so the company shouldn’t be penalized by more practical concerns like the sheer size of the demo. Once (and if) the products gets closer to market, GE can make adjustments with different size gardens to fit specific needs.

Shift

GE’s ‘Shift’ proof of concept showed how the company saw itself at the center a fully intelligent – and personalized – physical kitchen space.

So what is Shift? In the simplest terms, it’s an adaptable (or shiftable) physical kitchen space that personalizes itself towards the needs of each user.

The concept video below was put together by GE to illustrate how Shift could help a wheelchair-bound user:

CES 2020: The GE Appliances "Shift" Kitchen Concept Reel for Special Needs User with Wheelchair

In an era where everything is becoming more personalized, the idea of a personalized physical space based on the specific needs of the person makes lots of sense. Much like we have the ability to adjust our car seat to fit our own height or buy shoes that fit our feet, there’s no reason why in an era of lower cost robotics, IoT and smart sensors we shouldn’t think about adapting the space around us to fit our needs.

Kitchen Hub 2020

Finally, at CES 2020 GE rolled out the second edition of its Kitchen Hub , its kitchen screen/home command center.

You can see a walkthrough of the product shot at the GE Appliances booth below:

CES 2020: A Look at the GE Kitchen Hub 2

The most obvious difference with the new version is GE made the video touch screen the front door of a usable microwave oven. They also added an additional camera over the counter prep station as an option as well as improved food image recognition. Tying the experience together for food recognition and guided cooking is the Freshly app (powered by SideChef), which will recognize food, suggest recipes, and provide cooking guidance.

Also cool: The improved machine vision allows the system to recognize progress within a cook session. Below the Kitchen Hub camera captures a picture of a steak on the grill and let’s the user know that it has reached the desired doneness.

What struck me most about this version of the Kitchen Hub compared to the 2018 first edition is how the latest version just seems more practical. As a useable front screen for the microwave, Kitchen Hub is simply more useful and less awkward than as a standalone TV screen sitting atop your cooking range.

It’s also seems to fit more organically as a natural part of a next-generation kitchen. By coordinating the various cooking systems and, eventually, what’s in the fridge (SideChef is powering Haier smart fridges ), it seems GE is working towards building a platform that delivers valuable cooking assistance, inventory management and smart home control without being overly forced.

I left GE’s booth thinking that while much of what they showed off is still a few years away, I appreciate the moonshot thinking of the Home Grown, Shift and the practical advances they’ve made with their Kitchen Hub platform.

CES 2020: AntX and FlowWaste Use Data to Cut Cafeteria Food Waste

I don’t know about you, but whenever I’m in a cafeteria dining situation — school, offices, Whole Foods hot bar — I always load up my plate high and… never finish it all. Maybe technology from AntX and FlowWaste, both of which exhibited at CES 2020’s Eureka Park this week, will someday help all of us cut down on food waste from cafeterias.

AntX has a smart scale that helps track exactly what you’re eating. The scale, which can be installed under food offerings at places like cafeterias, hot bars, and fast-casual restaurants, give instant feedback when you serve yourself.  

Say you’re eating at a school cafeteria and want some mac & cheese. With AntX, you’d grab a plastic AntX tracking card at the door then fill up your plate. As you add a scoop of mac & cheese, the scale will tell you exactly how much weight you’re getting, how many calories are in the serving, and how much it’ll cost you. 

After you’ve served yourself you swipe the card on the scale, which will keep track of how much you’ve got. It’s then swiped at the register where you not only get the total cost of your meal, but can also see the nutritional breakdown of everything you’ve served yourself. All of that data is saved in the AntX app, so you can look back and see nutritional data about what you’ve eaten.

Sure, it’s nice to see exactly how much of any food you’re taking so that you don’t get sticker shock when you weigh and pay for your food. AntX’s CEO Wicky Zhang, who gave me a demo of the tech on the show floor (see video below), pointed out that it’s also a way to curb overeating and food waste; when people are confronted with the exact calorie breakdown of their food, they tend to eat less. 

CES 2020: AntX's Smart Scale Collects Data for Cafeterias

But the real selling point here is the data. For consumers, especially those trying to stick to diets, it’s an easy way to track what they’ve eaten. For the foodservice providers, it’s even more valuable. They can look through consumer data to better optimize their food offerings. Say, for example, chicken teriyaki sells really well when displayed next to rice, but not well when it’s next to pasta. Or that people tend to eat less meat on Mondays. The restaurant can use that information to better inform menu decisions, as well as the layout of their foods.

AntX’s operates off of a subscription model, charging partners a monthly fee (which Zhang did not disclose) to use their system. The hardware — which can be a single scale or a full-on cafeteria buffet setup — will be either a low up-front cost or free. According to Zhang, the company is already working with 40 college and office cafeterias in China. It’s making its U.S. debut in two weeks in the cafeteria of Silicon Valley company Deepmap.

