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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

ChefSteps

Food Tech Intelligence Brief: Will COVID-19 Mean A Lost Generation of Kitchen Tech?

Welcome to the Spoon Plus Weekly Intelligence Brief. Each week I’ll dissect trends that are unfolding in the world of food tech.

We’ve read a lot over the past two months about the loss of restaurants. Some prognosticators suggest that up to 75% of independent restaurants could permanently disappear.

While the pandemic’s impact on restaurants will continue to be massive and will undoubtedly reshape that industry’s landscape for years to come, another food-related market – appliances and housewares – could also see a dramatic impact in a much different form.

First, the good news. Since quarantines have started in the US, the home appliance market has seen a surge in demand as consumers have shifted to staying and home and eating a much larger number of their meals at home.

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This graphic from NPD’s Joe Derochowski shows how overall kitchen electrics have seen a bump in absolute dollars spent as consumers buy countertop appliances to help them cook at home. Total dollar percentage change for kitchen electrics was up 22% during lockdown.

Figure 1: Percentage Growth of Home Products March 15th-April 18th (NPD Data)

But while a near-term jump in consumer purchases of countertop cooking appliances is no doubt good for the bottom line for some of these companies, the untold story is COVID-19 no doubt set back the same industry from a product roadmap perspective.

At least that’s my belief after looking at data from our COVID-19 impact survey of food and kitchen industry professionals (see the full report here) conducted in late April. I cut a slice of the data from the survey, which had 377 respondents across the food and related industries, to look at how those within the home appliance and housewares market responded.

As you’ll see from this chart, the appliance/houseware business wasn’t immune to the pandemic’s impact, with 43% indicating their company had to lay off or furlough employees (compared to 52% of the broader food industry).

Figure 2: Have you had to lay off or furlough employees due to COVID-19?

Perhaps the most significant impact in the appliance and housewares businesses is not the near-term impact on employee headcount, but a longer-term impact on company product roadmaps.

The graph below shows the results from where we asked our survey respondents whether they had to delay or cancel a product. 

Figure 3: Has your company had to delay or cancel a new product due to COVID-19?

58% of those that worked for an appliance or housewares company indicated that their company had delayed or outright canceled a new product. This compares with 45% of those who worked in other food-related industries.

Why cancel or delay? The biggest reason for respondents was lower revenue/shrinking business, with over four in ten (43%) staying this was a reason. Another big reason (respondents were allowed to pick more than one contributing factor) was the impact of COVID on potential customers (40%), while another factor was COVID-related business disruption (38%).

Other reasons stated by at least two startups in the appliance space was lost funding rounds as investors grew skittish due to the impact of COVID-19.

The aggregate data tells a story of an appliance industry that has been hit hard, but differently than restaurants and other food-related businesses. How so? Perhaps more so than non-hardware businesses, appliances, and housewares companies often plan for revenue in the coming year or years with new products that, if canceled, will undoubtedly impact their outlook. New products often take years to bring to market, and the reality is the cancellation of a future product very likely changes the outlook of the company for years.

But it’s even bigger than that. New products often represent a company’s future vision for itself. Not to be too grandiose, but in some ways canceling a product is equivalent to a company canceling or delaying a vision of their future selves.

Not that these companies shouldn’t have shifted strategies. The reality is the landscape is going to be different. Consumers will have less money. The way they buy food and how they consume food is (and already has) changed. To not change how your company navigates a landscape where the map is suddenly much different would be a breach of your fiduciary duties as a company executive.

But it’s still worth trying to understand the long-term impacts of these many altered product roadmaps. To do that, it’s worth looking at what types of products were canceled or delayed.

The table below shows some of the products listed by the respondents:

Table 1: What type of product or service did you delay or cancel due to COVID-19?

As you can see, many responses were fairly generic (“kitchen appliances” or “home appliances”). Others were more granular (“braising pan”, “beverage dispenser” or “smart garden appliance”).  Others spoke to more services-related products related to the appliance or houseware industry (“SaaS service” or “Residential kitchen designs”).

But what is most telling, to me at least, is how the language speaks to how these companies are canceling what is next. One respondent said their company is canceling a “new generation of large home appliances”. Another “postponed next version of automation product .” A third cut “new technology and product-related R&D.”

Again, we’re traversing a new world. Product roadmap adjustments are required. But I can’t help but wonder how much innovative work and progress was lost due to COVID-19. In the coming weeks, I’ll continue to evaluate how the reshaped appliance industry landscape will look and what I expect kitchen tech and food-related innovation efforts will look like as we emerge on the other side.  

Quick Thoughts

Chickens Are Hot

I wrote a couple weeks ago about how smart garden equipment was seeing a massive surge as consumers. In that post, I also mentioned that interest in backyard chicken farming was also on the rise, no doubt due to the same inclinations that led people to start buying seeds and developing plants for backyard gardens at a record rate over the past month or two. 

But the sheer jump in interest in chicken-farming related products on Amazon is worth looking at. As show in the graphic below, Amazon-related searches for backyard chicken farming related products has most definitely shot through the roof. Chick supplies? Up eight-fold. Chick starter kit? Six-fold. Interest in chick coops has tripled. 

I don’t think we’ll necessarily see tens of millions of chicken farmers, but I would definitely say the pandemic has meant chicken-farming has jumped the chasm from hipster hobby to a broader swath of the population concerned about their own food supply in what has been revealed to be, perhaps more so than they thought, a somewhat fragile food supply chain. 

As I wrote last month, consumers are thinking about food sovereignty, many for the first time in their lives, and so I expect at-home food production to continue to be a big trend going forward. 

