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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

CES

CES 2023: GROW UP Wants You To Make Plant-Based Milk at Home

If you’re an adult, there’s a good chance you’ve weaned yourself off of cow milk in favor of a plant-based alternative. After all, not only is plant-based milk less disruptive to the digestive tract, but it’s also often healthier.

But it’s not all good news. Plant-based milk is often filled with weird-sounding additives like xanthan gum and lecithin, while some have more recognizable ingredients like sugar and salt that you may want to cut out of your diet.

So if you want plant-based milk but want more control over what goes in it, one option is to make your own. One way to make your own is to try using your blender and a milk nut bag. But if you want to automate the process and have less mess to clean up, you might want to buy a countertop machine to create nut milk for you.

The latest nut milk machine to make its debut is from GROW UP. The machine, which was at CES last week in Vegas, “brews” up to 10 different kinds of plant-based milk. To do so, it uses what its creator calls a “cold extraction” process in which it grinds the ingredients and then vacuums the liquid through a built-in filtration system. Once the milk is dispensed – which takes about 3-4 minutes – the leftover pulp can be taken out and dried to use in baked goods.

The person behind the GROW UP Milk Brewer is Luiz Felipe Rapacci, a former F&B industry veteran who has worked for big CPG brands such as Coca-Cola and General Mills in Brazil. In 2017 Rappaci moved to the US to attend UC Irvine, where he studied innovation management and entrepreneurship. After working for a food tech startup and a basmati rice producer, Rapacci started working on what would become the Milk Brewer in 2020. GROW UP is beginning to manufacture the Milk Brewer for customers and expects to have it to market by mid-spring of this year.

The price for the countertop milk maker will be $599 and is available for pre-order. The price is a bit on the high-end, considering there are other plant-based milk makers on the market today for less than half that. That said, none of the ones I’ve seen make as many types of plant-based milk as Grown Up claims their brewer will make (10). GROW UP also has what looks like an easy-to-use touchscreen with pre-configured options that allow users to easily choose different types of plant-milk.

You can watch our interview with Rapacci from the show floor at CES below.

Milk Brewer Makes 10 Types of Plant-Based Milk!

Cargill (Yes, That Cargill) Shows Off Smart Food Locker System at CES 2023

Most people know Cargill as a massive food conglomerate with a huge share of the total food commodity market. But considerably fewer people know the same company responsible for about 25% of total US grain exports has a digital business unit that incubates technology products more akin to something you might see from a Silicon Vally startup.

One of those products on display at CES 2023 was Chekt, a smart food locker system for restaurants, stadiums, and other food service-centric businesses. The Chekt system, which you can see demoed in the video below, automates the handoff of prepared food to customers or delivery drivers. The lockers can be configured to be hot and cold in the same unit, allowing a restaurant or other food service business to hand off a warm meal and cold drink to consumers from the same locker.

A Look at the Chekt storage locker system from Cargill at CES 2023

The way the lockers work is customers can order on their phone from their table or seat, and they receive a text when the food is ready. The customer then heads to the locker, responds to the text to notify Chekt they are ready for pick up, and the locker unlocks.

According to Cargill digital business lead Eric Parkin, the Chekt system is deployed at the Pittsburgh Penguins stadium and at restaurants on the US west coast. Parkin says that restaurants like Buckhorn BBQ are seeing as many as 70 orders a day going through the locker system for customer pick-up or delivery drivers.

Cargill’s Chekt system is just one of many smart locker systems for food pickup that have appeared over the last couple of years. As the pandemic accelerated the transition towards delivery and contactless pickup, companies like Cargill, GRUBBR, Minnow, and others have stepped in to fill a need for restaurants and others to automate the final handoff of food to their customers.

My guess is that over time we’ll see nearly every stadium in the US deploy similar solutions, where lines can get long, and people are in a hurry to get back to their seats. Larger restaurant chains that depend heavily on pickup orders and delivery will also likely make these a fixture, and there’s a good chance they’ll become commonplace in universities and large multifamily residences.

