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Newsletter: Everything We Saw in Kitchen and Food Tech at CES 2020

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The Spoon team descended on Vegas last week to try and find all the food and kitchen tech we could lay our hands on. We also held our second annual FoodTech Live event because, well, we’re lazy and we wanted the food tech to come to us.

And now that we’re back in the snowy foothills of the Pacific Northwest, the Spoon team had some time put our thoughts about the tech expo together, record a podcast, and decipher what it all means. 

So here it is, our CES Food Tech wrapup. I’ve got kitchen tech covered below, then Catherine looks at Impossible Pork and what else she saw on the fake meat front, and finally Chris gives his thoughts on robots and kitchens coming out of what has been an eventful couple weeks in that space. 

Kitchen Tech at CES

Because I’ve gone to CES more times than I could count, I’ve gotten pretty good at searching out what matters to me the most so as to make productive use of my time. That’s always been a challenge in food tech since CES and its exhibitors have largely ignored the category. But that all changed this year because of what happened last year: The launch of the Impossible Burger 2.0. 

And while fake meat is a long ways from a smart oven or a food robot, I think having the food tech unicorn choose CES as its venue to launch its new products has just given momentum to everything food-related, included the future kitchen.

What did I see? Well, I wrote a deep dive full kitchen tech wrap-up report detailing everything kitchen tech at CES this year, but if you’re looking for the short-short of it here are the top takeaways:

Personalization is Impacting Everything, Even Physical Space

There’s no doubt, personalization is impacting everything in food (heck, it’s why we decided to have a dedicated event on it). But when it comes to personalization, we usually are talking recipes or diet plans, not physical space. GE wants to change that, and so they showed off an adaptable kitchen concept that personalizes the space depending on the needs of the individual. 

Of course, there was also lots of meal planning and recipe personalization, as well as a couple startups like DNANudge and Sun Genomics looking to help you build meal journeys based on your personal biomarkers and DNA. 

Food Waste Only Gets A Half-Nod

There were better and more capable smart fridges to help us take better inventory and there were smart pantries to help us keep track of our dry goods, but I didn’t see a whole lot of effort focused on helping us reduce consumer food waste. One company, however, that wanted to help us all get better at composting our food waste was Sepura Home, which had a good solution that integrated with your home disposal to route food waste to a composter and liquids down the drain. 

Focus on Full Meal Journey Rather Than Point Solutions

When it comes to the smart home and connected kitchen, we’re used to seeing standalone technologies that show off a cutting edge new technology rather than a bigger solution tailored towards solving consumer problems. I think that’s starting to change, as companies like GE and Samsung showed off bigger ideas tailored towards helping people solve problems and connect the different parts of the meal journey. 

Drink Tech!

There were so many drink tech offerings at CES it was hard to keep track. We wrote about the Matcha making machine, tried out the Spinn and saw new beer-making robots.  We even checked out a new seltzer machine that is targeting reducing plastic waste in hotels and homes.

Countertop Cooking

Being a kitchen tech nerd, I have to admit it was cool have the guy who basically invented the home sous vide circulator give me a walkthrough of the Anova Precision Oven (you can listen along to Scott Heimendinger’s guided tour here.) We also took a look at the Julia multicooker here. 

Once again, check out my full kitchen tech wrapup for CES 2020 here. But first, see what Catherine has to say about fake meat this year at CES…

Impossible Pork at CES 2020 [Photo: Catherine Lamb]

I came into CES especially excited about one thing: Impossible Foods’ press event. The company had teased something major on Twitter, so I guessed we would see a new product — probably pork or chicken. And pork it was!

We got to taste the faux pork in a number of applications and it was juicy and fatty, though slightly more neutral-tasting than traditional pork — a great blank canvas for a number of porky recipes. If you’re feeling FOMO right now, don’t sweat it — you can soon you can sample the faux pork for yourself in the Impossible Croissan’wich, featuring Impossible’s plant-based pork sausage, which is rolling out in select Burger King locations this month.

While eating a bao stuffed with plant-based pork, I couldn’t help but wonder — what will be the next food to make a splash at CES? Last year Impossible stirred up a lot of attention when it won the Best of the Best award from Endgadget, even though it was the first edible food company to show at the tech expo. Now that the company has proven that food is, in fact, technology, it has opened up the door for more food companies to make a splash at CES.

One company to keep an eye on is Dutch startup Meatable. The cultured meat startup, which is growing pork muscle and fat cells outside of the animal, actually had its own small booth at CES this year. They didn’t have any of their actual meat on display, but Meatable’s CEO Krijn De Nood told me that they were hoping to bring cell-based pork samples to Vegas in 2021 for a limited taste test. They plan to start selling the pork on a large scale — pending regulatory approval — by 2025.

I guess that means we’ll have to start building up an appetite for CES 2021.