Meal Kits 2.0?

It’s pretty easy to diagnose the reason for the demise of first-generation meal kits at this point: They were expensive and oftentimes required a lot of work for people who, at the end of the day, wanted to get food on the table at, yes, the end of the day.

But in some ways, I think the meal kit may be making a come back in products like that from Omsom, a meal-starter-by-mail service that allows you to essentially cook authentic Asian cuisine with little to no previous experience. In a way, it’s similar to the vision that ChefSteps had with their Joule-ready sauces, which I thought (and still do) think is a good idea before it became a victim of ChefSteps company-specific financial problems.

I also like Yo-Kai’s meal kit concept, even though it’s slightly different from Omsom in that the product provides the entire meal (including proteins). As you can guess by now, I love Asian food, and while I think Asian food meal kits probably are just better because Asian food is better (sorry not sorry), I think it’s more about not only being convenient and making life easier, but it’s also tapping into food passions. I’m going to be more passionate about an Asian food-by-mail offering than a more generic offering from the likes of Blue Apron or Plated.  I also like the flexibility that greater and longer shelf-stability provides me (like with Omsom), which was always a problem with Blue Apron, which always felt like a race-against-the-clock for me. 

(Updated): ChefSteps Reenters The Paid Content Business With Studio Pass as Chris Young Exits the Company

Update: The Spoon has confirmed that Chris Young, former CEO of ChefSteps, has left the company. 

ChefSteps, the Seattle based cooking hardware and content startup recently acquired by Breville, today unveiled Studio Pass, a $69 a year paid content subscription service.

The service was announced via email, which described the new service like this:

So, we are now introducing the ChefSteps Studio Pass. This is your virtual key to our kitchen. We are letting you into our cooking studio in the heart of the Pike Place Market—online, at least—to see the creative science in action. ChefSteps Studio Pass gives you access to our chefs through behind-the-scenes videos, exclusive new cooking guides, scientific insights, and online Q&A sessions.

In a way, the service marks a return to the company’s roots, which was that of a high-gloss cooking content startup before it went down the path of getting into the hardware business.

What isn’t clear, however, is how this new service is different from the company’s previous premium offering – called, naturally, “Premium” – which the company still offers on the website for a one-time payment of $39. And, from the looks of the comments in the ChefSteps community forum, subscribers to Premium aren’t sure of the difference either.

One Premium subscriber wondered what exactly what they were getting that was different:

Part of the problem with the company’s original foray into paid content was that they offered a lifetime subscription to Premium with a one-time payment, something I wrote about in my post about ChefSteps’ financial problems:

I do think the company made a strategic error early on by choosing to not ask its ChefSteps Premium customers to renew access annually (it was a pay-once, permanent subscription product), which negated any revenue growth opportunities as the company grew its subscriber base.

With its latest effort, it looks like ChefSteps is trying for a do-over with a new paid offering that would allow for it to capitalize on building a large subscriber base of annualized, renewable revenue. From the looks of it, however, they’ll need to do some explaining to those who plunked down $39 for what they thought was lifetime access to the company’s premium offerings.

The service was announced via an email from ChefSteps cofounder, Grant Crilly.  Crilly starts the email by mentioning the elephant in the room, ChefSteps recent troubles and their acquisition by Breville:

Let’s talk. This last year was the toughest one of my career, but it was also the most clarifying. I took a break from ChefSteps to try out some other creative projects. I drove 12,000 miles through Mexico. And when I came back, our investor wanted to make some changes. We had to lay off most of our staff and ultimately, I had a breakup with my founding business partner. It was a hard time.

Then, after months of negotiations, Breville acquired ChefSteps. And honestly, I cannot think of a better partner. Breville is obsessed with making the best products possible to help their customers have amazing food moments in their kitchens. They see ChefSteps the same way I do.

While the email was largely about the new paid content offering, Crilly made a cryptic reference to what’s perhaps even bigger news: Chris Young, his cofounder, has left ChefSteps. While Crilly doesn’t refer to Young by name, The Spoon has confirmed that the former CEO has indeed left the company he cofounded with Crilly after the acquisition by Breville.

Exclusive: The Spoon Talks With ChefSteps CEO Young About Breville Acquisition

Big news today in the world of the connected kitchen. As Chris Albrecht previously reported, Breville has acquired ChefSteps, maker of the Joule sous vide appliance.

I caught up with ChefSteps CEO Chris Young to ask him about the deal. Below is a transcript of our conversation.

Congratulations on the news. Can you tell us a little about how this came together? 

Young: When the bad news broke, Breville quickly reached out. They had been longtime admirers of what we have done. As we met with Breville team in Sydney, as I got to know their CEO Jim Clayton and talked about what we were doing with software, community and content, and we talked about what we accomplished with Joule, they saw a real opportunity to accelerate what Breville was trying to do by putting us together.

How do they plan to integrate the company?

They are keeping the Seattle offices. They are going to be investing more in our software team and capabilities. I can’t talk about future roadmap plans, but I think there will be a lot of opportunity with what we’ve done with Joule and how it might work together with Breville products in the future, and I think you are going to see a lot of investment in content and community from the Chefsteps side. In a lot of ways, this is a great outcome. Everything we want to keep doing is going to continue to happen and our community has a great steward in Breville so there’s continuity of our business and work.

Are you are going to stay on?

Young: Right now [I’m] involved in Breville, having conversations about how my role will evolve. We’re working it out. Grant [Crilly] is staying on, most of the team is staying on, and I expect be involved in Breville in some way going forward.

Can you tell us the acquisition price?