Haura Unveils a Modular Food Factory for the Kitchen at CES 2023

Nestled in the basement of the Venetian Expo center last week at CES, a startup from Italy showed off a machine that its inventor hopes will empower home cooks to do pretty much anything their heart desires: making home-made pasta noodles, roasting coffee beans, making cheese, brewing beer and lots more. In short, the machine, called the Haura, is intended to be a modular food factory in a box.

The Haura comes with three major features that unlock all of that flexibility: a motor to power different add-on modules (lasagna-maker, blender, cocktail shaker, sauce and frosting shippers, etc.), an induction heating surface for cooking, and a built-in extruder to enable home cooks to make food that usually requires pro-style equipment.

“The extruder means that you can automate a lot of processes that you only industrial food-making machines,” Haura spokesperson Matteo Pressacco told the Spoon. “For example, if you need to make pasta, candies, snack bars, are confectionery packed, baby’s food, everything can be automated.”

A Look at the Haura Food Factory at CES 2023

The company is working on a number of different modules, ranging from a lasagna maker to a beer brewer, that can be plugged into the appliance’s motor or extruder. This modularity gives the box its flexibility and sets it apart from other all-in-one cooking appliances.

The machine will have its own 10″ touch screen that shows the progress of any food-making project, including information such as temperature and humidity. The Haura will have what the company calls the F-OS, short for Food Operating System, that will enable the operation of the appliance. Different cooking instruction sets, called F-Apps, will come with pre-set processes for operating the machine and allow the user to cook a variety of foods through repeatable, step-by-step processes.

The inventor of the Haura is Angelo Pressacco, a mechanical and electrical engineer, who worked with chef Dario Zuliani on the conceptualization of the Haura.

The patented machine is still in the design phase, and it’s not clear at this point when it will be shipped to consumers. Let’s hope they can pull it off, because if Pressacco and his team can bring their idea to market, they may just create an entirely new category of home food-making appliance.

Kara Water Shows Off Its Air-to-Water Dispenser at CES 2023

At CES 2023, Kara Water showed off its Kara Pure water dispenser that takes moisture from the air and turns it into drinking water.

The Kara Pure combines three functions into one machine. The machine uses the process of desiccation to gather water from the air and accumulates up to 2.5 gallons (10L) of water per day. The machine also acts as a water purifier and dispenser, making it an all-in-one water machine, only without the need to replace water jugs every few days.

Air-to-Water Dispenser at CES 2023 #shorts

Kara Water isn’t the first company to show off water-from-air technology at CES. Watergen, which sucks in air and cools it to a dew point to create water droplets, demoed their machine in 2019 and debuted the working model a year later. Zero Mass Water, which uses solar power to capture moisture and turn it into drinking water, showed off its machine at CES 2019.

Kara Water was founded in 2017 by Cody Sooden and Michael Di Giovanna. The two wanted to create a machine that could produce clean drinking water free of contaminants. Sooden’s interest in the technology started after he began experimenting with capturing water from air while studying architecture. He eventually wrote a research paper on harvesting moisture from the air, which eventually became the genesis of the company’s technology.

The company ran a crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo and raised $722 thousand dollars. The company announces it had finished production of its first units and started shipping to backers last month.

The Kara Pure is available now, but at a price of $3,799, it’s most likely priced a little high for consumers and will probably show up in offices or coworking spaces. The company’s founders have already started working to sell the technology in emerging markets like India, where contaminated water is a significant issue.

Brava Debuts the Brava Glass at CES 2023

Brava, a maker of smart oven technology, unveiled the Brava Glass smart oven this week at CES. The new model is the first update since the company debuted its eponymous in 2018.

The Brava Glass fixes what, for many, is the biggest shortcoming of the original Brava: not being able to see inside the cooking cavity. Ok, technically you could peek inside, but only by using the camera that resides inside the cooking chamber of the original Brava. But with the new Brava Glass, no cameras are needed (thought it does have one) as you look inside the Brava through a pane on the front door.

