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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

CES

CES 2019: The O2N2 is a Nitrogen-Rich Storage Solution to Extend Food Freshness

CES is massive, but it’s sheer size means that there are all kinds of delightful products hiding in the nooks and crannies of the convention center(s).

South Korea’s Hanyang University has a row of small booths showing off device prototypes based on research conducted at the school. One such device was the O2N2, a combination system of plastic food and beverage storage containers and what is essentially a nitrogren gas filter/pump.

The O2N2 removes oxygen from the plastic containers and replaces it with a nitrogren-rich environment. The science gets pretty complex, but the university developed a special membrane that filters out the oxygen and can create adjustable nitrogen levels inside the container. The result, O2N2 researchers told me, was that the nitrogen environments can keep food and beverages like wine fresher for longer periods of time. Here’s a chart they provided outlining their results:

chart provided by Hanyang University showing increased freshness from using the O2N2

Removing oxygen from food storage containers isn’t new. Silo vacuum pumps the air out of its storage boxes, and wine preservers like Syphon and Coravin inject argon gas into bottles to make wine last longer. So it seems like the O2N2 system could do much the same. Plus, you have the added benefit of re-useable containers and less waste.

And in a very floor wax & dessert topping kind of way, the O2N2 can also serve as a health-related tool for people who need oxygen-rich environments. Check out the video below for a deeper explanation of the technology.

There weren’t any pricing details, and who knows if O2N2 will ever actually make it to store shelves, but I’m glad I discovered more about how some researchers are thinking about food storage.

CES 2019: Levo Lets You Make Your Own Infusions, Even with CBD

You know you’re in a fancy eating establishment when they start throwing the word “infused” around. Thyme-infused butter. Rosemary-infused coconut oil. You get the picture.

If you’ve wanted to concoct your own culinary infusions at home, but didn’t know how, then perhaps you should check out Levo. Levo is a countertop infusing device that automates the infusion process. Pair the mobile app to the Levo, choose your herbs (citrus, basil, vanilla, etc.) and your oil (avocado, grapeseed, olive, etc.) and the Levo does the rest.

But you’re not just limited to herbs and fats. You could infuse just about anything with, well, just about anything (see: blueberry butter). And lately, CBD has been the big thing to infuse into just about… everything. A Levo spokesperson confirmed that their device can make CBD infusions, and the company is planning on featuring more hemp/CBD infusion recipes.

Levo also has uses outside of the kitchen, letting you create your infused soaps, salves, lip balms and the like as well.

The Levo has actually been on the market for a couple of years and is available through the company’s web site. There are two Levos to choose from. The Levo I costs $149.99 and does not include WiFi. The Levo II costs $349.99, is WiFi-enabled and connects with the mobile app, and does three “cycles”: drying, activation and infusion. According to Levo, drying and “activating” (ed.note: we’re not sure if that’s just marketingspeak) your botanicals will unlock their full potency.

Food personalization and customization is a trend we follow closely here at The Spoon. The flexibility of Levo to freewheel with your infusion creations is similar to BEERMKR, the crowdfunded home beer brewing system that also lets you toss just about anything into the batch to give your beer all kinds of different flavor.

Sure, you can still go out for fancy infused foods, but maybe it’d be more fun to make them at home.

Suvie Refrigerator+Four-Zone Cooker Makes Public Debut at Food Tech Live

Suvie, the connected countertop appliance that refrigerates your food and uses four-zone cooking to automatically have it ready for you when you want it, made its first official debut to the public this evening at The Spoon’s first ever Food Tech Live event in Las Vegas.

We’ve been following Suvie ever since it blasted through its Kickstarter goal last year, and were excited to see what will be a production machine. Check out this video with Suvie Co-Founder and CEO Robin Liss as she shows off the device and walks us through how it works.

Suvie Debuts at Food Tech Live in Las Vegas

CES 2019 Video: The Fresh Geoffrey is a Robot Party Butler

Do I really need to say more than “Robot Party Butler” to pique your interest? Because if I do, thankfully I have a video from CES showing Fresh Geoffrey in action.

Fresh Geoffrey is an autonomous robot that can roam around your house serving you and your guests cold beer on tap, snacks, and, because the machine is French — wine. It even has a glass washer so you don’t mix backwash with that fresh pint. Geoffrey responds to your voice command so you can just call out to bring you a beer and voila!

Sadly, Fresh Geoffrey won’t be able to beer you up this Super Bowl, but the company says it should be shipping in time for the next one! You can see Geoffrey scooting around the CES show space here:

The Fresh Geoffrey is a Robot Party Butler

Video: Impossible Foods CEO Pat Brown says They’ll Tackle Steak Next

Last night, Impossible Foods unveiled their new Burger 2.0 at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES). The newest iteration of the alt-meat is made of soy and potato protein (not pea protein, as I guessed!), is gluten-free, and has fewer calories and fat than the first version.

After tasting our way through sliders, tacos, empanadas, and even tartare made of the new ground “beef,” we got to sit down with Impossible Foods founder and CEO, Dr. Pat Brown, to ask him a few questions about the topic that’s on everyone’s mind during CES: the future. Specifically, the future of plant-based meat.

“R&D has been going at a blazing pace since Day One,” said Brown. Which means as soon as they locked down the formula for Version 1.0 of Impossible’s patties and started selling them in 2016, they were already working on version 2.0 (and yes, now they’re working on 3.0).

While they plan to keep iterating on their flagship ground beef product, Brown explained that they’re also starting to work on what he called “whole cuts of beef,” including steak. “[Steak] has huge symbolic value,” said Brown. “If we can make an awesomely delicious world-class steak . . . that will be very disruptive not just to the beef industry, but to other sectors of the meat industry.”

Watch the video below to hear more about Impossible’s plans to tackle the $3 trillion industrial meat industry, and why they’re not worried about plant-based competition.

Impossible CEO Pat Brown talks Impossible 2.0 and the future of meat

If you’re in Vegas for CES, be sure to hit up their food truck outside the Convention Center and taste the burger 2.0!

Meet the DUO, The Portable Carafe With Precision Temperature Control

At last year’s CES, one of my favorite new products was the Tetra, a small countertop dishwasher that cleans the equivalent of two place settings of dishes in about 15 minutes with a single gallon of water.

The product was introduced by Heatworks, a company I had never heard of before, mostly because I was not in the business of writing about water heaters.

Maybe I should have been paying more attention because, as it turns out, the technology that powers their water heaters can be used in a variety of devices, including the company’s latest, a portable water carafe with precision temperature control called the DUO.

The DUO, which the company is introducing at CES 2019, is a battery powered portable carafe that holds up to a liter of water. The DUO can heat water to within 1° of a desired setpoint and also also includes a water filtration system.

I caught up with Heatworks CEO, Jerry Callahan, at CES Unveiled, who told me that they made the DUO because they realized how important precise water temperature was to making anything from a good cup of coffee to green tea to baby formula.

“We started with the premise that people really wanted to get the exact right temperature,” said Callahan.

I could see myself using a DUO when I’m in a hotel room (does anyone else get grossed out by hotel coffee machines? Thought so) or when I’m camping. I can also see using it for filtering drinking water on the road since I never know how good the drinking water is in any city I might be in.

When I asked Callahan when the DUO might ship, he said they were hoping that it would be available by end of the year. My assumption is that probably means first half 2020, in large part because the company missed its original promised ship date for the Tetra (which they are now promising out by Q1), and at this point the DUO is still largely in prototype stage.

You can hear my full conversation with Callahan from the show floor below.

Meet the Duo, a portable water carafe with precision temperature control

Zimplistic’s Rotimatic Can Now Make Flour Tortillas

Zimplistic announced today that it has added tortilla making and gluten-free functionality to its already immensely popular Rotimatic.

The Rotimatic is a connected countertop device that measures, dispenses, kneads and bakes dough to create ready-to-eat flatbreads in 90 seconds. According to the Zimplistic press announcement, its Rotimatic is “enjoyed by more than 50,000 families across 20 countries.” If we assume that 50,000 families equals 50,000 units sold, that’s an increase of 10,000 units since we last checked in with the company back in October, when it had sold 40,000 units.

The Rotimatic can already make a host of different flatbreads, including pizza dough, puris and pearl millet flour flatbread. In a statement, Zimplistic said that it’s been getting a lot of requests for tortilla capabilities, especially in the U.S. Adding tortillas to its roster, along with a gluten-free recipe could help ease the sting of the device’s high price tag of $1,000 and get more people to purchase the device.

Zimplistic will be at our Food Tech Live event this evening. We’ll be sure to sample the goods and report back on how they taste. Additionally, you can check out this podcast Mike Wolf did with Zimplistic Co-Founder, Rishi Israni.

Impossible Foods Unveils New Gluten-Free Burger Recipe at CES

The Consumer Electronics Show (CES) is known as a time when companies debut cutting-edge technology like drones, robots, and… burgers?

Tonight plant-based meat company Impossible Foods unveiled new recipe for their popular “bleeding” vegan burgers. According to the release from Impossible, the new iteration will be gluten-free, have zero cholesterol, and contain as much iron and protein as conventional beef from cows. This marks the first time the Redwood City, CA-based startup has revamped their burger recipe since the patties debuted in 2016.

The new-and-improved burgers will launch tomorrow (January 8th) in an array of high-end restaurants, and Impossible stated over email that they will “likely” be available in grocery stores in 2019 (as long as Impossible gets FDA approval to sell its burgers in retail). So far, there’s no word when the new recipe will roll out to the over 5,000-odd locations — including all White Castles — which currently have Impossible burgers on their menu.

Impossible’s patties already contained no cholesterol and have comparable protein to ground beef — so essentially, the main difference is that the new patty is gluten-free. Which is actually kind of a big deal. “Wheat protein” is the first ingredient listed on the Impossible Foods website, followed by coconut oil, potato protein, and heme (which is what makes the burgers “bleed”). That means that the original Impossible patty was strictly off-limits for anyone with a gluten allergy, or who was just trying to cut down on gluten for health/dietary reasons.

Nixing the wheat protein certainly opens up potential new consumers for Impossible, but only if they can still deliver on taste without their primary ingredient. Which leads me to wonder: what exactly is the new burger made of? Impossible didn’t reveal the ingredients in their new burger, so we don’t know what they’re using to replace wheat. My guess is pea protein, the go-to protein choice of most alternative-meats including Beyond Meat, Impossible Foods’ biggest plant-based competitor. (Beyond Meat’s products are already gluten-free.) That could make it especially tricky for Impossible to differentiate itself when it heads onto retail shelves to compete directly with Beyond in 2019.

[Ed note: At the opening Impossible Foods revealed that the main ingredients in their new burgers are soy and potato protein, not pea protein as I’d guessed.]

Taking a step back, it’s interesting that Impossible Foods decided to make this announcement at CES, amid a sea of more “traditional” technologies like touchscreens and VR helmets. But when you think about it, plant-based meat is indeed a technology: one that’s changing the way we eat protein. In fact, it’s a technology that has the potential to improve our planet a lot quicker than something like self-driving cars. I for one hope we see more innovative food companies repping at events like CES in the future.

For now, CES attendees can try free samples of Impossible’s new burgers from a food truck outside the Las Vegas Convention Center from January 8-11. Stop by and let us know what you think!

GoSun Debuts The ‘Solar Kitchen’ So You Can Cook (and Chill) Around The Clock

If you think solar powered cooking is something you can only do when the sun is out, think again.

That’s because GoSun, the company which got its start five years ago when it debuted its first solar oven on Kickstarter, has evolved its product line to what is essentially a fully self-contained “solar kitchen” that can cook (or chill) at any time of the day or night.

At the center of the company’s solar kitchen concept is the GoSun Fusion, a hybrid oven that can cook using solar power or electricity. With the Fusion, a user can cook a meal with solar power in about an hour. At night, the Fusion can cook a meal in the same amount of time by drawing power from the new lithium ion power bank product the company is debuting at CES. The power bank will receive its energy from an accompanying foldable solar panel, also being rolled out at CES.

While all this cooking is great, you and I both know a kitchen is not complete without something to keep your food (or beer) cold. GoSun now has that covered too. The company also unveiled the GoSun Chill, which the company calls a cooler but, according to GoSun CEO Patrick Sherwin, it’s actually a fully operable mini-fridge.

“It’s crazy how efficient this technology has gotten,” said Sherwin. The Chill (read fridge) has a “brushless DC compressor motor inside allows you to keep a couple cases of beer cold for entire day with this power bank.”

According to Sherwin, the Fusion will be shipping in a little over a month and the new power bank, solar panel and Chill cooler will be for sale in March via Indiegogo and will ship in the summer.

You can watch my full interview with Sherwin from CES Unveiled below:

GoSun Debuts The 'Solar Kitchen', Including a Solar Powered Mini-Fridge

Chop and Awe: Whirlpool Debuts A Bunch of Smart Kitchen Products at CES 2019

Big companies will sometimes debut one intriguing product at CES and call it a day. But this year, Whirlpool decided to drop about a half dozen.

In what amounted to essentially a shock and awe campaign of smart-kitchen product debuts, the company announced a whole bunch of products that piqued my interest. We’ll be stopping by the Whirlpool booth when the show floor opens tomorrow to capture some of these items on video. For now, here’s an overview of what the company is unveiling in Las Vegas:

Connected Hub Wall Oven With Augmented Reality

This oven kind of blew my mind when Whirlpool told me about it, primarily because of the transparent front display: besides allowing a user to see inside the oven, it also acts as a video screen for displaying pretty much everything from video-cooking instructions to shopping lists to family calendars.

As Spoon readers know, I’ve felt for a long time now that the kitchen screen is a big opportunity, one that only a handful of companies (cough Amazon, cough Samsung) have tried to seize. With this new oven, Whirlpool is staking territory for this largely unclaimed terrain with an integrated screen that can power all sorts of video-centric applications in the kitchen.

KitchenAid Smart Oven+

This one was intriguing to me because not only does it offer smart-oven capabilities such as voice control and an LCD screen for recipe selection, it’s also modular and allows the user to add steam, grill or baking stone attachments. While I’m not sure I’m ready for a baking stone, after trying out a countertop steam oven, I’m sold on that method as a superior way to prepare many types of food. With this new KitchenAid oven, I can add it in.

The Smart Countertop Oven from WLabs

This oven is basically Whirlpool’s answer to the June smart oven. The countertop device has food identification capability, which means it can recognize a variety of food types and set cooking temperature and time accordingly. It also has a scan-to-cook feature and voice-control integration with Alexa. The smart countertop oven is from Whirpool’s incubation unit, W Labs, which essentially means it’s a limited availability product that is not – as of yet at least – part of the permanent Whirlpool lineup. The product will be available soon for preorders for $799 at the WLabs website.

KitchenAid Combination Cook Processor

While not as tech-forward as the other products, the KitchenAid Cook Processor may just be the most useful product debuted by Whirlpool/KitchenAid at CES this year. This multifunction cooking appliance can cut, stir, steam, and, just like a Thermomix, has an internal scale that enables step-by-step recipe guidance. The device has Wi-Fi on board, allowing it to connect to the Internet to download recipes and software updates.

I’ve long been waiting for one of the big appliance makers to offer up a Thermomix-like offering for the U.S. market, and it looks like KitchenAid finally has done just that.

KitchenAid Smart Display

I mentioned above my belief that kitchen screen is going to be a big deal, and so it makes sense that KitchenAid would offer up their own smart display with Google Assistant. Google’s been on a tear lately, hoovering up integration partners, and with KitchenAid, they’ve gotten a blue-chip partner into which they can plug their voice assistant and smart home platform. The KitchenAid Smart Display will work with Yummly, including a new Pro version of Whirlpool’s cooking guidance app that features celebrity chefs like Richard Blais.

Believe it or not, this isn’t even all of the announcements Whirlpool/KitchenAid will be making this week. We’ll be sure to post updates once we’ve visited the Whirlpool booth here at CES.

The BreadBot Is A Bread Factory for the Corner Grocery Store

Back in college, whenever I rode my bike through the Gasworks Park neighborhood in Seattle, I’d get hit with the smell of bread baking as I passed the local bread factory.

As you can imagine, it was wonderful.

And now, Wilkinson Baking Company hopes to bring the best smell in the world to your local grocery store with its new bread making robot, the Breadbot.

The BreadBot, which made its debut last night at CES Unveiled, is a standalone bread robot that can make up to ten loaves of fresh bread per hour from scratch. The machine is fully automated, so after the store employee adds in bread mix to the mix hopper, the BreadBot mixes, forms, proofs, bakes and cools the loaves of bread.

The bread robot was designed to make bread pretty much anytime during the day (or night), and could be scheduled to start the process up to three hours before a store opens. So when the early rising morning shift worker unlocks a store with a Breadbot inside, not only will the smell of fresh bread waft out, but over a dozen loaves will be waiting to be sold.

“It’s the first time bread can be made in a fully automated fashion, start to finish,” said Dr. Randall Wilkinson, the CEO of Wilkinson Baking Company.

Wilkinson envision the BreadBot going into grocery stores, where the machine can sit in the bread aisle and make bread in front of customers. The company’s been trialing the breadbot in local grocery stores in eastern Washington and the results are basically what you’d expect.

“You see the crowds here at CES, that’s what happens in the store,” said Wilkinson. “The consumer comes in, says ‘what’s this?’, and if you’re a retailer you say, ‘that’s what I want.'”

The BreadBot is part of a larger trend of automation and robotics enabling more localized creation of food types that are normally made in a big factory somewhere. Much like the Bellwether coffee roasting machine can push coffee roasting out to the local neighborhood coffee shop, the Breadbot allows the local grocery to offer fresh made bread made in-store.

“Imagine taking a $150 million bread factory, slicing it up into small pieces, move that out into the grocery store, and make it fresh there rather than in the factory,” said Wilkinson.

You can see my full interview with Dr. Wilkinson and see shots of the BreadBot in action in the video below (bread smell not included):

BreadBot, a bread making robot, debuts at CES

Newsletter: The Road to CES and Plant-Based Meat Mania

Happy Friday,

It’s all hands on deck here at the Spoon as we prepare for CES. Our comfortable walking shoes are packed, our schedules are taking shape, and our Criss Angel Mindfreak tickets are booked (just kidding on that last one (maybe)).

We’ll be exploring the cavernous show floors all week long, sniffing out stories about new food tech products and smart kitchen appliances — and taking videos along the way. Make sure to check in on the site and on social to see our latest finds. If you’ll be there with a company of your own, feel free to pitch us!

But before we jet off to Vegas, here are a few of the biggest stories we wrote about this week:

Nestlé is tossing its hat into the meat alternatives ring with an offering called the Incredible Burger. (If you think that sounds a lot like the Impossible Burger, you are right!) In the piece I wrote that I was optimistic that Nestlé’s new burger will be successful, mostly because there’s such demand for plant-based meat that it isn’t a zero-sum game: there are room for all sorts of colorfully-named meatless burgers, chicken nuggets, sausages, etc.

After we published the post, however, we began to see some pushback on social media from readers who were skeptical about Nestlé’s choice, and thought that the Big Food company had much baggage to ethically make plant-based meats. Maybe they’re right, maybe they’re wrong (look out for a more in-depth post on this debate on Sunday), but regardless it brings up an interesting point about the implications of Big Food cashing in on new eating trends, e.g. plant-based foods.

Photo: Beyond Meat.

Speaking of plant-based foods, is anyone trying out Veganuary? This year record amounts of consumers are going veg for the month (and beyond), and the U.K. is cashing in big time with a myriad of plant-based offerings in major grocery chains and fast-food joints. Even Pizza Hut has a vegan, BBQ jackfruit-topped pie.

Here in the U.S. we may be a little bit behind the eight ball when it comes to plant-based options, especially in the fast food realm, but a few players, namely Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat, are working hard to catch us up. Beyond Meat just launched on the menu at Carl’s Jr. and Impossible Foods, which is already at White Castle, has hinted that it’ll be dropping some news on January 7th at CES — check back here, we’ll be bringing you the business.

In other news this week, Chris got the scoop on AirSpace Link, a startup which came out of stealth this week and launched a registry that allows people to opt in or out of drone delivery. (Drone delivery may still be a ways away — but autonomous vehicle delivery isn’t!) Mike shared his 2019 smart kitchen predictions, from food-driven revenue models to the emergence sentient kitchen. Finally, Jenn wrote about a research group at Princeton University working to provide an open-source model for vertical farming.

If you’re looking for something to listen to this weekend, check out the latest episode of the Smart Kitchen Show. It’s another editor roundtable where the Spoon writers talk about their predictions for 2019 and what they’re looking forward to at CES. You can also get it on Apple podcasts, Stitcher and Soundcloud!

And finally, we have a job board! We’ve added a whole bunch of listings over the past week, some of which you can check them out below, or you can get the full list on the site. And if you have a job opening at your company, feel free to post it (it is free, after all).

That’s it from me! See you in Vegas (with a glass of wine in hand).
Catherine

Gourmia to Roll Out Smart Multicooker, Coffee Brewer, and Dehydrator at CES
Brooklyn-based smart kitchen company Gourmia will be unveiling three new IoT-connected devices at CES: an air fryer, a multicooker, and a coffee roaster/brewer.

Lifesum Unveils a Google Assistant Version of Its Health-Tracking App
Swedish company Lifesum has unveiled a Google Assistant version of its nutrition app, which allows users to track meals, weight, and water intake using their voice instead of a phone or computer.

Editor Roundtable Podcast: 2019 Predictions And CES Preview
Take a listen to our latest editorial roundtable podcast, in which we discuss our 2019 predictions and what we’re most looking forward to for CES.

Pepsi and Segway Enter the Increasingly Crowded Delivery Robot Space
Both Pepsi and Ninebot, Segway’s parent company, have announced separate delivery robot initiatives.

MyWah to Debut Connected Wine Dispenser for Businesses at CES
MyWah, a connected wine dispenser which uses RFID-tagged bags to track wine temperature and portioning, is debuting at CES.

DoorDash Is Testing Self-Driving Cars in San Francisco
Third-party delivery service DoorDash just announced it has partnered with General Motors’ Cruise Automation to test autonomous vehicles in San Francisco.

As the Food Industry Wakes Up to Blockchain, Online Training Options are Now Available
It’s no secret that the food industry is rapidly awaking to the great promise of blockchain technology, and headlines abound about how it promises to make traditional paper ledger-based transactions obsolete, replaced by digital ledgers. A number of online blockchain resources are springing up to help educate companies on how to use this new technology.

Soylent Adds Snack Replacement Beverage to its Lineup
Rosa Foods, the company behind meal-replacement-in-a-bottle, Soylent, launched Soylent Bridge, a new, lighter liquid designed to replace your snacking on solids. The 11 oz. Soylent Bridge clocks in at 180 calories with 15 grams of plant-based protein and comes in chocolate flavor. The shelf-stable Bridge will last a year

Why Vertical Farming Won’t Grow Without More Data
Vertical farming may be getting lots of funding, but we don’t actually know how well it works. A research project from Princeton University is getting data from vertical farming and working to make an open-source framework for aspiring vertical farm companies.

New Year, New Food: U.K. Grocery and QSR’s Cash In on Veganuary
In the U.K., large grocery chains and fast-food joints alike are taking advantage of the growing interesting Veganuary — and plant-based eating in general.