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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

CES

CES 2022 Preview: Carbon Origins Wants to Merge Robot Delivery With the Metaverse

If you’re looking to get a fresh start on a new career in 2022, may I suggest a new occupation as a virtual reality robot delivery driver?

Yes, that’s a job – or at least a new gig – being offered by a startup out of Minneapolis called Carbon Origins. The company, which is building a refrigerated sidewalk delivery robot by the name of Skippy, is looking to assemble a roster of remote robot pilots who will utilize virtual reality technology to pilot Skippy around to businesses and consumer homes.

The company, which launched in early 2021 and participated in Techstars Farm to Fork accelerator this year, will be showcasing the new technology at CES 2022 in January. This past summer, the company started testing an early version of the VR-piloted robot in the above-street skyway system around St Paul, Minnesota and plans to begin testing deliveries to offices and homes in the Minneapolis market starting in January.

You can watch a video of the company’s CEO, Amogha Srirangarajan, piloting a prototype of the Skippy robot using a virtual reality headset below. According to Srirangarajan, the robot uses machine vision to navigate the world using a neural network.

Skippy Demo (04/21)

“What you’re seeing now is Skippy’s neural network, detecting and classifying objects, analyzing the sidewalk, and segmenting safe zones for navigation,” explains Srirangarajan in the demo video.

The Skippy operators – which for some reason the company calls “Skipsters” – use virtual reality headsets to supervise and correct the robot as it navigates through the world.

“Remote human operators, who we lovingly call ‘Skipsters,’ use fully immersive virtual reality headsets to monitor and train Skippy’s neural network in real-time,” said Srirangarajan. “Like an augmented reality PacMan game, Skipsters monitor and correct Skippy’s trajectory, giving Skippy the ability to navigate the human world unlike any other robot on the planet.”

The company emailed me and asked if I wanted to try out piloting a Skippy while in CES next week, and, of course, I said yes. If you also want to become an, um, Skipster too, you can visit the company’s booth or fill out an application to become a driver here.

The Spoon & CES Bring Food Tech To The World’s Biggest Tech Show For First Time Ever

Each January for the past couple of decades, I’ve packed up my suitcase and headed to the Nevada desert to take part in the world’s biggest tech show, CES.

I’m not alone. CES is the singular tech show that pretty much every major industry attends along with those who watch and follow those industries.

This includes the food world. Many remember the debut of the Impossible 2.0 burger in 2019, a watershed moment for both the company and the plant-based meat industry. There’s also been food robots, ice cream makers and much more that have made a big splash at the big show.

However, up until this year, any food professionals coming to CES were attending despite the lack of a dedicated food technology and innovation area in the exhibition space or in the conference tracks. Because CES is *the* great convener in the tech world, we felt food tech needed representation. This led The Spoon to rent out the ballroom of Treasure Island for a couple of years running to produce Food Tech Live. We wanted to give the food industry a central place to connect and check out the latest and greatest in food innovation.

But now that’s all about to change as food tech hits the big time this coming January. CES announced in June that food tech is going to be a featured theme for the first time ever at the big show. We couldn’t be more excited, in part because we will get to see even more cool food tech innovation, but also because CES has chosen The Spoon as the dedicated CES partner for the food tech exhibition and conference portions of the show!

We’re busy helping to develop a half-day conference and talking to lots of companies about coming to show their products at the four day CES food tech exhibition and we can’t wait to show what we’ve helped CES build.

But we need your input too! If you are interested in showing off your latest and great food and kitchen-related product or solutions, make sure to let us know. Just head over to this form on the SKS website and drop us a line. We’ll get right back to you and let you know how you can be a part of food tech at CES.

You can read more about the program below with our official announcement, or just drop us a line to see how to get involved.

We’ll see you in Vegas!

Food tech has arrived at CES®. Leaders in kitchen, food and cooking are coming together in Las Vegas from January 5th to January 8th at CES  2022 to examine how technology is changing the global food chain. CES has teamed up with The Spoon, the leading food tech media and events partner to showcase, demo and discuss the way technology has transformed the world of food. 

While we’re sure the excitement and buzz around food tech will be everywhere, we are working with CES on two key initiatives at the show, including: 

  • The Food Tech Exhibit, an exhibit space showcasing the latest innovations and demonstrating new products from across the kitchen and food tech spectrum. This will be live on the CES show floor in the Venetian Expo. 
  • The CES Food Tech Conference, presented by The Spoon, will bring together visionary thinkers, chef entrepreneurs, appliance vendors, delivery and food retail disruptors at CES 2022. Each session will highlight the innovation and disruption happening across the food industry as a result of tech advancements like artificial intelligence, machine learning, automation, mobile accessibility and more. 