FlowWaste’s image recognition device. [Photo: Catherine Lamb]

Other cool stuff I saw (and tasted) on the CES show floor:

Food Robots: Do We Need Them?

While Chris wasn’t able to get around CES this year (save for our event FoodTech Live), he was watching for food robots and saw buzz around quite a few:  

I was unable to attend CES this year, and as such, I missed a bunch of robot stuff. LG showed off a mock restaurant with a robot cooking food and making pourover coffee. Samsung demoed a concept robot that was billed as an “extra set of hands” in the kitchen that could grab items, pour oil and even wield a knife. IRobot, maker of the Roomba vacuum announced it too was developing robotic arms to load dishes or carry food to the table. And of course, who could forget the robot that makes raclette melted cheese.

But in the end, he started to wonder: Do we need these more advanced robots in the consumer kitchen? …my initial response to robot arms swerving around a kitchen is why? Are these robotic ambitions the best way to gain greater convenience in the kitchen, or do they just make things more complicated? Let’s acknowledge that there are definite use cases for robotic arms to help those with disabilities or who are otherwise movement impaired. The University of Washington is working on a voice-controlled robot that can feed people who need such assistance. And researching how robots interact with odd-shaped and often fragile objects like food can help the robotics industry overall. That’s one of the reasons Sony teamed up with Carnegie Mellon to develop food robots, and why Nvidia built a full kitchen to train its robots. But in our homes, and especially smaller apartments with even smaller kitchens, robot arms seem like more of a menace than a help, taking up space and potentially getting in the way. A case of futuristic form over function.

You can read Chris’s full piece about the robotic consumer kitchen and where he thinks it’s all going here. 

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.

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: Stratuscent’s Digital Nose Can “Smell” When Crops are Ripe or Food is Burning

Something good-smelling must be in the air at CES this week, because digital noses are becoming a bit of a thing at this year’s tech expo. Yesterday I dropped by the booth of Stratuscent, a Montreal, Quebec-based startup which is digitizing scents to detect freshness.

The company’s sensors, called eNoses, detect chemicals in the air to create a scent print — like a fingerprint for a smell. According to CEO David Wu, who gave me a tour, Stratuscent’s “secret sauce” is its superior AI and machine learning, which can quickly and accurately determine any number of complex scents, even ones too tricky for humans to smell. The company’s tech came from NASA, where it was originally used for leak detection.

The eNose is pretty simple to use. Just wave the product in question under the eNose and it will determine what it is — as well as its percentage of accuracy — in under thirty seconds. You can Wu demonstrating the technology below:

CES 2020: Stratuscent's eNose is a Digital Smelling Machine

Wu told me that Stratuscent’s noses have a variety of applications, including sniffing ethylene, a chemical that indicates spoilage, in crop shipments. They’re also working with a dairy company to detect milk freshness. In the home, Wu told me that the eNose could also be integrated into smart kitchen appliances to identify cooking stages (your sauce is about to burn!) and alert users to food spoilage.

Startuscent was founded in 2017 and has raised $4.3 million thus far. Wu said that in addition to its partnership with a dairy company, Stratuscent is pushing further into the food and agriculture space, and is also in conversations to work with indoor agriculture farmers.

Stratuscent isn’t the only player digitizing smell technology (what a world). Yesterday Chris wrote about Aryballe’s new Digital Nose 2.0, which also debuted at CES this week and also digitizes scent to detect freshness, cooking smells, etc.

Regardless, the digital scent landscape is just beginning to emerge. As food safety outbreaks grow — and consumers become more conscious about reducing home food waste — I think there will be a growing market for this sort of technology. Which means there’s ample opportunity for more than one player to nose its way into the digital smelling space.

Impossible Foods Reveals New Plant-based Pork at CES 2020, will Sell Sausage at Burger King

Today at CES 2020 Impossible Foods, maker of the plant-based “bleeding” burger, unveiled its newest product: pork. Impossible’s plant-based pork is gluten-free and has 16 grams of protein and 13 grams of fat per 4-ounce serving. The company also announced its plant-based sausage, which will debut later this month at 139 Burger King restaurants, which already sell the Impossible Whopper, in the form of a sausage croissan’wich.

Last year at CES, Impossible Foods surprised everyone when it stole the show and won the Best of the Best CES 2019 award for its meatless burger. (We were there at the unveil, and it tasted delicious.) This year they’re hoping to top that by revealing an entirely new product. Like its ground beef, Impossible pork contains heme, a genetically engineered product that gives meat its savory flavor. However, it contains less of the molecule than its beef.

Considering that Impossible is trying to move into the Chinese market, its decision to tackle pork makes a lot of sense. Impossible’s CEO Pat Brown had previously stated that the company already had a “very good prototype of plant-based pork,” though the company has also said it’s developing fish and steak. From a practical standpoint, it’s also a much easier jump to go from ground beef to ground pork than to develop something with an entirely new texture, like chicken.