AntX comes into play at the beginning of your cafeteria journey, but FlowWaste appears at the end. The startup makes a camera that attaches to the tray rack of a dish station in cafeterias. As you stack your finished plate, the camera takes a photo of how much food is left behind and sends that data to the cafeteria operators, so they can tweak their portion sizes, menu offerings, dish pairings, and more. 

FlowWaste’s camera detects leftover food. [Photo: Catherine Lamb]

According to a FlowWaste rep, the first four weeks the camera trains to recognize all of the offerings in a cafeteria. After that, its image recognition software is sophisticated enough to “see” different food items and instantly recognize them. 

We’ll soon see just how effective this technology can be. FlowWaste will begin trialing in early Spring in the Indiana area with university and corporate cafeterias. The company, which is currently part of an incubator system at Notre Dame, operates on a subscription service which will cost around $1,000 per month. 

As we all know, food waste is a pressing issue up and down the food chain. Companies like Winnow and Leanpath are helping curb waste in restaurants’ back of house by optimizing ingredient ordering, but thus far there hasn’t been a lot of tech-focused on reducing consumer food waste in the front-of-house.

Hopefully that’s starting to change. Who knows, maybe next year the CES cafeterias will have AntX and FlowWaste up and running — and we’ll see a lot less food go in the trash. 

CES 2020: INTHEKEG is an All-in-One Beer Brewing, Storage, and Dispensing Machine

By the end of CES, I’m betting all attendees (this reporter included) will be in dire need of a cold beer. They might want to hit up INTHEKEG, a smart brewery platform I took a tour of at CES’ Eureka Park this week.

INTHEKEG is roughly the size of a refrigerator, has a small interactive screen display, and runs off of electricity. The device can hold 10 ‘SMARTKEG’s, the 18-liter container in which the beer is brewed and stored, each of which can be a separate flavor. Brewers order ‘SMARTKEG’s from the INTHEKEG website. Each container comes with all of the ingredients needed to brew a particular style of beer (pale ale, IPA, etc). 

Put the SMARTKEG into the machine with some water, press a button, and between two and four weeks later (depending on aging and brew environments) you’ll have freshly-made beer, which can be dispensed directly from the INTHEKEG machine. Beer brewing and levels can be monitored via the INTHEKEG app. The full containers are stored in the device at the optimal temperature for its particular flavor of beer. After use, the machine automatically sterilizes and cleans itself.

While INTHEKEG is pretty hands-off, those who want to customize their brew can add flavorings — like pumpkin, blueberry, or fresh hops — to a canister which will infuse the beer. An INTHEKEG rep told me that people use that option to make unique brews for special events, like weddings. He said that the device will cost roughly $10,000 to buy. However, he told me it can be leased out for around $50 per month — which seems incredibly low to me, but clearly they’re hoping to hook people and continue selling them SMARTKEGs. He did not disclose how much the SMARTKEGs cost.

If that sounds pretty high-tech and high-volume for a home brew operation, it is. INTHEKEG’s giant size and almost-as-giant cost will likely make it a tough sell for home brewers, especially since there are more affordable countertop devices like Picobrew, BEERMKR and Minibrew out there.

However, I could definitely see it being a fun device to rent out for events, like weddings and birthdays. INTHEKEG could also be a good investment for restaurants or catering operations that want to attract beer-lovers with a signature brew which was made on-site — provided they can figure out how to move the heavy machine to different venues. The machine can also make wine, kombucha, and sake, which opens up some possibilities (fresh kombucha at music festivals, anyone?) 

INTHEKEG is already sold in China, India and Korea, and will land in the U.S. later this year. If you want to take a little tour of the machine, check out the video I shot on the CES show floor below!

CES 2020: A Tour of INTHEKEG's Smart Brewing Machine

CES 2020: Watergen Wants to Replace the Water Cooler by Making H20 from Air

Maybe it’s just that I’m parched from the dry Las Vegas air, but it seems like water tech has been big at CES this year. There’s rOcean, the smart water machine which dispenses fizzy or flavored water on-demand. Zero Mass Water, which captures the humidity in the air and turns it into potable water with solar power, is also back.

This morning I had a chance to speak to another company trying to reinvent the way we get our H20. Watergen uses patented technology to create filtered water from air. The Israeli company’s water dispensers, called GENNYs, are about the size of a traditional water cooler and plug into electrical outlets. To make water, they suck air into the machine and cool it to a dew point to create water droplets, which is then filtered. A single GENNY can make up to 30 liters (8 gallons) of water per day and can be dispensed hot or chilled.

Watergen has been developing GENNY since 2009 and actually won a CES 2019 Best of Innovation award last year. However, it will finally start shipping the GENNY in the U.S., its first market, this June, for an MSRP of $2,499. Filters — which should be replaced every six months — will cost around $125. The GENNY will be available intially through Watergen’s website.