CES is fast approaching — and there are many ways to get involved before, during and after the show. The CES Food Tech presented by The Spoon area will focus solely on companies building the future of food and cooking. Booth spaces are diverse in terms of size and ability to customize – get in touch and we’ll work with the CES exhibitor team and our team to ensure you put together a space that serves you. 

If you aren’t able to secure a demo or company/showcase spot but still want your brand to be part of the inaugural year of food tech at CES, you can sponsor the CES Food Tech Conference on Day 2 of CES in the Venetian. Conference tickets for CES programming will be on sale soon. 

Here are the Kitchen Robots We Saw at CES & Food Tech Live 2021

One thing I miss most about heading to Vegas every January for CES is walking the basement of the Sands convention center. There, in the startup area known as Eureka Park, I’ll wander for hours and get lost amongst thousands of exhibitors in search of a few undiscovered food tech gems.

I usually find a few and, since we’re talking CES, they sometimes come in the form of a food robot.

From there, I usually head across the street to Treasure Island where The Spoon has its own product showcase during CES week called Food Tech Live, where I can also get my fill of food robots while also doing such things as eating a cookie with my face on it.

While both CES and Food Tech Live didn’t take place in person in Sin City this year, that doesn’t mean there weren’t some cool food robots to check out at their virtual versions last week. Below is our roundup of home food robots I found at virtual CES and The Spoon’s annual first-of-the-year product showcase, Food Tech Live.

Moley Robotic Kitchen

Since 2015, the Moley robotic kitchen has captured the imagination of the tech journalists and robotics industry with its robot chef concept that can that can prepare full meals from prep to cook to clean up with a pair of articulating robot arms.

And while we’ve yet to actually see the Moley cook a full meal from start to finish, the system’s inventor told The Spoon that it’s finally on sale and will find its first home in 2021. The company, which had a virtual booth at CES 2021 and debuted a bunch of new highlight videos, will sell both a home and pro version of its robotic kitchen. Prices for the fully robotic kitchen will be about $335 thousand.

The Moley Robotic Kitchen System at CES 2021

Oliver

Else Labs Oliver is a single-pot cooking robot that dispenses fresh ingredients and automates the cooking process with the help of temperature sensing and machine vision capabilities.

Else Labs, which went on sale via Indiegogo last fall, was on display at Food Tech Live last week. The product’s inventor and company CEO Khalid Aboujassoum says the major difference between Oliver and other guided cooking appliances on the market is Oliver pretty much handles the entire cooking process for you.

“The Oliver can do unattended stovetop cooking,” Aboujassoum told me last fall when the product went on sale.

Oliver, the smart cooking robot

iWonderCook

The iWonderCook is a automated cooking machine that cooks one-pot meals. The meals are provided in the form of the company’s own meal kit service, which the user orders through the device’s touchscreen. From there, as can be seen in the video below, the user inserts a bowl, embeds the food “cartridge”, and then adjusts the amount of oil and water needed.

I haven’t gotten a chance to see the iWondercook in action or taste the food, I will say is the product’s reliance on its own meal kits might be a turn-off for some users.

iWONDERCOOK robotic chef does the cooking for you.

Yo-Kai Express Takumi

Technically the new Yo-Kai Express Takumi home ramen machine is something closer to a Keurig for food than a food robot, it’s worth looking at this machine given the company’s smart vending roots.

The Takumi, which debuted at Food Tech Live last week, follows Yo-Kai’s move into the home market with its home delivery service. The Takumi takes the frozen ramen bowls, which are centrally produced in Yo-Kai’s California facilities, and steams and reconstitutes the ramen in just a few minutes.

The company has plans to not only to start selling ramen to users in the office and home, but on the go with an autonomous ramen delivery cart.

Day With Yo Kai Final

Samsung Bot Handy

Samsung announced a trio of home robots aimed at helping humans around the house. The one that was most interesting when it comes to lending a hand in the kitchen was Bot Handy, a mobile bot with large articulating hand that can help with anything from pouring a glass of wine to doing the dishes.

It’s worth noting that Samsung – like many big consumer electronics brands – has a history of showing off cool new product prototypes at CES that are more conceptual than anything close to actually coming to market, including last year’s they showed off a Moley-kitchen style robot system. Let’s hope the Bot Handy is something the company delivers on.

Julia

The Julia is another single-pot home cooking robot that allows the user to set it and forget it for pretty much an entire meal. The Julia is made by a Nymble, an Indian-based startup with plans to start selling the product in 2021. Nymble CEO Raghav Gupta showed off the product at Food Tech Live, told us that they are expanding their alpha trial program in the United States in February.