According to Brava spokesperson Steven Barush, the company had always intended to put a see-through glass on the door of the Brava, but didn’t want to rush it. That makes sense, especially considering that Brava’s cooking technology uses high-intensity light. To make looking inside the Brava with the naked eye without getting sun-blinded possible, the Brava Glass has a 97% tint says Barush.

As you can see below, even with a significant tint, the internal cooking light brights things up enough to get a good view of the inside of the oven.

A Look at the Brava Glass at CES 2023

The new Brava Glass with retail for $1,995 (compared with $1,295 for the original Brava) and comes with accessories like a cast iron dish, a muffin tin, a bread pan and more. The company expects the Brava Glass to shipping in early April.

Fridge Cam Maker Smarter Launches New Models at CES, Announces Acquisition of Chefling

Smarter is off to a busy 2023. At CES in Las Vegas today, the fridge cam and kitchen tech startup announced a new lineup of fridge cams. And, if that wasn’t enough, the company also announced they have acquired smart kitchen software maker Chefling.

The new lineup of fridge cams includes an update to the company’s original model. The FridgeCam2 has an extended 3-month battery life, an upgraded processor, and easier one-click set-up via the device’s Bluetooth and Wi-Fi. In addition to new FridgeCam, the company also introduced the FoodCam Mini, a small form-factor model that can be placed in the fridge or the pantry.

Smarter is also debuting the FridgeCam Pro this week, a model targeted at appliance manufacturers who want to retrofit a fridge cam into their refrigerator models without significant redesign. According to Smarter, the Pro model, which is powered by a USB-C connection, can be added to a fridge without having to make expensive modifications to an OEM’s pre-existing hardware.

Above: Smarter Image Recognition Technology

In addition to new hardware, the company announced it had acquired Chefling, a startup whose software helps home cooks manage food inventory, create shopping lists and plan meals. Smarter plans to pair Chefling’s food inventory database with its food image recognition capabilities to create what it says is the most advanced food inventory management system available.

Chefling, which got early traction through a partnership and investment from Bosch, has been pretty quiet for the last year and a half. By putting its software into the hands of Smarter, it gives its technology new life through the newly combined companies’ fuller suite of software targeted at the difficult task of consumer inventory management.

“The software offered by Chefling is the missing piece of the puzzle in terms of providing a full end to end service,” Chrisian Lane, CEO of Smarter, said in a release sent to The Spoon. “Taking the hard work out of stock keeping, meal planning and deciding what you need to buy next. We have automated the entire planning and cooking experience, making it the ideal assistant for the kitchen”.

Smarter also announced a new inventory management software tool it calls KitchenSync. The tool, paired with Smarter’s computer vision, can determine whether food is in stock or not. The software can factor in other sensor data (such as a weight sensor) and determine whether an item needs to be replenished. The software can also integrate with a customer’s online grocery service and can match food inventory to purchases.

If you want to check out Smarter’s new FridgeCam lineup, they’ll be at Showstoppers at CES.

Smarter Managing Director Isabella Lane will be on stage tomorrow at the CES Food Tech Conference on the future of cooking session.

The Walkaround Guide to Food Tech at CES 2023

If you’re heading to CES to check out food tech, we’ve got you covered. The Spoon team has scoured the exhibitor pages and the news releases and is keeping running track of all the companies exhibiting in the food tech category in Las Vegas this week.

You can use the handy table below to read a description of what each is showing off at CES as well as find a link that shows a map of the location of their booth.

The exhibit floor open tomorrow and we’ll be updating this throughout the show, so feel free to check back!

Yo-Kai To Debut Desktop Ramen Robot For Space-Constrained Retail Formats at CES 2023

Yo-Kai Express, a startup that makes autonomous ramen robots, will debut its latest model at CES, a desktop ramen-making machine targeted at small-format retailers such as gas stations and co-working spaces.

The new machine, called the YKE Desktop, is a semi-automatic cooking machine that makes a bowl of ramen in 90 seconds. The machine is paired with an RFID-enabled freezer that holds up to 24 bowls of ramen.