Young: No. Those terms are confidential. But I will say everyone who is involved, though it’s been a very challenging few months, feels very good about the outcome.

Why Breville?

Young: I’ve known Breville for a very long time. I had worked with them back when I was with the Fat Duck.

April was a very tough time. Had to let go a lot of my colleagues, stabilize the business, take time to figure things out. But when I made list of who I think was the right company to go forward with, Breville was at the top of my list. So when they reached out, I was really happy. It made it really easy. We have a shared DNA, how we think about products, how we think about innovation, that we’re fundamentally there to serve our community of cooks. We’re never just about doing a product at a particular price point and a set of features, that’s never how we approached things. I also think it’s real validation [that] what we built, what we shipped, was really one of a kind.

You had been working on a number of other products. Can you tell us what will happen to the ChefSteps product roadmap under Breville?

Young: This is one of the changes for me. Breville has to make a lot of decisions. We’ll absolutely see Joule go forward. There is a lot of eagerness to see our roadmap go forward. Will everything go forward? I have no idea, but I know there are several things we are very close I think we will be able to ship to our community later this year and I am quite excited about that.

You’ll be paired with precision cooking pioneer Polyscience under Breville. Thoughts about that?  

Young: We worked with Polyscience early on. They were a pioneer in the commercial space. With Joule, Breville was not only wanting to have a commercial offering, but also wanted to have the best offering in the consumer space with Joule.

The consumer sous vide market has been really competitive and some companies have struggled. Any thoughts on how it looks going forward?

The sous vide market is growing tremendously. The market is growing very fast, over 40% per year. Prime Day was fantastic for us. [I] think there has been a challenge in the industry. Some of it is a timing question. Some of the obvious strategic buyers that would give startups an exit, they’re maybe not ready yet to transform themselves with technology and they’re struggling out to figure out how they would benefit.

That is sort of the problem: there are not a lot of buyers that yet have the vision they need for the technologies that companies like ChefSteps pioneered. Breville gets it. They were already committing to a connected future and we just provided a great opportunity to accelerate it. I think until you get more companies recognizing they absolutely need this technology as part of their future, you’re going to see these companies struggle. But fundamentally, I think we’ve proven this technology is absolutely worthwhile and the relationships with their customers are invaluable.

Is the Joule Ready sauce business dead?

Young: I don’t think any final decisions have been made. We’re not putting back into production immediately. These are assets that Breville has acquired. There was a lot of things we were developing behind the scenes our customers absolutely loved. To be candid, I wish that business had a little bit more time to mature because their growth numbers were tremendous. I don’t know if I would say its dead, it might just be a question of priorities before anyone can turn back to it.

Newly Downsized ChefSteps Dropping Sauce and Paid Content Businesses

Last week, news broke that ChefSteps had laid off a significant percentage of its staff. At the time,  it was unclear what the future held for the company other than an assurance from company CEO Chris Young that the Seattle startup and its flagship hardware product, the Joule sous vide appliance, would live on.

Now, thanks to a Facebook post from Young, we have a clearer picture of what a downsized ChefSteps will look like. Young’s note, which he wrote to the Cooking With Joule Facebook group, reiterated that ChefSteps and the Joule would live to see another day.

However, as I speculated last week, it looks like the company is getting out of the sauce business.

From the post:

I appreciate your understanding that in the coming days our focus will be on supporting our affected friends and that we may be a bit slower to respond than usual.

This also means that we will be discontinuing certain lines of business, including Joule Ready and any additional content being added to ChefSteps Premium.

I liked the Joule Ready sauce concept, even if the pricing for sauces ($4-$7 depending on the sauce) was a little high. Still, the idea of creating an easy sous vide meal without having to worry about getting the necessary ingredients to make a sauce like Thai curry or or tikka masala made life a little easier, even if it meant supplying your own protein.

From the looks of it, not enough people agreed with me. I have a feeling if the company was turning a profit or saw strong growth ahead for Joule Ready, they wouldn’t have killed the business after only half a year.

The company is also axing its paid content business. ChefSteps Premium, which offered video-centric cooking classes, in-depth how-to’s and exclusive recipes, cost subscribers a one-time fee of $39.  While it’s not clear how successful Premium was, the business clearly either didn’t have enough subscribers to justify the investment of putting new content behind the paywall or the company simply couldn’t afford to keep the team on. I do think the company made a strategic error early on by choosing to not ask its ChefSteps Premium customers to renew access annually (it was a pay-once, permanent subscription product), which negated any revenue growth opportunities as the company grew its subscriber base.

Finally, while Young didn’t go into too many details about how they ran into a cash crunch, he did drop one interesting clue:

As you’ve heard, there have been some changes at ChefSteps in the past week. Our funding situation unexpectedly changed (emphasis mine) and we’ve had to make the incredibly difficult decision to let a significant fraction of our amazing team go. This truly sucks.

While it was always assumed ChefSteps was in a good financial place because of the backing of billionaire Gabe Newell, it’s apparent now that wasn’t necessarily the case. Most interestingly, it looks like the sudden change in the health of the company’s balance sheet was not anticipated, making me wonder if either Newell called in the loan or had changed his position somehow and didn’t want to extend more credit to the company. There’s also the possibility ChefSteps had been seeking other financing and had something fall through at the last minute.

Either way, it looks like the company’s runway was suddenly shortened, which meant the startup no longer had the luxury of experimenting in new lines of business such as food delivery and premium content.

I also wonder if this means ChefSteps will permanently shelve its ongoing development of other hardware products. While the company never disclosed publicly what their next product would be, they’d been signaling for some time that new products were on the horizon.

With last week’s news, chances are any new products (one of which was speculated to be a steam oven) likely won’t see the light of day anytime soon.

ChefSteps Lays Off Staff as CEO Young Vows Company Will Live On

ChefSteps, the Seattle startup which began life as an online culinary community and recipe site before expanding into hardware with the Joule sous vide appliance, has laid off a significant percentage of the staff according to reports.

The news of the layoffs was first leaked via food delivery review site Food Oasis, which was told by an anonymous source that the company would be shutting down.  Not true says ChefSteps CEO Chris Young, who told Geekwire the company would live on and continue to sell and support the Joule.

There are still not many details beyond what’s been reported, so it’s hard to tell exactly what happened and why ChefSteps was forced to downsize. I can only speculate that sales of the Joule (or their related Joule Ready sauce business) wasn’t substantial enough to fund the ongoing business and that they had exhausted funding provided by early backer Gabe Newell.

Newell, a billionaire who made his money in the video game business as the founder of Valve, had given the company a low-interest loan early on. While Young had described Newell’s support as giving the company the financial flexibility to push in new directions (such as with the Joule), it looks like Newell’s generosity has its limits. It’s unclear if ChefSteps had sought funding from other outside sources (or is still seeking funding).

It’s also unclear how many of ChefSteps roughly 50 employees will stay on, but a quick look at Linkedin shows some of them have already hung “looking for my next gig” signs on their profiles.

I also have to wonder if the company’s early sales of the Joule had tailed off as pricing pressure on the commoditizing sous vide circulator market has become more pronounced. The Joule, which is priced at a premium ($199) compared to other circulators, has sold well on Amazon and through ChefSteps own website, but lower-priced circulators (Anova launched the sub-$100 Nano last year) may have started to eat into their sales.

The Joule Ready sauces are all ‘Out of Stock’ on ChefSteps website

It also looks like the company had not been able to ramp their Joule Ready sauce business to capitalize on a Joule circulator installed base that I suspect numbers in the hundreds of thousands.  At this point, it’s unclear if the company is even still in the sauce business:  a quick perusal of the company’s site today shows every sauce as being out of stock.

We’ve reached out to Young for a comment and will update this story as we get more details.

Video: Rethinking Business Models in the Era of FoodTech

There was a time when Whirlpool was an appliance company, pure and simple. Nestlé focused exclusively on packaged goods. ChefSteps started as an online content community. But in the past few years, Whirlpool bought recipe content platform Yummly, Nestlé has added digital services, and Chefsteps has diversified into hardware and prepared food.

In the technology age, are the traditional roles of food companies breaking down?

Michael Wolf asked this question to Chris Young of ChefSteps, Stephanie Naegeli of Nestlé and Brett Dibkey of Whirlpool on the Smart Kitchen Summit stage. Watch the video below to see the panelists discuss how food companies are taking new, sometimes risky approaches in order to stay viable in the shifting smart kitchen ecosystem for years to come.

Rethinking Business Models In The Era of FoodTech

Look out for more videos of the panels, solo talks, and fireside chats from SKS 2018! We’ll be bringing them to you hot and fresh out the (smart) kitchen over the next few weeks.

From Pop Rocks To Spicy Snickers: Why Data Science Is The Future of Food Creation

When I think of interesting food products, I often think of Bill Mitchell, a legendary food scientist who stumbled upon what would eventually become Pop Rocks.

Hunkered inside a General Foods research lab in the 1950s, Mitchell discovered that mixing sugar with carbon dioxide in his mouth caused them to fizz and pop. The prolific food researcher — who would go on to invent a number of other innovative products like Tang and Cool Whip — filed for a patent on his idea in 1959. It took a couple decades for Pop Rocks to become a part of the 1970s cultural zeitgeist, but the fizzing candy is still sold to kids around the world today.

That’s the thing with food: so much of what has makes it to store shelves, whether Pop Rocks or the popsicle, is the result of magical mistakes. But in the era of smart phones, connected appliances and Amazon Alexa, this may soon change. Increasingly, new products will be less likely to come from happy accidents like that of Dr. Mitchell’s and instead will grow out of insights gleaned from consumer data made available through connected platforms.

Take the recent story about Mars using Alibaba data to create a spicy Snickers bar. According to Bloomberg, Mars used data gathered through the Chinese Internet giant’s various online platforms that showed customers who like chocolate also buy spicy food.

From the story:

That prompted the creation of the Spicy Snickers candy bar, which incorporates the Sichuan peppercorn, the source of China’s famous “mala” (numb and spicy) taste. Typically Mars spends two to three years developing a new product; the Spicy Snickers came together in less than one.

It’s not just Internet giants getting in on the action. Because every Joule sous vide appliance from ChefSteps is connected, the kitchen startup knows what customers are cooking at any given time. The company is able to analyze this data to unearth potential opportunities for new products.

For example, Joule usage data showed one of the biggest challenges time-starved consumers face when creating a sous vide meal is creating multi-ingredient sauces to go with a protein. This catalyzed the company to create a new product called Joule Ready sauces that solves for this exact problem. The Seattle startup has also built an agile production process that allows them to scale up new sauces based on consumer usage data and double down on popular ones.

While data-driven product development has been on the rise for some time, products like the spicy Snickers are a sign food companies are embracing data insights to take new risks and speed time to market.  And this embrace of data is only the beginning. A whole host of new startups are building upon the foundation of better food and consumer data to build AI platforms that not only will discover new products faster, but ensure a much higher likelihood of success.

Just as we saw with baseball, there might be some old-schoolers that decry the world of food undergoing its own Moneyball revolution. As for the inventor of Pop Rocks, I suspect Bill Mitchell would have been ok with it.

The reason? His grandson — also named Bill Mitchell — runs a little connected beer brewing appliance by the name of PicoBrew.

I Tried ChefStep’s JouleReady Bags: How a Sous Vide Virgin Became a Convert

I have a confession: I am a full-time writer about food technology and the smart kitchen, and I’ve never tried my hand at sous vide. Maybe it’s because I don’t eat much meat, or because I have a pint-sized kitchen, or because — gasp! — I actually gravitate towards old-fashioned cooking techniques. Half the time I don’t even use a recipe.

But a few weeks ago Mike and I went by ChefSteps HQ to learn about their new Joule Ready sauces, a line of sous-vide-ready bags filled with sauce, which CEO Chris Young told us they’d developed in part to “help first time sous vide users.” So I decided to shed my Luddite culinary ways and give the Joule a spin. Here’s how it stacked up:

ChefSteps launched the initial 12 flavors of Joule Ready with 8,000 of their community members this month, ranging from Sauce au Poivre to Roasted Red Pepper Walnut Muhammara. I decided to try Thai Green Curry, which I thought would go best with the salmon in my fridge.

For those who haven’t used the Joule app before, it’s a piece of cake. The app has tips and tricks for sous vide newbies, and also offers a myriad of recipes organized by protein type. My only qualm is that their “beginner guide” only has four options, all of which are meat. I’m a pescetarian, and I know that most people get sous vide to perfect their carnivorous cooking — but I’d appreciate at least one fish, egg, or vegetable dish on there.

When it comes to the Joule Ready, however, it’s even easier. You just scan the QR code on the bag and the app prompts you to select your protein, pick how done you like it, and note its thickness. You can also choose to follow the Featured Recipe for that particular sauce, which will show you how to make a full meal out of your protein. For the Thai Green Curry the featured recipe is chicken over rice with grilled eggplant and a sweet pepper and herb salad, but I went with salmon instead.

Once you’ve entered in your protein info the app then tells you to put the sous vide in your water vessel, plug it in (not the other way around!), and connect it via bluetooth so it can start heating the water to the exact specifications for perfect cooking. Once it reaches the right temperature, the Joule app alerts you that it’s time to put your protein into its saucy bath, pop it in your water, and start the timer. I didn’t even use a clip to affix the bag, and yet the salmon stayed perfectly submerged.

My sous vide setup.

After 40 minutes my app alerted me that my protein was ready, though I kept it in the water for a few minutes more while I finished my brown rice (doesn’t it always take longer than you think?) and sweet potatoes. One of the benefits of sous vide: your food will never dry out!

After I messily extracted my (perfectly cooked, perfectly tender) salmon from its saucy bath, I was left with the sticky problem of how to get the tasty green curry sauce out of the bag and onto my plate. ChefSteps is clear that the sauces are meant not only as a marinade/cooking accompaniment to your protein, but also as a finishing sauce.

Spooning it out worked, but not without plenty of it getting all over my hands. I realized after the fact that I could have snipped one of the corners of the bag and squeezed the sauce out like I was piping icing — I’ll try that next time.

My completed Joule Ready meal of Thai Green Curry salmon with rice and kale.

A few thoughts:

  • Yes, yes, I’m a sous vide n00b — but I didn’t realize that you were supposed to sear your protein before putting it into the bag, lest it the sugars in the sauce burn. My Joule app didn’t instruct me to pre-sear after I scanned my Joule Ready. Luckily the salmon worked well tender and didn’t need a caramelized exterior, but for some proteins I imagine you’d really need that sear.
  • Eventually, it would be nice to have multiple recipes for each Joule Ready sauce. The more customizable the recipe, the more people would use it; after all, people want the sauce so that they have to think less about what to make for dinner, not brainstorm a whole extra side dish or starch just because they don’t eat/want the particular meat recommended by the recipe.

In the end, Joule Ready delivered on its promise: it made sous vide cooking simple, even for someone who’d never tried it before. Forty minutes isn’t a quick meal by any account — and it would take even longer with, say, steak — but with a little planning ahead it was simple to pop in some protein, put on a pot of rice, and have a way above-average meal for a Tuesday. Bonus: if you get distracted doing laundry or watching TV while you wait for your food to cook, you don’t have to worry about returning to a smoky kitchen and charred dinner.

I haven’t (yet) tried out other devices from Anova or Nomiku, but with Joule Ready, ChefSteps did the hard work of getting me — a sous vide skeptic — to actually give this kitchen technology a whirl. Plus, I love how the sauces are shelf-stable, so I can make a fancy-pants sous vide entrée anytime the mood strikes, without having to order pre-made meals ahead of time or plan out a recipe.

Good thing I have six more sauces in my cabinet to try out.

SKS 2018: A Growing Community Accomplishing Big Things

Every year after Smart Kitchen Summit, I do a couple things:

  1. Catch up on sleep.
  2. Process and distill all the insights, conversations and connections made during the past few days.

And this year, with over 600 attendees, 80 speakers and 30 sponsors at our flagship food tech event, there were a whole lot of interesting ideas to digest.

So now that I’ve caught up on sleep, I wanted to share some of the lessons I learned during these action-packed two days.  While I will no doubt continue to connect the dots from the lessons learned last week — and gain additional insights as I watch the videos of the sessions I missed (stay tuned for those!) — here are some early observations about the trends on display at SKS 2018:

Products are shipping

Onlookers check out the second generation June oven

At the first SKS in 2015, many of the early conversations were about next-gen cooking devices that had yet to ship. Compare that to today where companies like June are on their second generation product, and big appliance brands have deep integrations with software platforms from the likes of Innit and SideChef, and we are seeing a market that is less about theory and more about what happens when you put these products in the hands of actual consumers.

Innovation across the food system is interconnected

While some conversations about the future of the kitchen may start with looking at connected appliances, SKS showed us the future of food and cooking spans new delivery formats, AI & robotics, food retail, home design and much more.

We heard from startups making AI platforms to create highly personalized new flavors for CPG companies. Executives from restaurants, big food, appliance, and software companies talked about how their companies are taking part in a rapidly changing meal journey. We heard from home designers working with technology providers to create new kitchens that incorporate intelligence within the fabric of the home.

The big takeaway here is that all of these stops along the journey to the plate are not isolated, but part of a bigger interdependent whole.

Business models are crystalizing

The Wall Street Journal’s Wilson Rothman talks to Malachy Moynihan

One of the biggest challenges in new markets is figuring out how companies will make money. Because of this, at this year’s SKS we dug deep into how business models are changing with a bunch of amazing talks and conversations from those forging a new path. We heard from the President of BSH Appliances about transitioning one of the world’s largest appliance makers to a services-oriented company, from ChefSteps on the path to becoming a food delivery company, and about lessons learned by the former head of product behind both the original Amazon Echo and the Juicero.

After hearing from these leaders on stage and discussing their business models in the hallways and backstage, I’m am convinced those pioneering the future of food are figuring out new and unique approaches that are informed by the past — but break conventions when and where necessary.

Existing markets morph slowly (with occasional ‘big bang’ jolts of innovation)

One thing I try to keep in mind is markets don’t change overnight. Existing product categories  — whether they are packaged food, appliances, restaurants or retailers — evolve as new alchemies of technology, business model innovation, societal changes, and company cultures bring about long-term change to a given market.

Pablos Holman talks about the future of 3D printed food

Occasionally, however innovation evolution is catalyzed by those that help us see into the future, and this year at SKS we heard about a few of these big-bang jolts of innovation. Whether it starts with a maker who hacked together a home sous vide circulator in 2012, a serial inventor working in a well-funded research lab where he convinces Nathan Myhrvold of potential of our 3D printed food future or Amazon’s reimagining the future of the grocery store, we were shown the potential of accelerating innovation through singular visions.

Innovation is happening globally

Hirotaka Tanaka talks about Japan’s food tech market

We took our event international last year with Smart Kitchen Summit Japan, and this year we went fully global by taking the event to Europe. This global nature was on display in Seattle this week with startups from all over the globe showcasing their ideas and products, appliance and food goliaths sponsoring our event, and speakers from all over the world discussing their ideas on stage

We are exploring stories at SKS and The Spoon

One of the realizations I’ve had since starting the Smart Kitchen Summit in 2015 is that our job is to help food innovators share their stories. We do that throughout the year by telling stories at The Spoon of creators doing exciting work. We also engage in conversations with them on our podcasts where we can learn more about their work.

We also like to have the stories we discover shared from the SKS stage. Stories resonate most when shared by the person who lived it, and it’s through thoughtful conversation, questions, and connections that new chapters are added.

Thanks to all those who made SKS 2018 possible and a special thanks for those who came to SKS and shared your story. For the rest of you, we can’t wait to hear your story, share it with our community, and maybe even have you on stage for SKS 2019!

Got a good food tech story to tell? Let us know.  And if you want to participate in our FoodTech Live at CES, drop us a line. 

With Joule Ready, ChefSteps Establishes Sous Vide Food Delivery Business

This week Mike and I got invited to the ChefSteps headquarters for that most elusive meal: a free lunch. What we got was free lunches, plural, plus a sneak peek at the newest product from ChefSteps. No, it’s not a new update on the Joule, their sous vide machine. It’s much saucier.

Joule Ready is a line of sous vide-ready bags pre-filled with sauces in flavors like Thai Green Curry, Salsa Chamoy and Roasted Red Pepper Walnut Muhammara. Here’s how it works:

You can scan the code on the Joule Ready packaging through the ChefSteps app, which will give you the option to select your protein: chicken, fish, tofu, etc. Once you make your choice and add your meat (or veg) to the Joule Ready bag, the app will automatically start your Joule and instruct you on how to cook the rest of the dish, which may include pan-searing or grilling to finish. (Joule Ready can be used with other sous vide appliances, though obviously the app won’t be able to start and stop cook-time in the same way.) Each sauce also comes with one featured recipe — basically a complete meal of protein + side + garnish — which you can access by scanning the Joule Ready code in the ChefSteps app.

Joule ready meals

Joule Ready has been in beta since the beginning of 2018, and will launch with 8,000 ChefSteps community members later this month. After that, they’ll aim to hit a 15% week over week growth rate.

The bags are all shelf stable without refrigeration for one year, and each one feeds 2 – 4 people. A key appeal of the Joule Ready packs is their variety of flavors — no cooking ennui here. ChefSteps CEO Chris Young told us that they’ll offer 12 initial Joule Ready flavors at launch, and already have 12 more queued up and ready to go. Options will change weekly: sauces that perform well will stay, while those that don’t, go.

ChefSteps hopes that Joule Ready’s constantly rotating lineup of sauce flavors will push consumers to use their Joule more frequently, and with less forethought. “Customers would get into a rut,” explained Young. They would master sous vide-ing steaks or pork chops, but they would get bored of the same preparation every time. The premade sauces also help save time and energy, so home cooks don’t have to do anything more than plop in some protein and make a side of rice. “We want to help people actually cook on a busy Wednesday night,” he said.

Joule Ready featured recipe with Salsa Chamoy.

For ChefSteps, the beauty of this undertaking — as well as their decision to bring everything but printing and laminating the sous vide bags in-house — is its agility. Young told us that they could produce a new sauce within 3 – 5 weeks. That means they can easily capitalize off of new trends on cooking sites or social media, upcoming holidays, as well as feedback from their consumers.

There are three reasons ChefSteps can do this so quickly. The first is size: by making, say, 500 bags of Truffle Jus Gras instead of 500,000, which are the type of numbers in which Big Food has to deal with, the company can be flexible and take risks with their sauces. It also means they can make holiday or limited-time Joule Ready bags without being stuck with a ton of leftover inventory.

The second reason is their manufacturing practice: namely, that it’s almost all in-house. Everything but printing and laminating the sous vide bags is done by ChefSteps, from recipe testing to production to packaging design. The company ultimately built their own facility in order to build a filling machine that would work at their comparatively low volume. That gives the ability to pivot and develop new sauces super-quickly, and have complete control from end-to-end.

Lastly, there’s ChefSteps’ not-so-secret weapon: its data. Whenever any of its community cook with a Joule Ready bag, the company registers it and can ask them through the app how their experience went. ChefSteps can then leverage all this data to see how their users are liking each sauce, and make adjustments accordingly. “We’re 100% connected to our customers,” said Young.

Though they’re still testing prices, Young said that the Joule Ready bags wouldn’t have across-the-board pricing. For example, a truffle one might be cost in the double-digits, while most other bags would set you back around $6.95. If you buy a four-pack, the price would go down to around $4.95, and the company will eventually add a Subscribe & Save feature.

Young said that Joule Ready would be in retail stores by 2019. However, he was very clear that retail is more of a customer acquisition channel than the end goal — their focus will be on direct sales through the ChefSteps site. Which makes sense: the company can ship sauces cheaply, since the pack flat and don’t require ice or other refrigeration. That gives them a big advantage over direct-ship full and pre-cooked meals.

ChefSteps has been working to diversify into food sales since 2014. Last year the company beta-tested a new line of business selling locally raised meat and fish to Joule users (a move not that different from other Seattle food tech startup Crowd Cow). A few months later, also dabbled with frozen pre-cooked meals and teamed up with PostMates to enable delivery.

While neither of those products were rolled out beyond their initial beta test phase, Young said the company learned a lot from both efforts which they incorporated when creating the Joule Ready lineup. One obvious lesson was that by focusing on long-shelf life sauces where the consumer adds their own protein, the company is able to sidestep all the logistical expense and complications that go along with shipping meat across the country.

ChefSteps is not the only smart kitchen company getting into the food business. Tovala made food delivery a core part of their offering, paired with their countertop smart cooking device, and First Chop ships frozen proteins in various sauces pre-packed in sous vide bags. Sous vide pioneer Nomiku has also expanded pretty aggressively into food delivery.

Michael Wolf wrote about this phenomenon for the Spoon: Eventually, Fetterman decided to recreate the entire experience for her consumers,  one which included not only a sous vide circulator, but the food itself. She had decided that Nomiku would make the act of creating a meal easier by offering pre-packaged, pre-portioned, and pre-cooked sous vide meals. All the consumer would need to do is scan the RFID tag on each component of a meal – usually a main course and a couple of sides — and drop them into the water. In thirty minutes, food is ready to eat.

Neither Nomiku nor ChefSteps is immune to the challenges of growing an audience for a smart kitchen “luxury” gadget. According to Young, there are three main challenges that face widespread consumer acceptance of sous vide. The first, price, is already being solved with the $99 sous vide wand. The second, convenience, is solved by the Joule Ready sauces. The third, time, has thus been elusive — but Young hinted that it could be solvable with AI.

With a glint in his eye, he said that ChefSteps would be unveiling tech by the end of the year that would enable Joule Ready meals to cook in 30 minutes, making them competitive with Nomiku’s pre-cooked meals — only customizable. “These sauces are meant to help first-time sous vide users,” said Young.

Soon, we’ll put it to the test. Keep an eye out for later this week, when a sous vide virgin (me!) tries her hand at making a Joule Ready meal for the very first time, with her very first sous vide wand. Will it be a tasty success? Tune in to find out.

If you want to hear ChefSteps CEO Chris Young talk about why the company created Joule Ready, make sure to come to the Smart Kitchen Summit where he’ll be discussing new business models in the era of the connected kitchen. 

Celebrate a FoodTech Fourth of July

It’s weird when a major holiday falls on a Wenesday, right? Do you take just the day off? The first half of the week? The last half? The whole week? Regardless of how much time you take off, we can help make your time at the grill a great one with these FoodTech finds.

FOOD
The Fourth–and most summertime grillin’–is all about the meat. Normally, we’d suggest you purchase your steaks and burgers through CrowdCow, which meticulously sources all of its meat from small ranches. But your guests will be hungry tomorrow, so here’s a twist, maybe try a meatless option this year?

I know! I know! “Heresy!” you cry! But really, we love the Beyond Meat burger patties available at many local grocers. The company says it wants their plant-based meat that “bleeds” in the supermarket butcher section, but I’ve only ever found it frozen with the other alterna-meats.

Personally, I think the Beyond Meat patty is a delicious replacement for the traditional meat burger, so much so that I stock up on extra when I’m at the store just to have it around when I crave it. Beyond Meat won’t fool any carnivores, but it’s a tasty substitute and perfect if you’re trying to cut back on your red meat intake.

BRING THE (CONTROLLED) HEAT
Everyone has an opinion about the best way to grill, we won’t waste your time with some obscure technique. We will however, recommend a pair of devices that can help make your steaks and other proteins turn out great.

Photo: Anova

Sous vide-ing your steak is a fantastic way to get juicy meat with no overcooking. There are a ton of sous vide wands out there that will turn any pot of water into a precision-heated circulating bath. We like the ChefSteps Joule and the new Anova Nano (review forthcoming). They are small, well built, and work with an accompanying mobile phone app to bring your meat to a desired internal temperature. Sure it takes a little longer, but it also helps remove the risks of over- or undercooking your precious steaks.

Stylish holder/charger.

Regardless of whether you sous vide or not, you can use the Meater thermometer to get just about any type of meat to the proper temperature. The Meater is kinda big (like a beefy nail) that sits in your protein while you cook it. Using the Meater app on your phone, you can keep track of both ambient and internal temperatures, and Meater will even tell you when to pull out and rest your meat to achieve optimal results.

If you’re going camping and want a greener experience, you could grab a GoSun portable grill that cooks food by simply harnessing the power of the sun.

BEER
The good news is, if you live in the right location, you can still run out and buy your own PicoBrew to make homebrewing much easier. The bad news is that even if you bought one today, there isn’t enough time to brew and ferment your beer before tomorrow. (Maybe just pop by Spoon founder Mike Wolf’s house for a bottle of his.)

PLAN FOR NEXT YEAR
It’s never too early to start planning for an epic Independence Day celebration next year. Here are some items to put a pin in and revisit next summer:

  • If it makes its crowdfunding goal, the Ambassador 5-in-1 grill features rotating cooktop that spins through flattop and grate surfaces.
  • The Bartesian cocktail robot (due out by the end of this year) can whip up delicious boozy concoctions on demand.
  • And for the truly adventurous, you can throw a slice of ketchup, yes, a “slice” of ketchup on next year’s burger.

No matter how much time you’re taking off, have a Happy Fourth of July, everybody! Be safe.

Highlights From The Future of Recipes Food Tech Meetup

We had our first food tech meetup last night! And thanks to our sponsor ChefSteps, tech-brewed beer from PicoBrew, and our awesome venue Galvanize, it was a rollicking success. Plus we had a very cool panel: Alicia Cervini from Allrecipes, Cliff Sharples from Fexy Media, and Jess Voelker from Chefsteps had a great conversation with The Spoon’s Michael Wolf.

If you missed it, here are a few topics and points that really stood out to us. Prepare yourself: the future of recipes is very dynamic, very shoppable, and tastes good — every time.

P.S. Mark your calendars for our next meetup on the future of meat on May 24th! Register here to make sure you get a spot.

So what’s the future of recipes then?
All of our panelists agreed that in the future, recipes will be very responsive and dynamic:

Allrecipes’ Alicia Cervini said they are exploring completely customizable meal kits based on their recipes. They have a relationship with Chef’d to work on their vision of “making a dynamically generated meal kit on the fly,” pairing convenience with customization.

Fexy’s Cliff Sharples predicted that as people take a deeper interest in food (he said that 50% of millennials consider themselves “foodies”) recipe customization would become more and more popular. He also had an interesting app idea where users could plug in their dinner guests with all of their eating profiles and plan a menu.

ChefSteps’ Jess Voelker envisions a future where technology can help people become a better cook. She brought up the interesting concept of using AI to troubleshoot their recipes. So if your cake went flat or your food was too salty, ChefSteps could help you figure out where you went wrong. 

Voice interfaces alone are incomplete
All of our panelists agreed that, when it comes to cooking from a recipe, voice alone isn’t all that useful — cooking is just too visual. Sure, if the recipe instructions are short enough, you could cook an entire recipe just with a voice assistant. And, as Voelker pointed out, “it can solve some real problems just in time, like if you have chicken grease on your hand and need to know something.” But without a visual guide, like a connected screen, you often end up having to break down steps into even smaller steps, which takes more time than if you’d just read the recipe. 

So while voice assistants like Alexa may be a helpful tool if your hands are mucked up in the kitchen, as of now they’re most useful for playing news or podcasts while you cook. The panelists did, however, seem optimistic about the combination of video and voice. (Or maybe an all-in-one robot chef assistant?)

Are recipes just data?
During the meetup Sharples likened recipes to code, which is the driving force behind smart appliances, the shoppable recipe journey, and recipe search tools. If you’re a regular Spoon reader this might remind you of Jon Jenkin’s talk at last year’s Smart Kitchen Summit, where he made the claim that we are all eating software. 

Mike Wolf made the point that with recipe integration and connected appliances like the Joule, you could essentially have a celebrity chef cook your meal for you in your own kitchen. Sort of.

For example: you could select a steak recipe from kitchen gadget-loving chef Kenji Alt-Lopez on your connected app and your device would precisely follow his cooking instructions, giving you a consistent, high-quality result. It’s almost like having Kenji himself sous vide a steak for you, every time. (Which, for many food nerds, is a dream come true.)

Recipes are becoming more important, in different ways
All of our panelists agreed that the recipe is not the least bit dead. In fact, they argued that the recipe is becoming more important; it’s the core atomic unit of the rapidly evolving meal journey.

The hardest part, which isn’t surprising, is making recipes that tick all the boxes for such a wide variety of needs. But with apps like PlantJammer and Ckbk, plus the convenience of services like 2-hour grocery delivery and meal kits, it doesn’t seem like the recipe is going anywhere anytime soon.