Impossible is also smart to move into ground pork while it’s still a relative white space. The biggest competitor is probably Omnipork — though not in the U.S. The Hong Kong-based company is developing plant-based pork specifically for Asian palates and doesn’t yet sell outside of the Asian continent. In terms of sausage, adding a plant-based option will help Burger King compete with Dunkin’, which began selling Beyond Meat sausage sandwiches at all of its locations late in 2019.

But I know what you’re all wondering: How did it taste? Honestly, it was awesome — a viable stand-in for ground pork. I sampled the new product in a variety of preparations: meatballs, banh mi, dan dan noodles, and nestled in a bao. It’s slightly less juicy and fatty than traditional pork, and is lacking a distinct, well, porkiness. But the texture and pale pink color are spot-on, and it’s a good neutral palate for a variety of preparations and sauces. I’ll definitely order it when it comes onto menus.

There’s no word on when the Impossible pork will head to menus, outside of the Burger King sausage launch. We also don’t know how much either product will cost. But for the lucky folks at CES this week, you can give the new plant-based pork a try; Impossible will be cooking up samples from January 7-10th in the Las Vegas Convention Center.

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:

Here’s Your Handy CES 2020 Food and Kitchen Tech Preview & Walking Guide

Heading to CES?

Make sure to wear comfortable shoes, bring some Tylenol, and get ready for lots of food and cooking tech!

Having gone to the world’s biggest consumer tech show for well over a decade, I’ve gotten pretty good at finding new products that are of interest to me. That said, even for someone like myself who’s spent more than his fair share of shoe leather getting around the ugly carpets of Vegas, finding the latest in food tech has always been something of a challenge at a show where entertainment, robotics and car tech news usually steal most of the headlines.

The good news is that all started to change last year with the debut of Impossible Burger 2.0, and, based on my pre-show planning over the past couple of weeks, I expect to see a whole bunch of food and kitchen tech news at this year’s CES.

I figured I’d share some of my research by putting together a guide to what’s going on in food tech and smart kitchen at CES 2020 to help you make the most of your time in Vegas. I’ve even added booth numbers for most of the products to help you get there.

During the next few days, I’d also suggest you check back in here at The Spoon for stories, videos and interviews from The Spoon editor team. And, if you plan on making foodtech news at CES with a cool product you think we should check out, drop us a note at the tip line.

So here we go! Check out these food and kitchen tech products at CES 2020:

Robot Pizza: Back in October, attendees of the Smart Kitchen Summit got to sample pizza made by the Seattle based pizza robot startup Picnic. For those of you who couldn’t make it to Seattle, now’s your chance: Picnic’s pizzabot will be serving pizza at CES. Lines for food are long at CES, and I expect the pizza-robot lines at the Las Vegas Convention Center to be even longer.

Robot Ramen: If pizza isn’t your thing, you might want to make your way over to the Taiwan Tech Area in the Sands Eureka Park (Sands 51411) to check to another Smart Kitchen Summit alumni Yo-kai Express, which will be dishing up noodles from their robot ramen vending machine.

Beerbots: You’re gonna need something to chase the pizza, so you might want to check out a beerbot like PicoBrew (Sands 41518) or stop by Treasure Island for FoodTech Live (ticket needed) to see MiniBrew or BEERMKR. Also, while I haven’t hear anything out of LG yet about their beerbot, I am waiting to see if they’ll have an update on their beer brewing appliance they debuted at last year’d CES.

Drinkbots: If you’d like something a little stiffer (I’d suggest to wait til after noon, but this is Vegas and you are an adult), try out a cocktail robot like the Drinkworks (Sands 42546 and FoodTech Live) or Bartesian (Sands 40852).

Wine Tech. Oh, so you’re a wine snob, are you? Don’t worry, you can find that too. Earlier this week Chris wrote about the Albi from Albicchiere (Sands 52722), a cool countertop appliance that stores and serves your wine. Invineo will be showing its connected wine dispenser off as well (Sands 50863).

DNA-Driven Food Choices. Food personalization is moving beyond simple suggestions, and in the future it will get downright personal by creating diet plans based on a person’s biological makeup. If you want to check out a couple of companies looking deep inside your body to make food recommendations, check out DNA Nudge (Sands Booth 44316) or Sun Genomics (FoodTech Live – ticket required for entry).

Smart Countertop Cooking. There will be an array of different countertop cooking appliances that are powered by smart software and cook in new and interesting ways. CES will be the first chance to see a working version of the long-promised Anova smart oven (see our post here), which you can see in the Sands (booth 40946) . The Julia, which is a multicooker reminiscent of the Thermomix, features guided cooking videos delivered via a touchscreen interface. You can find the Julia at in the Sands at booth 41367. Speaking of Thermomix, they’ll be showing off the TM6 at FoodTech Live (ticket required). If you’re the smoothie type, check out the cool next-gen Millo blender (Sands 40346), who will also be showing off a smart table with wireless power.

Intelligent Surface Cooking. I expect some interesting news in terms of smart cooking surfaces. One cool demo I plan to check out is the GHSP concept that is both an induction cooking surface and a touch interface (North Hall 3111). I also expect the Wireless Power Consortium to be showing off their Ki cordless kitchen platform at their usual spot in the Las Vegas Convention Center at on the walkway near the South Hall (South Hall SL-2).

Smart Home Gardening/Vertical Farming Systems. I’ve been following smart gardening systems for years at CES, but this is the first year we’ve seen big appliance brands jump in. As Jenn wrote earlier this week, LG will be showing off a new indoor gardening system at CES (Central Hall 11100). Not to be outdone, GE will be coming with its own home gardening kitchen concept called “Home Grown” which it will be showcasing at the Haier/GE booth in the central hall (Central booth 16006).

Home Food Robots. We’re not sure how fully fleshed out the Autokitch cooking robot concept is, but they’ll have a booth at CES (Sands 53034). And while it’s not quite a fully robotic kitchen concept or bread making robot, the Tigoût is a pod-based baking machine from Argentina that’s is worth checking out. Drop in a pod, out spits a souffle or a raspberry muffin. You can see the Tigoût in action at Sands 52768.

Coffee and Tea, Please. If you’re looking for a nice cup of tech-powered tea, you should check out the Teplo tea maker, which will be at the Panasonic booth in the Sands (Sands 42711). If you’re more of a coffee person, then you’re in luck if you have a ticket to FoodTech Live: A production line version of the grind and brew Spinn will make its debut after a long-anticipated wait. The Terra Kaffe – which grinds, brews and steams milk – will also be in attendance at Food Tech Live.

Alexa, Give Me a Coke. Sure, this one is kinda gimmicky, but we are talking CES after all. Amazon and Coca-Cola are teaming up for a voice-powered Amazon Alexa “Coke Energy Wall” where attendees will be able to ask Alexa for a coke and a smile (delivered via what the PR describes as a “one of Alexa’s witty responses”. You can find the Amazon Alexa Coke Energy Wall at Sands booth #40934.

Smart Fridges. Smart fridges have been debuting at CES for years, and this year they are more evolved than ever. LG will be showing off its new InstaView ThinQ refrigerator, which uses computer vision and AI for real-time inventory of what’s inside (Central Hall 11100). Samsung will be back with its latest edition of the Family Hub smart fridge line, this time powered by Whisk, a smart food AI platform they acquired in spring of 2019 (Central Hall 15006). If you’re interested in products that make existing dumb fridges smart, Smarter will be showing off its smart fridge cam platform at FoodTech Live (ticket required).

Fake Meat. Impossible stole the show last year at CES with the debut of the Impossible 2.0. In retrospect, it was a brilliant move for the fake meat unicorn to unveil their next-gen meat at CES 2019, mostly because it would be the first time most journalists and attendees would have a bite of a plant based burger. It also didn’t hurt that the 2.0 is much better than the 1.0. This year Impossible will be back, kicking things off with a press conference at 5 PM on Jan 6th and then serving up twenty five thousand free samples of Impossible Burger (I’m guessing it will be the new recipe/3.0 edition) their new pork product and the Impossible Burger at the Central Plaza of the Las Vegas Convention Center.

Smart Grillin’. The Weber folks partnered up with June late last year to add some software powered cooking intelligence to their grill. You can swing by their booth at the South Hall to see what those two have cooking on the Barbie (South Hall SP-2). Also, Chris wrote up the news this weekend about Yummly’s new entry in the increasingly crowded smart thermometer space. You can check that new product if you make an appointment with Whirlpool and swing by their meeting space at the Wynn (Wynn hospitality suites). Speaking of smart thermometers, Meater is back and you can check out their latest if you have a ticket to FoodTech Live.

Tiny Adorable Dishwashers. Like many of you kitchen nerds, I’ve been excited about the Tetra. Only problem is, Heatworks, the company behind the Tetra, is a bit behind on shipping their sexy little countertop cleaning machine and so it looks like they are staying home this year and focusing on getting it out the door in 2020. But don’t worry! If you’re looking to scratch the countertop cleaning machine itch, head on over to the Daan booth to check out equally adorable Bob (Sands 50819).

Ok, that’s it. While this list isn’t exhaustive, it’s a good start. If anything really interesting pops up before tomorrow’s CES Unveiled, I’ll update the post (send me any news I’ve missed via our tip form), and for more detailed updates make sure to check back here at The Spoon all next week!

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.