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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

CES

The Auum Dishwasher Takes Aim at Single-Use Waste By Cleaning & Disinfecting a Glass Cup in 10 Seconds

Every year, the average office worker uses 500 single-use paper coffee cups, most of which end up in landfills. Plastic cup and bottle waste is even worse.

One obvious answer to reducing or eliminating all this waste is to replace single-use beverage containers with washable, reusable cups or glasses. The problem with this is many offices don’t have a kitchen, and even in those that do, most workers are either too busy (read lazy) to load or unload a dishwasher.

Enter the auum-S, a small countertop dishwasher that washes and dries a single glass cup in 10 seconds. The machine, which uses less than one ounce of water per wash, also disinfects the glass cups using high-temperature dry steam heated to 140°c (284 °F).

You can watch how the system works in the video below:

Unlike other small form-factor countertop dishwashers, the auum-S is targeted at offices, and because the system is for the professional market, the company uses an as-a-service pricing model. The standard setup price is €150 per month for the machine and one hundred 8 ounce glasses. The glasses, designed by Swiss company Bodum, are double-walled and can be customized for the customer with logos or names printed on the glass.

According to company spokesperson Léo Calvet, auum started selling the auum-S four months ago in its home market of France and has already shipped 1500 machines. Many customers are based in Paris and include such names as L’Oréal and Yves Saint Laurent. The company, which has raised one round of funding and is looking to raise more funds this year, plans to sell the auum-S into additional European markets this year and is eyeing a US market entry in 2023.

The Auum Dishwasher Aims to Eliminate Single Use Cups at Work

How Do You Train AI-Powered Checkout To Recognize A Product? In Vegas (& Elsewhere), You Throw It Like Dice

When it comes to training machine vision and AI-powered retail checkout systems, packaged goods and locally created food items are treated very differently.

That’s at least according to Mashgin, a maker of touchless checkout systems. Company spokesperson Toby Awalt said that’s because another store on the network has likely already added that bag of chips or candy bar to their 10 thousand plus item database.

Not so when it comes to locally made food items.

“CPG items, we have to do less and less because there’s enough overlap,” said Awalt, who gave us a walkthrough of the system at CES 2022. “But for dishes, we’ll do every time.”

According to Awalt, adding a new food menu item for a restaurant doesn’t take that since most cafeterias or restaurants only serve between 15 and 50 items.

“You can do that relatively quickly,” he said.

Still, a new packaged good has to be entered into the system now and then. Whenever that happens, the operator has to position the package in several different positions to give the system enough info to recognize the product whenever it shows up under the camera.

Mashgin’s Toby Awalt Rolls the Häagen-Dazs

“I actually do dice rolls with the product,” said Awalt, throwing a Häagen-Dazs ice cream bar onto the tray.

According to Mashgin, the company recommends the system capture 20 to 50 total positions of a product so it can recognize the product from various angles and also distinguish between different variations within the same product line (such as two different flavors of ice cream or potato chips).

You can watch a walkthrough of the Mashgin system below.

The Spoon checks out Mashgin's AI-Powered Checkout at CES 2022
The Minnow Pickup Pod

CES 2022: Minnow Shows Off Pickup Pod, an Unattended Cubby System Designed for Food Delivery

Food tech startup Minnow showed off their contactless, asynchronous smart lockers for food delivery at CES 2022 — and The Spoon got a demo and sat down to talk to CEO Steven Sperry.

Minnow began shipping the pods in the last four weeks through Hatco, a manufacturing partner who creates Minnow pods on demand. On one end of the spectrum, Hatco is serving customers where food is picked up, including restaurants, ghost kitchens, and cafeteria operators. On the other end, Minnow is focusing on selling their pods into commercial real estate including office buildings, residential spaces like apartments and condos, and college campus locations — basically, where food is delivered.

While delivery lockers aren’t a new idea, Minnow differentiates by being designed specifically for food. Each pod is insulated, lit from the inside, and includes UV lights and antimicrobial surfaces.

“We did research and found that people don’t like the idea of reaching into a dark space to get their food — they want to know that the space is clean and sterile,” said Sperry.

Not only is the Minnow pod designed for food and strong connectivity with 5G on board, it’s also providing a standardized and easier way for third-party delivery drivers to find a delivery location to drop off food without navigating secure lobbies and elevators, gated entryways or confusing campus maps.