“We are pleased to debut our new product : Yo-Kai Desktop, the new terminal with a smaller form factor, which can be installed anywhere – remote office, gas station, convenience stores, co-working space,” said Andy Lin, founder and CEO of Yo-Kai Express. “It’s a semi-automated machine that provides our customers more flexibility.”

In addition to showing off its newest model at CES, the company will demo a new app that enables customers to order ramen remotely. The app, which will be released to the public in the spring, allows customers to earn loyalty points, discounts, and rewards.

The news follows a busy fall for Yo-Kai, in which they expanded throughout Japan, raised additional funding, and partnered with the Japanese robotics giant Softbank to enable an integration with server robot Pepper.

For those interested in checking out the new Yo-Kai machine, they will be in the Food Tech Pavilion at CES at booth 53114.

Here Are Some Alternative Protein & Future Food Innovations Heading to CES 2023

Ever since Impossible stole the show at CES with the debut of the Impossible Burger 2.0 in 2019, a growing number of future food startups head to Vegas each January to try to repeat the feat or, at the very least, build momentum for the coming year.

This year will be no different, and companies making everything from new types of fat to bug protein infrastructure will be on the show floor starting this Thursday.

Below are some of the alternative protein and future food startups on our radar for CES 2023:

Armored Fresh – If you’ve ever wanted to try plant-based cheese, this is your chance. Armored Fresh which launched their plant-based cheeses in the US in October, creates its cheese with almond milk and plant-based lactic acid. The company, which has a number of patents for its process, will be showcasing its cheese starting January 5th at booth 53314.

Koreasoft – If cheese isn’t your thing, how about bugs? Koreasoft showing off its 3rd generation edible insect smart farm machine and system on the bottom floor of the Venetian Expo in Eureka Park in the Korea Pavilion.

SavorEat – Israel-based SavorEat is has built a 3D-printing robot that makes plant-based meat. The company’s focus for now is food service, but they intend to create a home machine in the future. SavorEat will be in the Food Tech Pavilion in the Venetian Expo at Booth #53117.

Kwang Jin Corp – This Korean startup will be showing off its plant-based food product, ‘DNS Da Neung Sik’, which originated from Chungguk jang, a traditional Korean fermented food. DNS’s main ingredient is soybeans and the company says it is a futuristic fermented alternative milk rich in protein and probiotics. You can find DNS Da Neung in the Korea Pavilion in Eureka Park.

Lypid – Lypid makes PhytoFat, a proprietary plant-based fat line that it claims mimics the texture, mouthfeel, transfer of flavor, and cooking behavior of animal fats. The company plans to sell its product to manufacturers to add animal meat-like juiciness and mouthfeel to plant-based meats. The company will in the Taiwan Tech Arena, booth 62500, starting Thursday.

Nuldam – Nuldam makes a variety of plant-based food, including vegan macarons and vegan aquafaba. They will be in the Food Tech Pavilion at booth #52914.

Nature’s Fynd – Nature’s Fynd makes alternative meat products utilizing a hearty new microbe called Fusarium strain flavolapis, which they discovered in the remnants of acidic volcano springs of Yellowstone National Park. Nature’s Fynd will be sampling their product outside of CES in a food truck.

The Spoon will be covering all the food tech news they find at CES. Check back regularly!

Samsung to Debut Bespoke AI Oven at CES as Family Hub Fades Into Supporting Role

Every year, Samsung takes up more square footage on the exhibition floor than perhaps any other company at CES. Among all that booth space, the Korean consumer electronics giant usually allocates some footage to their kitchen products and, for much of the past decade, a good chunk of its kitchen product focus was on the company’s Family Hub smart fridge line.

But over the past year, Samsung has been pushing its Bespoke family into the limelight while quietly pulling back the Family Hub into more of a supporting rule. And this week at CES 2023 in Las Vegas, Bespoke is not only getting top billing again, but it will also include some product categories beyond the fridge such as its new AI-enabled smart oven.

Starting Thursday, Samsung will showcase the Bespoke AI Oven, a built-in wall oven features a ‘Sense Inside’ feature that uses AI-powered image recognition to recognize up 80 different dishes and ingredients and help avoid overcooking. Samsung claims the new feature is the first food recognition and burn detection AI algorithm to receive an AI cooking appliance verification by UL Solutions. The AI Oven also works with SmartThings Cooking and Samsung Health, which allows it to recommend meal ideas based on the user’s workout stats, diet goals, and the ingredients they have on hand.

As for why Samsung is starting to emphasize the Bespoke brand over Family Hub, my guess is they’ve had more success selling the design-forward Bespoke lineup over the tech-heavy marketing lift required for when Family Hub got top billing. While certainly open to new technology in the kitchen, a consumer’s primary focus with kitchen design and significant appliance purchases is to build an attractive and functional space. Bepoke’s mix and match design concept serves those needs well.

As for Family Hub’s future, signs are pointing to the platform following the same path as the Samsung SmartThings platform, which transitioned over time from a discrete product line to an enabling feature integrated into other products.

Did you know The Spoon is producing CES’s Food Tech Conference? Find out more here.

The Smart Cutting Board is the Latest Kitchen Gadget to Make Its Way to CES

Over the years, there’s been no shortage of kitchen gadgets at CES. But next week, a new category will join the smart ovens, connected thermometers, and AI-powered fridges on the floor of the world’s biggest tech conference: the smart cutting board.

Yep, there will be not one but two on display in Vegas next week, each with a very different focus. First is Versaware, a company that makes a connected cutting board that works in tandem with a bowl as part of a system that helps users calculate and track calories and nutrition. According to Versaware, when a user prepares a meal, they scan the ingredient barcodes (for packaged food) or query an item (for fresh produce) on the touchscreen display before they drop it onto the cutting board. Then, the app takes the weight of the added ingredient and calculates the incremental calorie count and macronutrients (protein, carbs, fat) as you build your meal.

The other smart cutting board on display next week is BLOK, which its creators bill as a ‘Peleton for the kitchen.’ The idea with BLOK is users will learn to be better cooks through access to live and on-demand cooking classes viewable through the device’s video screen. When the cutting’s all done, the BLOK’s wooden cutting board detaches from the video screen and is washed. The assembled BLOK (wooden cutting board and video screen) is stored in a wireless charging station that fits on the countertop. The company will monetize through – what else – a subscription service for access to cooking videos.

Both devices beg the question of whether consumers will embrace technology being inserted into the most basic of kitchen mainstays, a category that – at least up to this point – has excelled in being nothing more than a reliable surface on which to slice and dice our food. While I think both companies will have an uphill battle selling the idea to consumers, I am more skeptical about the BLOK, primarily because I’m not convinced of any Peleton-for-kitchen business model. I’m also not sure the cutting board is the most logical place to put video playback, especially with most consumers’ easy access to smartphones, Alexa video screens, and tablets.

I plan to swing by and see both products next week. If you’re at CES and want to see a smart cutting board up close, you can find Versaware at booth 53414 and BLOK at booth 61706.

Meet Joe, The Oven-Shaped Brother of Bob the Dishwasher

Remember Bob the Dishwasher? He has a brother that likes to cook.

Daan Tech, the French-based startup behind Bob the Dishwasher, has created a small form-factor countertop oven called Joe. Joe is a multifunction oven with a steam/combi oven, convection heating/air-frying, and a microwave. As far as I know, this oven is the first countertop appliance with all three of these capabilities in one box.

Like Bob, Joe the Oven comes in a Smeg-ish design that looks cool on the countertop. Daan isn’t planning on releasing Joe until 2024, and, at this point, they haven’t revealed pricing, but since they are showing up at CES in about a week, we may know more soon.

We’ll be covering CES and what’s happening in food tech all the next week, so if you have a tip or story about a product you see or will be bringing to CES, drop us a line.