If you’re familiar with Zero Mass Water, you’ve probably noted that these two technologies sound pretty similar. But according to Watergen representative Nick Harris, GENNY is unique in that it can run on electricity and isn’t reliant on solar power (though the company is also developing a solar-powered device). That makes it a lot easier to set up in smaller settings, like homes or offices, and a lot easier to move. Zero Mass is also significantly more expensive; it costs over $5,000 to install a two-panel system, which creates enough water for four to six people (though they also have a new model which can be purchased for $2,500 each).

Watergen has a charitable mission as well. The company worked with the American Red Cross and FEMAA to donate some of its larger units to areas that lack consistent access to clean drinking water across the globe. Harris even told me they’d sent a unit to Flint, Michigan in the wake of the city’s enduring water crisis.

The Genny, however, is meant to be a more sustainable upgrade to home and office water coolers — no giant plastic water bottles required. And honestly, it’s about time that we start seeing some serious innovation in the H20 space. With rising populations and increased demands for meat, freshwater is becoming increasingly scarce. Places around the world — from developing countries to right here in the U.S. — struggle to have consistent access to clean drinking water. At the same time, our oceans are filling up with discarded plastic water bottles. Here’s hoping we see (and taste) more water tech at CES’s to come.

You can watch a video of me getting a tour of the GENNY device (and tasting its water!) from the CES show floor below.

A Tour of Watergen's GENNY at CES 2020

CES 2020: DNANudge Guides Your Grocery Shopping Based Off of Your DNA

Unless you’re a nutritionist or really adept at reading nutrition labels, it can be tricky to tell which brands of peanuts/chocolate/crackers are healthiest for you. Especially when grocery stores offer dozens and dozens of SKUs for every possible food item.

With DNANudge, a London-based personalized nutrition startup, the key to optimizing your grocery shopping is on your wrist. The company’s app links up with wearable bands which scan CPG products and give you real-time feedback on whether they’re a good fit for you to eat — or not.

We stopped by DNANudge’s booth at CES 2020 to get a tour of how it works. First you send off a saliva sample to the company’s HQ in Covent Garden, London. DNANudge analyzes your DNA to give you a breakdown of your nutritional profile — sensitive to salt, low risk of diabetes, etc. — which is available via the company’s app. (Your sample is then destroyed.) The app also connects to DNANudge’s wearable armbands, available online or in its London retail store. 

Then the fun begins. You can scan the barcodes of edible CPG products with the armband, which will either flash green (a good match for your biology) or red (not so much). After the band flashes, you can check on the app to get a more detailed breakdown of why the food is/isn’t a fit for you, and also get recommendations for products that might be a better match. Which kind of makes me wonder why the armband is even necessary — couldn’t you just scan all the products with your phone? Though I guess it looks #fashion and saves you the step of pulling out your phone, if you just want a quick yes/no in the grocery aisle.

Speaking on the CES show floor, DNANudge’s co-founder and CEO Chris Toumazou told me that he started the company in 2015 to empower people to eat healthier. “If you want to eat a biscuit, you’re going to eat a biscuit,” he explained to me. “But you can eat the best biscuit for your biology.”

DNANudge’s scanning currently works with all CPG SKU’s in major U.K. supermarkets, except for Marks & Spencer. The entire system — DNA test, wearable, and app — is currently available in the U.K. for 120 pounds ($158). Toumazou told me that they were planning to launch in the U.S. soon, possibly in L.A. He estimates that the system will retail for $120 stateside.

Personalized nutrition — either based off of DNA or gut microbiomes — has become quite a trend lately. Viome and Sun Genomics make dietary and supplement recommendations based off of your microbiome. The most similar offering to DNANudge is GenoPalate, which also uses a saliva swab to map DNA and make suggestions about which foods people should eat. However, GenoPalate doesn’t have the wearable aspect, so it can’t make recommendations on a case-by-case basis like DNANudge does.

There’s no doubt that more people want more personalized dietary guides, but how exactly to do that — and protect consumer data — is still unclear. If you’re curious this emerging space you should come to Customize, our food personalization summit on February 27th in New York City. See you there!

The Rocean Smart Seltzer Maker is Shipping This Spring, After a Stay at the Swanky Conrad New York

If you’re in Vegas right now for CES, there’s a good chance you’re sitting in a hotel room sipping from a hotel-supplied bottle of water as you read this. Sadly, most of us do it, despite knowing the wastefulness of single-use plastic.

But I get it; Vegas’s dry air makes us thirsty, and, let’s face it, hotels aren’t great at providing in-room solutions for filtered water. (And also: have you ever tasted Vegas tap water?)

Here’s the thing though: more and more of us are moving through the day with our own reusable water bottles, and if we just had an in-room solution we’d fill up there before heading out to conquer our day.