When asked about Minnow’s support model and whether a multifamily property owner would be able to use the Minnow pod “as a service” versus a straight purchase, Sperry responded, “The purchase typically has a SAS component because the device is always connected to our servers and monitored in real-time. We monitor the food continually, we know what’s happening in every pod and in most cases, it’s considered an amenity for the residents of that building.”

The Spoon video crew was able to get a quick demo of a Minnow pod live on the CES show floor — check it out below.

CES 2022: Demo of the Minnow Pick Up Pod

CES 2022: Uvera’s Smart Food Storage Uses UVC Light To Kill Bacteria

If you’re like me, no matter how hard you try, you end up throwing out food.

And while I recognize most of that waste is on me – a huge part of reducing food waste, after all, is being more mindful about how much is made and remembering to eat what’s already been purchased – I am also pretty convinced that better food storage technology could help me better manage and reduce food waste.

This is why I was intrigued to see the Uvera home food storage system at CES. The Uvera smart food storage system is similar to the Silo system in that it has a base unit that will vacuum seal containers to extend the life of food stored in the device. However, what sets the Uvera apart is its use of UVC light.

Why UVC light?

According to Uvera CEO Asrar Damdam, UVC kills bacteria, which helps extend shelf life and make food after.

“UVC light creates a sterilized environment,” Damram said. “It destroys viruses and bacteria such as COVID-19, salmonella, E.coli, and H1N1. So UVC light alone can extend shelf life of food, but now we’re combining vacuuming as well to increase shelf life even further.”

According to Damdam, the company will begin offering the Uvera food storage appliance via a crowdfunding campaign in March of 2022. Let’s hope the company has better luck than the Silo, which is over two years late and hasn’t updated its Kickstarter backers since July.

You can see Damdam explain the Uvera smart food storage system in the video below.

CES 2022: A Look at the Uvera Home Food Storage System

MycoTechnology Mushroom Tech Drives New Shelf Stable Alt-Protein

A few years ago, it might have seemed bizarre to anyone to have meatless crumbles, vegan cheese, or molecular alcohol alongside smart home and digital health tech on the show floor. But with the launch of Impossible Foods in 2020, CES has started to embrace a wider definition of food tech — one that goes beyond the smart kitchen. That’s why it’s no surprise that MycoTechnology — a company that created a mushroom technology that turns mycelia into different forms of alternate protein — has chosen this week at CES 2022 to launch its consumer-facing brand.

Goodside Foods is debuting shelf-stable meatless crumbles made from plant protein powered by fermentation. While there are a good deal of alt meat products derived from plant protein, Goodside’s meatless crumbles stand out because they only include three ingredients and they’ll last a lot longer and without refrigeration.

Powered by MycoTechnology’s mushroom fermentation platform, Goodside Foods meatless crumbles contain a pea and rice protein blend fermented by shitake mushroom roots or mycelia. The brand claims that the natural fermentation process makes their plant protein easier to digest.

In a written statement, Lisa Wetstone, Director, Innovation and Growth Strategy at MycoTechnology, Inc. commented, “Consumers deserve plant-based protein that is delicious, clean and nutritious. Our protein doesn’t contain anything extra or unnecessary – just three simple ingredients that can work for a thousand and more of your favorite recipes.”

MycoTechnology and Goodside Foods are at CES showing off their mushroom tech platform and the first consumer product to come from said tech — if you want to try shelf-stable meatless crumbles and learn more, visit booth #53753 in the Venetian (formerly Sands) Expo Hall A-C.

Where to See Food Tech on the Show Floor @ CES 2022: Day 1

While CES 2022 will be smaller this year as the show returns to in-person after hosting an all-virtual show in 2021, we’re excited to see food tech as an official category on the show floor. The Spoon team will be in the Sands Expo in Booth 53752 talking to leaders from startups to funders and execs across agtech, robotics, future food and kitchen tech.

We’ll have videos and reports as the show goes on. To start, here’s a quick list of booths where you’ll see food tech and smart kitchen innovations and the companies behind them:

  • Bear Robotics — Booth #53755 — Bear Robotics is utilizing AI and autonomous robot technology, deploying bots to take care of everything from drink and food serving to bussing. Bear Robotics works with top chefs and restaurants, providing front of house labor support.
  • MycoTechnology — Booth #53753 — MycoTechnology harnesses the metabolic engine of mushrooms, known as mycelium, using natural fermentation to create novel ingredients that solve the food industry’s biggest challenges. (Stay tuned for a story on their consumer facing brand launching at CES.)
  • Yo-Kai Express — Booth #53758 — Yo-Kai debuted as a robotic ramen vending machine and announced a 2021 expansion into other autonomous food and cooking devices at the Smart Kitchen Summit Japan.
  • Edamam — Booth #53860 — Edamam structures and organizes food and nutrition data and sells it as a subscription to businesses in the food, health, and wellness sectors. They have worked with food and retail giants include Nestle, Amazon, and The Food Network and according to the company have close to 100,000 developers using Edamam’s APIs.
  • Northfork — Booth #53959 — Northfork is a Swedish-based startup that enables shoppable recipes online, bridging the world of digital recipes and food retail.
  • Apex / “OrderHQ” Smart Food Locker — Booth #53958 — Apex Order Pickup Solutions is the creator of the OrderHQ smart food locker, a secure, contactless solution for food pickup and delivery services. The lockers combine front and back of house technology, including hot and cold storage as well as integration with fully automated order fulfilment.
  • Uvera — Booth #54058 — Uvera is a Saudi cleantech startup that wants to reduce food waste with a device that claims to increase the shelf-life of fresh food up to “97% on average within only 30 seconds of using the device, without any chemicals.”
  • Yangyoo / Armored Fresh — Booth #53761 — Yangyoo is a Korea-based food tech company launching Korea’s first vegan cheese alternative first developed by its US subsidiary, Armored Fresh. The future food brand uses a similar fermenting process that produces natural cheese on plant-based protein milk.
  • Endless West — Booth #54061 — Endless West is a beverage technology startup founded by biotechnologists using science to create a blend of wines and spirits; its first product – Glyph – is the first molecular-made whiskey, created without aging or barreling.

(Shared) Booth #51830

  • Picnic — Robotic pizza machine designed for back of house operations in restaurants; they first launched onto the scene at CES 2020 and started filling orders in the middle of 2021.
  • iUNU — iUNU (you knew) is a Seattle agtech firm creating an AI-based platform for greenhouses and vertical farms that assists indoor growers with yields, farming waste and overall operations.
  • Minnow was the winner of the 2020 Smart Kitchen Summit Startup Showcase for their contactless food delivery solution called the Minnow Pickup Pod. An IoT-enabled locker for businesses and multifamily properties, Minnow streamlines food delivery on site.

We’ll add more companies to the list as we cover news and discover additional companies! Follow us at @TheSpoonTech on Twitter and LinkedIn as well as hashtags #CES2022 and #CESFoodTech for social updates.

CES 2022: Samsung & Others Launch Home Connectivity Alliance to Foster Appliance ‘Cloud to Cloud’ Interoperability

This week at CES, Samsung, Haier (and its subsidiary GE Appliances), Electrolux, and others announced the formation of the Home Connectivity Alliance, a group focused on fostering cloud-to-cloud interoperability across different home appliances.

The organization, which was incorporated in September 2021, is focused on solving a big problem for the smart home: incompatibility across different brands’ smart appliance products. Anyone with smart home appliances from different brands knows why this is a problem. Connected appliance product lines typically have their own proprietary app that only works with that brand. The end result is multiple apps and products that don’t talk to each other.

Here’s how the group’s website describes the benefits of interoperability: A consumer may purchase a connected washer and dryer from Brand A and benefit from features like notifications that alert the user when their wash or dry cycle is complete. Unfortunately, these notifications can only be enabled via Brand A’s platform. Interoperability enables consumers to purchase a washer from Brand A and a dryer from Brand B (or vice versa) and still receive the convenient wash or dry cycle completion notification either from Brand A’s platform or Brand B’s platform.

To achieve that type of cross-brand interoperability, the HCA’s focus is on making sure member companies’ data and service clouds connect. This focus on cloud-to-cloud interop makes sense in 2022, a time well into the smart home revolution where interoperability in the lower parts of the network stack – like physical layer communications (i.e. Wi-Fi, Zigbee, etc) – has largely been solved.

Since the HCA was founded only three months ago, it’s not surprising there are no technical details on how it will work (and by no details, I mean no details: The technical info page simply says “more info to come!”). One of the big unknowns will be how the group will work with other efforts to create cross-compatibility in the smart home, including the much-discussed Matter standard founded by Amazon, Apple and, yes, Samsung’s SmartThings Group.

In Samsung’s announcement about the group, they make no mention of Matter or other smart home interoperability standards (though they mention their own platform SmartThings), instead talking up the importance of interoperability across appliance brands.

“It is the support of global manufacturers like Samsung that makes HCA uniquely qualified to establish interoperability guidelines for long-life appliances and systems in the home, ultimately delivering safe, simple and elegant consumer experiences,” said Yoon Ho Choi, President of Home Connectivity Alliance (and Samsung employee).

While the group has an impressive initial roster of members, a few notable absences include BSH Appliances, Whirlpool, and LG Electronics. BSH is particularly interesting because the group has its own smart home interoperability standard it has been pushing for some time called Home Connect.

In many ways, it’s this absence of other big names that is the HCA’s (and really any interoperability effort’s) biggest challenge; any semblance of full cross-brand compatibility is, by definition, out of reach unless all of the industry’s biggest stakeholders buy in. Whether or not that happens for HCA is yet to be determined, but it’s still early days and the group is off to a good start. Let’s hope they can make it happen so we smart appliance owners can finally have products that reach their full potential.

CES 2022: As LG and Others Embrace Steam, Could 2022 Be The Year of Steam Cooking?

When asked at Smart Kitchen Summit in 2017 what appliance he was waiting for to make its way to the consumer kitchen, award-winning chef Philip Tessier said, “the combi oven.”

As it turns out, Tessier wasn’t the only chef that day who thought a steam-powered consumer kitchen was a good idea. When asked the same question a couple of minutes later, Serious Eats’ Kenji López-Alt agreed.

“I was going to say combi ovens too,” said López-Alt.

The combi oven, also known as combi steamer, combines traditional convection (dry) heating and moist heat using steam to enable the cook to do all sorts of things they can’t do with traditional ovens: Sous vide cooking, steaming vegetables, and baking moist delicious bread to name a few.

While steam cooking has been a long-time fixture in pro kitchens, it has never taken off in a big way in the consumer kitchen. But that might be changing. In 2020, Anova finally started shipping their countertop Precision Oven, and the critics embraced it. Since that time, the company has had trouble keeping the $599 appliance in stock.

Other upstarts such as Tovala and Suvie are also bringing different spins on steam-powered cooking to consumers. And LG, which introduced steam cooking into their convection ovens in 2018, is now adding Steam Cook functionality to the microwave.

In some ways, steam cooking is following the same early path pioneered by sous vide circulators. Like sous vide, steam cooking is a technique long-embraced in the pro kitchen, and it is also finally reaching consumer price points and showing up in friendlier form factors.

However, while sales of sous vide circulators eventually hit a wall because most consumers didn’t have the patience to cook meat in water baths for hours on end, my guess is steam cooking has a much wider appeal. A big reason is that unlike sous vide, steam cooking arrives in the kitchen via traditional-looking appliances (not to mention steam ovens like Anova’s allow you cook sous vide without the water bath or the plastic bag).

If 2021 was the year air-fry was everywhere, I suspect in 2022 we might begin to see the year the chefs get their wish and steam cooking begins to enter the mainstream.

Four Food Tech Gadgets We’re Excited to See at CES 2022

We’re prepping our floor walk plan for CES 2022, figuring out what food tech gadgets (other than robots, that is) we want to check out. We thought we’d share four of them with you.

CES 2022 Preview: Four Food Tech Gadgets We're Excited to See at CES

The products previewed are The Fresh Portal home delivery storage locker, the Bru smart tea maker, the Keddle baby milk warmer from Bisbee Baby, and the Tetra dishwasher from Heatworks.

The Spoon will be here all week reporting on all the food tech innovation we can hunt down, so make sure to check back often and follow us on Twitter, Instagram and Linkedin.

The Walkaround Guide of Food Robot Companies Exhibiting at CES 2022

At CES 2022 this week, there will be a bunch of automated food-making machines on display. So with the big tech show starting in just two days, I thought I’d make a quick walk-around guide for those looking to do the food robots tour at CES 2022.

Beyond Honeycomb

While we don’t know a lot about this Korean-based company and their restaurant robot, we are intrigued by the company’s description: AI-driven kitchen robot that learns to reproduce world-class chef dishes. With its food sensors, the robot digitizes the texture and taste of the original dish and replicates at the molecular level. The company aims to innovate commercial kitchens to create a digital platform.

Beyond Honeycomb will be exhibiting at booth CP-29 at CES 2022, and it’s one we have on our list to check out while in Vegas.

Cecilia

Suppose you can imagine Siri fused with a weird Polar Express-like animated character. Then imagine this character served you drinks. In that case, you might have some idea of what the Celicia.ai bartender experience is like. If you want to check out this voice-assistant powered animated robot bartender for yourself, you can do so at booth 61708.

Yo-Kai

Readers of The Spoon may remember that Yo-Kai gave a sneak peak at the Takumi home ramen machine at last year’s Food Tech Live. At this year’s CES, the company will be primarily focusing on its fast-growing autonomous ramen robot for public and retail spaces, the Octo-chef. You can visit Yo-Kai in the food tech exhibition space at booth 53578.

Carbon Origins

As I wrote late last week, not only is Carbon Origins building a refrigerated sidewalk delivery robot by the name of Skippy, the company is also assembling a roster of remote robot pilots who will utilize virtual reality technology to pilot Skippy around to businesses and consumer homes. If you’re at CES, you can visit Carbon Origins and even possibly get adorned in VR gear and drive a Skippy at booth 15883.

Picnic

Picnic made its CES debut in 2020 when it teamed up with convention center catering company Centerplate and made thousands of pizzas to feed hungry trade show attendees. The Seattle-based pizza robot startup returns this year and will be making pies once again at LVCC West Hall #5043. If you want to hear what Picnic CEO Clayton Wood has to say about their robot and the food robotics landscape, you can see him speak at the Food Tech Conference at CES on a panel entitled Welcome to our Food Robotics Future led by yours truly on Thursday, January 6th.

Bear Robotics

After a big 2021 which saw the maker of front-of-house food robots showing up at Chili’s, Denny’s and lots of other places, Bear Robotics is kicking off 2022 by showcasing its Servi robot at CES. You can find Bear at booth 53755 and also hear the company COO, Juan Higueros, on the panel Welcome to Our Food Robot Future on Thursday.

Yummy Future

Yummy Future, which was co-founded by a group of students from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, makes a robotic coffee kiosk that serves up both hot and cold coffee beverages and can make a cup of joe in about 30 seconds. If you want to check out Yummy Future, they will be at booth 63149 in Eureka Park in the Venetian Expo Center.

Ottonomy

Readers of The Spoon are familiar with Ottonomy, maker of autonomous delivery robots that can navigate through both outdoors and indoor environments. You can check out Ottonomy’s robot at booth 9648.

If we’ve missed any food robots, drop us a line and we’ll put them on the list.

Food Tech To Make Official Debut at CES as The Big Tech Show Gets Underway This Week in Vegas

In 2022, CES, like most everything nowadays, is a bit different than in the before times.

For one, it’s going to be shorter. There will be fewer big companies and way fewer people. And forget about the after-parties.

But even with all those changes, CES is still happening (after going entirely virtual last year), and food tech will be a part of the official program for the first time ever.

We know that because The Spoon is CES’s official food tech programming partner and is putting together a half-day food tech conference (all attendees will need to be fully vaccinated and will be required to wear masks). On Thursday, we’ll be talking about the future of cooking, the amazing innovation helping us move beyond factory-farmed meat, how technology can help us waste less food, and taking a peek into our food robot future.

We’ll also be running around the show, bringing you videos and stories about what we’re seeing both on the show floor and off it. We’ll also be sharing stuff on Instagram and Twitter, so make sure to follow us.

If you’re heading to Vegas for CES, we hope to see you there, and If you see any cool food tech products at CES, let us know. See you in Vegas!

CES 2022: Steambox To Show Off Self-Heating Lunchbox

If one of your new year’s resolutions is to pack better lunches for your kids or yourself, here’s one way you might do that: with a steam-heated lunchbox. That’s the idea behind the Steambox, a connected lunchbox that will heat food up with a push of a button.

Here’s how the Steambox works: Working like a bain-marie boiler, the Steambox creates steam using its built-in electric heating technology. The user simply adds water in the morning and, when they are ready to eat, turns the Heatbox on and the food will be warm in 8-12 minutes. The box is rechargeable and can heat up to three times on a single charge.

Of course, before you plunk money down for your Steambox, you should know that the company has been working on the products for a couple of years and has a bit of history. The Steambox got started via a Kickstarter campaign back in 2019 and since that time, has showed up CES before, changed its name, had some sort of mysterious dispute, and now is back at CES to show off its lunchbox with promises of an April 2022 delivery.

We’re heading to Vegas and we’ll be checking the Steambox out as well as other food and kitchen gadgets as part of our CES 2022 coverage. We’ll be there all week, so check back on the site, check out our Instagram and Twitter, and send us your tips.