ColdSnap

Like the Takumi, the ColdSnap isn’t quite a full-fledged food robot, but something closer to a Bartesian style automated appliance that makes cold ice cream (as well as frozen margaritas and smoothies). While we weren’t able to get our hands on the ColdSnap, the company gave CNET a hands-on preview of the appliance and the editors were impressed. The appliance, which is going to a fairly spending $500-1,000, reminds me of the Wim fro-yo appliance that never made it to market after an acqui-hire of the founding by Walmart.

Podcast: The CES & Food Tech Live 2021 Review

On this week’s episode of Food Tech Show, the Spoon editorial team talks about what they found walking the virtual exhibit halls of CES 2021 (answer: not much).

The good news is we also had Food Tech Live, the Spoon’s annual food tech showcase that happens during CES week. Normally we’re in Vegas for FTL, eating cookies with our faces on it and checking out the latest in food tech gadgets, but this year we took things online and had a bunch of cool product demos, interviews and breakout sessions.

Finally, we also talk about the June oven acquisition by Weber and what that means for the smart oven space.

So listen in on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, download direct to your computer or just click play below. And, if you’re a regular listener, we’d appreciate it if you throw us a review to start the year!

Food Tech Live 2021: Meet The Companies

Usually this time of year we’re in Vegas for CES, weaving through crowded casino floors, hailing cabs and throwing a party for a thousand of our favorite kitchen and food tech fans in the ballroom of Treasure Island.

But since CES has gone virtual this year, so has Food Tech Live!

Today we’ll be doing live interviews all day with food tech innovators creating products ranging from food robots to 3D food printing companies to a Keurig for home ramen.

We also have virtual exhibition booths you can visit and check out the latest innovations and talk to the creators.

We still have a limited amount of free tickets available so head on over and grab one before they run out.

Below is a sneak preview of the companies exhibiting at Food Tech Live. Descriptions of products were provided by the companies.

Anova – The newly introduced Anova Precision Oven is the world’s first steam-enabled combi-oven designed for the home cook.

BBot – Bbot is a web-based contactless order and pay solution that allows guests to order food and drinks from their phone to their location.

BIOMILQ – is a women-owned, science-led, and mother centered start-up that is on a mission to provide the next generation every opportunity to thrive by producing cultured breastmilk that offers supplemental nutrition to mother’s milk with the convenience of formula.

BonBowl – Bonbowl is an induction cooktop paired with patent-pending cookware, designed to allow you to cook for one. The bowl is designed so that you can cook and eat from the same dish. Bonbowl also offers single serving recipes that are specifically designed to be cooked in 15 minutes or less.

Botrista – The Botrista DrinkBot is the next generation drink dispenser for restaurants. The patented technology can dispense more natural ingredients which tend to have higher fiber or pulp levels, like juice concentrates or even as thick as honey.

Breville/Polyscience – Breville|PolyScience is a manufacturer of cutting-edge equipment for chefs and mixologists, including sous vide immersion circulators, the Control ºFreak, the Smoking Gun Pro, Anti-Griddle, Sonicprep, Rotary Vacuum Evaporator, and other culinary technologies. The company has just released the HydroPro and HydroPro Plus sous vide immersion circulators.

CHEF iQ – The CHEF iQ Smart Cooker is an electric pressure cooker with unique features like a built-in scale, OTA firmware updates, and a connected app with over 200 included guided recipes.

CocoTerra – CocoTerra has developed the world’s first tabletop chocolate maker. CocoTerra lets you create custom chocolate from scratch in just two hours. You get to choose your chocolate flavorings, ingredients, designs, and decorations. Make chocolate your way, anytime you want.

Cuzen Matcha – An innovative at-home matcha system consisting of Matcha Maker and Matcha Leaf.

Drop – Drop is a smart kitchen platform with its KitchenOS serving over 100 different appliance models from brands like Bosch, Instant Brands, Panasonic, LG Electronics and Thermomix. The company specializes in recipe and kitchen appliance technology, connecting the whole cooking journey, effortlessly.

Edamam – Edamam licenses and provides via API nutrition data to food, health and wellness businesses. We have built the largest, broadest and deepest dataset of nutrition data with over 5 million recipes and 800K+ foods all analyzed and tagged for every nutrient, allergen, lifestyle diet and chronic condition.

Else Labs – Else Labs is the maker of Oliver, an expert chef, recipe library, meal planner and shopping assistant all in one. This robot chef replicates the timing, patience and skill of a chef at the stovetop leading to the creation of dynamic and delicious meals cooked to perfection, every time.

Ember – Ember Travel Mug² and Ember Mug² are the most advanced coffee mugs on the market, allowing individuals to set and maintain their preferred drinking temperature for hot beverages.

Grubtech – Grubtech’s product suite encompasses the entire end to end operations from demand generation, food aggregator integration, in-kitchen operations and last mile delivery integration.

HakkoBako – Fermentation Chambers for professional flavor developers

Hestan Cue – Hestan Smart Cooking provides the latest in temperature sensing cookware and leading connectivity solutions. Hestan Smart Cooking has pioneered precise temperature control for the stovetop and offers a variety of services ranging from hardware manufacturing, app development, to content creation, and more.

Minnow – Contact-free Pickup Pods take the worry out of food pickup and delivery by keeping food secure and people safe. Amazon Locker for food.

MyAir – MyAir develops plant-based nutrition bars with a personalized edge. The company’s plant-based formulations (infused in nutrition bars) are tailored to the consumer’s unique stress profile and cognitive needs.

Nymble – Home food robot. Julia, a home robot that helps you treat yourself to world food everyday, without having to spend time in the kitchen cooking it yourself. The food is cooked using ingredients you trust, all from the comfort of your home at the press of a button.

Pantri – An online platform that enables your smart appliances to shop automatically for the items they consume.

PantryChic – Simplify recipe preparation and ingredient organization with the PantryChic Smart Storage System. This multifunctional appliance stores, measures, auto-converts, dispenses and weighs ingredients.

SamsungNext/Whisk – Whisk powers the creation, discovery, personalization and monetization of food content online, in-store and at home. Whisk was acquired by Samsung in 2019.

Satis.AI – Satis.AI is an AI powered operational platform for restaurant kitchens aimed at improving decision making and reducing mistakes. The core of the platform uses computer vision to do object detection, object tracking and action recognition, enabling real time feedback to staff and connected devices

SIGMADESIGN – SIGMADESIGN supports food tech industries what it calls ‘Protoduction’. The company bridges the middle ground between prototyping and full-scale manufacturing.

Sojourn – Technology for last meter meal and grocery delivery. Computer vision platform and supply chain technology that can integrate with existing navigation techniques of delivery services and applications.

SpoonShot – Spoonshot delivers food & beverage innovation intelligence by leveraging AI and food science.

Tasteboosters – Tasteboosters makes SpoonTEK, a new tongue sensory utensil that adds a mild electric current to food (which excites the taste buds) to enhance flavor, heighten taste and improve after-taste.

The Weapon – Your beverage cans dedicated home entertainment – dispensed ice cold or hot from you mobile app.

Yo-Kai Express – Autonomous Restaurant Solutions using highly advanced technology to freshly serve a gourmet bowl in under 60 seconds 24 hours a day.

Zymmo – Zymmo gives independent chefs the power to market and manage every aspect of their careers, while providing foodies with amazing food experiences through their chef-meal marketplace.

Heatworks Partners With BASF to Bring the Tiny Tetra Dishwasher To Market in 2021

When Heatworks introduced the Tetra at CES 2018, I imagine they were just as surprised as anyone when it became one of the most buzzed about new products at the annual tech show.

The tiny countertop dishwasher, which promised to clean a few settings of dishes with just half a gallon of water in 10 minutes, appeared on dozens of top of CES lists and the product’s small form factor, sexy design and estimated price point ($299 at the time) had many of us signing up to be notified when it was available.

All of that buzz was probably new for a company that had focused on making tankless water heaters to that point, which probably added a bit of pressure when the original ship date of end of 2018 slipped by.

When I asked them about it last year, Heatworks said the reason for the delay was they were primarily focused on bringing their latest generation water heater, the Model 3, to market. It turns out they also had another reason, which is they would ultimately need a partner to build the sophisticated detergent dispensing system required for such a small form factor device.

That partnership, announced today, is with German conglomerate BASF.

According to the release, the Tetra cartridge system “will be designed to deliver custom solutions and dosing, dependent on the selected wash cycle, ensuring each cleaning cycle is optimized. Tetra’s cartridges will last for multiple loads and consumers will be able to sign up for a subscription, so that cartridges are shipped to them automatically.”

Obviously a subscription based detergent system is a new wrinkle for the Tetra, one that might be a cause for reconsideration for those still waiting for a Tetra. Another potential concern might be the slightly higher price tag ($399) for the new device.

Still, unlike many of the other countertop dishwashers on the market, the Tetra doesn’t require plumbing or hoses and uses less than half of the water. Because of this self-sufficiency and the product’s attractive design, I imagine the 25,000 or so customers the company says have signed up expressing interest in the Tetra might still pull the trigger.

Hopefully soon they’ll have a chance: According to Heatworks and BASF, the Tetra will be available in the second half of 2021.

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.

Audio Player

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
Can Stratuscent determine this mystery smell? (Spoiler: Yes, yes it can.)

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.