Well if you’re staying at the Conrad New York this coming March, you’ll actually have the chance to fill your bottle water up with filtered (not to mention fizzy and flavored) water in-room. That’s because the swanky NYC hotel is going to put a Rocean smart water machine in every one of the hotel’s 463 rooms for a limited time.

The ritzy chain decided to give the water machines a go after a 40 day pilot this past November-December where they installed a Rocean in a single room. According to Rocean’s Chief Commercial Officer Andre Jaquet, guests in the room consumed 1.2 liters of water per day from the Rocean on average, the equivalent of 5-6 hotel-furnished single use plastic water bottles. Hotel management ran the numbers and realized, over the course of a year, they could eliminate about 1 million plastic water bottles from going into the waste stream.

One million plastic water bottles is a lot of water bottles. Extrapolate that across the tens of thousands of hotels in the US that provide single-use plastic water to guests, and you can see how big an impact these types of solutions could make if widely deployed.

Sadly, there are some business model inhibitors to making this happen, namely that lots of hotels charge guests for water bottles. But Rocean envisions a future where hotels could charge for extras like flavors and other add-ins like caffeine or nutrients that could replace the income from selling single-use plastic.

Friend of The Spoon Richard Gunther, who looked at the Rocean for the Spoon in 2018, told me what he likes most about the machine is it can be plumbed directly into your own water system. “That makes it really easy to use,” he said.

What I like most about the Rocean is the product’s aesthetics. Like many, I’m finding my kitchen countertop increasingly crowded, and if I’m going to put another device in my kitchen, it had better look good.

This one does, in no small part due to a former architect. Unlike so many of the high profile connected consumer products coming out of Silicon Valley nowadays, the product’s design wasn’t the result of some engagement with a high-priced design firm like Frog or IDEO, but instead it was the brainchild of architect-by-training and cofounder Mohini Boparai.

Boparai and husband, CEO Sunjay Guleria, conceived of the concept for the Rocean when living in India and Amsterdam and trying out different seltzer makers and filtration systems. They soon began to think about the impact a good built-in filter and carbonation system could make on reducing plastic, and soon Rocean was born.

If you aren’t traveling to New York soon to stay at the Conrad, you’ll be able to buy a Rocean smart water dispenser for your home soon. The machines, which had originally expected to ship in December of 2018, are now on track for a spring 2020 shipment after a $6 million venture infusion from investment firm Blue and a handful of celebrity angels like John Legend and South African DJ Black Coffee.

The machines will sell for $349, which will come with a starter of a couple flavors and a CO2 canister. Additional flavor add-ins and CO2 refill canisters will be available through the company’s website.

If You Really Love Matcha, Cuzen Matcha Will Be Your Matcha Making Robot

If you’ve been to a Starbucks or pretty much any other any premium coffee or tea shop over the past couple years, you’ve probably either ordered a matcha drink or seen someone downing some variant of the vibrant green beverage.

That’s because matcha is everywhere. Driven in part by the health benefits and tastemakers who have fallen in love with its unique sweet and savory flavor profile, matcha has made its way into everything from ice cream to baked goods to energy bars.

If you’re a purist, you might want to consider making your own matcha at home. If you’re like most Americans, that likely means buying pre-ground powder to stir and mix like Tang. But if you really want to make matcha the old school way, you have to grind your leaves fresh into powder like a Japanese tea master.

But you’re not a Japanese tea master, which probably means you don’t have a stone mill on hand to do the grinding. Lucky for you, a new startup by the name of World Matcha has created what is essentially a matcha-making robot that both grinds and mixes matcha fresh from leaves called the Cuzen Matcha.

The Cuzen Matcha machine, which had its public debut last night at CES Unveiled in Las Vegas, takes un-ground matcha leaves and then grinds them into the fine powder with a ceramic grinder. From there, the machine drops the powder into a cup where a magnetic stirrer replicates the traditional bamboo whisk to make your fresh ground matcha drink.

Once it’s mixed, you can drink it straight or use it to make your favorite matcha drink like a latte or cappuccino.

Now I realize most people will likely just choose to continue scooping matcha powder. You, like me, are lazy like that. But, if you are a matcha fanatic, the Cuzen Matcha might just be for you. If that’s the case, you can pre-order now off of the company’s website for $290, which includes the machine and a total of 100 grams of tea leaves to get you started on your matcha making journey.

I had a chance to watch the Cuzen Matcha make tea last night and tried a small sample of it. While I’m not a matcha expert by no means, it certainly tasted fresher from the times I’ve made drinks from matcha powder at home.

According to company CEO Eijiro Tsukada, World Matcha is already working with manufacturers and he expects Cuzen Matcha to ship sometime in 2020.

You can see the Cuzen Matcha in action below: