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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

ChefSteps

Sansaire Announces It Is Shutting Down

Today Sansaire, one of the first consumer sous vide hardware startups, announced it is shutting down.

Acting company CEO Lukas Svec shared the bad news in an update on the company’s Kickstarter campaign page for the new generation product, the Delta:

“We regret to share that Sansaire will be ceasing development of the Delta and the company will ultimately be closing its doors.  In short, our relationship with the new production facility broke down and has exhausted available funding and manufacturing routes. As we wind down over the next 12 months, Sansaire will be supporting warranties and customer service issues. Kickstarter Backers will be contacted individually regarding next steps.“

Sansaire was one of a handful of companies building sous vide circulators to launch in the 2013 time frame. However, unlike Anova and Nomiku, the company struggled to build its brand in an increasingly competitive consumer sous vide market and was never able to ship its second generation product despite a successful Kickstarter campaign in 2016.

The company was cofounded by Scott Heimendinger, a well known food hacker who tapped into his following to help launch company’s first Kickstarter campaign. However Heimendinger left the company before the launch of Sansaire’s second Kickstarter campaign in 2016 and the company has seen a number of executive departures ever since.

The company’s former COO Valerie Trask left in the middle of the crowdfunding campaign for the Delta. The company named a new CEO in Johnna Hobgood soon afterwards, but she soon left to go work for Amazon in their Amazon Go group. Another executive named Lilac Muller joined as acting CEO last fall, but has since departed the company.

The company raised over $250 thousand for the Delta, its second generation sous vide appliance, in fall of 2016 with a promised spring 2017 ship date. However, as time went on and the executive team turned over, it became increasingly obvious the company was having difficulties.

In one way, Sansaire’s troubles shows the perils of relying on crowdfunded money to bring a hardware product to market. Unless a campaign is wildly successful, the funds raised usually aren’t nearly enough to design, build and bring a product to manufacturing. More often than not, a company requires external investment or a really successful first-gen product (or both) to fund the development of a new product.

With today’s news, it’s apparent that Sansaire didn’t have either.

Update: I caught up with Scott Heimendinger via email to ask him for a comment. He had this to say:

“I’m disappointed, of course, but I processed my grief over Sansaire when I walked away from involvement two years ago. The saddest part is what could have been. Today, the outcomes of Sansaire vs. Anova could not be more stark.

I’m disappointed most for the people who backed the Sansaire Delta on Kickstarter. We built the company originally on the trust and generosity of the Kickstarter community and moved heaven and earth to do right by them throughout. So it’s crushing that the contributors to the Delta campaign in 2016 will be left with their promises unfulfilled.

Although founding and leaving a failed startup leaves some scars, I’m proud to have contributed in some small way to the overall movement of sous vide. I rooted for Sansaire to succeed after I departed, and I’m sure it was a difficult and humbling decision for them to announce the shutdown.”

Tyson Bets On Home Food Delivery & Smart Kitchen With Investment In Tovala

Today Tyson Foods announced they have invested an undisclosed amount in Tovala, maker of smart steam ovens that pair with ready-to-cook home delivered meals. The investment comes on the heels of a $9.2 million series A announced in December. As part of the deal, Tyson will add an observer to Tovala’s board in Tyson Ventures managing director Reese Schroeder.

According to Tovala CEO David Rabie, the deal made sense for them as they started to look toward expanding the Tovala platform beyond their own meals.

“Over time, we will have other brands on the platform where we can automate the cooking, similar to how it works with Tovala meals,” said Rabie in an interview with The Spoon. “This (Tyson) is the first brand and harbinger of what’s to come.”

The move comes at an interesting time for big food companies like Tyson. Consumer packaged good providers are continuing to look for ways to reach the consumer as Amazon continues to wreak havoc on the retail landscape and consumers are increasingly exploring fresh food choices. Home food delivery is seen a potentially interesting – if still yet somewhat unproven – route to the consumer. The move by Tyson follows investments by other big food companies like Nestle, Unilever and Campbell into the home food delivery space.

What’s different about the Tyson’s investment is that with Tovala, they are also moving into the connected kitchen space. Tovala, an alum of the 2016 Smart Kitchen Summit startup showcase, is part of a growing trend of startups looking to pair food delivery with a smart cooking appliance.  Sous vide circulator startups like Nomiku and ChefSteps have both ventured into food delivery, and just this week Suvie, a new startup from the founder of Reviewed.com, is kicking off a Kickstarter campaign for a cooking robot that pairs with the company’s own meal kit delivery. Smart kitchen operating system startup Innit has hinted they will be working with white-label meal kit company Chef’d later this year.

It will be interesting to see where this trend combining automated, assisted cooking combined with meal delivery goes. For companies like Tovala and Suvie, meal delivery provides a form of recurring revenue that more hardware-specific startups like June struggle with. On the other hand, the logistical challenges of building out meal delivery services add more complexity to creating a company. Long term, all of these companies are chasing the idea of creating greater convenience for the consumer. It will no doubt be interesting to see which companies get the combination right and begin to see traction in 2018 and beyond.

The Founder of Reviewed.com Wants To Reinvent Cooking With This Robot Cooking Appliance

A hypothetical question: What do you do for a second act after spending a good chunk of your teens and twenties building one of the leading product review sites in the US?

You start a company to reinvent one of those product categories you used to review.

At least that’s what you do if you’re Robin Liss, cofounder of Suvie, a Boston based startup that is creating a next-gen cooking appliance. Liss, who started what would become Reviewed.com in her basement at the tender age of 13, sold her company to USA Today in 2011 and managed and grow the site as part of Gannett until she left in 2015.

While she didn’t leave Reviewed with plans to create a cooking appliance startup, it didn’t take long before Liss and her cofounder, Kevin Incorvia, conceived of what eventually became Suvie.

Robin Liss and Kevin Incorvia, cofounders of Suvie

“When I was leaving Reviewed.com, I thought I was going to enjoy my time on the beach,” said Liss when I sat down with her this week to talk about her new company. “But when I was at Reviewed I was really into sous vide cooking, and I thought how can I take this to the next level?”

That next-level cooking idea rolling around Liss’s head eventually crystallized into the Suvie, an ambitious new take at a countertop cooking appliance that includes multiple zones for each staple of a typical dinner: proteins, vegetables, starch, and sauces. Put simply, the Suvie cooks each staple separately using optimized processes for each (sous vide for the protein, steam for veggies, a water dispenser/chamber for starches) but syncs the process across the different cooking chambers so they are finished at the same time.

To top it off, Liss and Incorvia insisted on creating an appliance that enabled “cool to cook”, which means the Suvie would keep food chilled all day and initiate a cook remotely via an app. To do that, they started looking into adding refrigeration.

After looking at a variety of cooling methods like thermoelectric cooling (the cooling technology used in wine coolers and, somewhat notoriously after this Wired review, the Mellow), they decided the Suvie would use a compressor. Compressors are standard in most refrigerators, but the problem was they couldn’t find a compressor small enough for their countertop cooking appliance.

Eventually, they worked with a large appliance maker to have a custom compressor made for the Suvie.

“We have a custom, small compressor, which is one of the key parts that make this work,” said Liss.

But unlike a fridge, which cools by forcing coolant into coils and absorbing heat, the Suvie team decided to use water to cool the food. They came up with a novel water-routing concept that takes cold water from a water chamber and distributes it to water jackets in each of the four zones and chills the food until its ready to cook.

When Liss started thinking about her new company, there were a few underlying trends she felt made it the right time to try and reinvent cooking. One was the ubiquity of mobile phones. She saw mobile was becoming more important in people’s lives as a way to not only discover food but would also become they way control their cooking appliances.

She also saw the growth of precision cooking techniques like sous vide and connected appliances as a signal that things would change drastically in the consumer kitchen in coming years.

The last trend she focused on was the rise of meal kits, as she watched the emergence of first generation meal kit companies like Blue Apron and started to think about how they could incorporate meal delivery into their offering.

And it was this last trend that led to her other big idea. Unlike meal kit providers like Blue Apron that have their own warehouses and pack food for shipment, Liss wanted to create a product that they could open to a variety of food packers and distributors as a way to sell their products as part of a meal kit. In short, she saw the beginning of what could become a new distribution platform.

“[Meal kits] are the first step of what will eventually become a platform,” said Liss. “What we’re trying to do is build an appliance that can bridge the technology gap between existing food suppliers and the appliance that can cook it intelligently.”

This early focus on using a variety of food packers and distributors forced the company to make an open approach integral to the design of the Suvie appliance.

“There were some restrictive rules I put on our engineering team at the beginning,” said Liss. “One was we don’t want us packing our own food. The reason we did that is we wanted to make sure the existing food supply chain could easily pack for their device using the equipment on their floors.”

In a way, Suvie is emblematic of a new trend in the smart kitchen space where startups are looking to pair recurring meal subscriptions with smart cooking hardware. Tovala, Nomiku, and ChefSteps are other examples of companies going down this route but, according to Liss, Suvie has a bigger vision.

“That’s really important when you think about the business and platform because that way if new food brands want to pack for Suvie, they don’t have to build new cooking methods, they don’t have to precook stuff. The raw veggie guys don’t have to think about how long it takes to cook the chicken. They can just pack their raw vegetables like their doing now because of this platform.”

To assemble the final meal kits, Suvie has partnered with a local mission-driven organization in the Dorchester area of Boston that employs economically disadvantaged workers.

Liss said the company plans to launch a Kickstarter in February and plan to ship the product by the end of this year. If successful, the campaign will add to already $3.75 million in seed funding that the company has raised. Pricing for the Suvie will be announced next week when they unveil the Kickstarter campaign.

After more than two years working in stealth, Liss is excited to get what she unabashedly calls her “robot multizone cooking appliance” into the world.

“It’s so exciting and so much fun,” she said. “I do wish we got as much attention as the robot cars. I think it’s just as important a category as self-driving cars.”

You can listen to my full conversation with Robin Liss, founder of Suvie, below (or through Apple podcasts).

Smart Kitchen Curious? Here Are Some Black Friday & Cyber Monday Deals For You

Want some new smart kitchen gear? Now might be a good time to pick up a new gadget or two given, well, BLACK FRIDAY.

Below is a quick list of some Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals we’ve spotted for smart kitchen gear from around the web. (If you see any other screaming deals for smart kitchen gear, let me know via Twitter and I’ll keep this list updated):

Mellow 

The Mellow smart sous vide appliance just started shipping and is getting some decent early buzz. The good news is you can pick up this sous vide appliance with built-in refrigeration for $299, a hundred bucks off the list price. Better hurry, the deal expires after Monday.

PicoBrew

If you or one of your loved ones has made a new year’s resolution to become a home brewer, now might be a good time to pick up a PicoBrew brewing appliance. You can get the Pico C right now for $399, a hefty $150 off of the list price of $549.

Hestan Cue

Want to cook like a chef? Try a Hestan Cue guided cooking system. The device, which was just named one of the best tech gifts of 2017 by the Wall Street Journal, is available now through December 3rd for a hundred bucks off. Use the discount code “blackfriday” at checkout.

Instant Pot

If you haven’t become part of Instant Pot community, what are you waiting for? With the 5 quart Instant Pot available right now for only $50 right now over at Walmart, you really have no excuse.

Anova

The leader in home sous vide circulators has dropped the price on their flagship product ofr Cyber Monday week. If you want to pick up a circulator, you can do so now for $99 over at Anova.com.

ChefSteps

If you’re reading this on Thanksgiving, you might want to give thanks for a true Black Friday deal coming your way. ChefSteps will be selling both models of the Joule for $30 off, with the Joule Stainless on sale for $169 and the Joule White for $149. Just head over to the ChefSteps Joule page and use the code BLACKFRIDAY at checkout.

HOPii

If you’re willing to wait and want to try out the HOPii home fermentation system, the HOPii folks are offering a “secret perk” right now through Indiegogo which allows you to have a HOPii system for 50% off. Go here to get access to the deal.

Nomiku

Nomiku has a bunch of deals on its sous vide gear and meal delivery service for Black Friday and cyber Monday. The company’s 2nd generation circulator, the Wi-Fi Nomiku, is on sale for $99 and their newest appliance, the Nomiku WiFi Smart Cooker, is available with $50 worth of meals for $179.

Two New Thanksgiving Uses for that Sous Vide Circulator

I don’t need to tell you about the benefits of sous vide immersion circulators. Devices like the Anova, Joule or Nomiku transform just about any pot of water in a temperature controlled, water circulating, precision cooking machine.

I mainly use my Anova for meats – it’s a fantastic way to bring up the internal temperature evenly without under or over cooking. But given that it’s Thanksgiving, it’s unlikely (and perhaps impossible?) that you’ll sous vide an entire turkey.

However, I came across two other unique uses uses for your sous vide wand that can help make your Thanksgiving even more awesome.

Mashed potatoes
First, if you are hosting, what are you doing reading this? Go prepare, you’ve got people coming over! But wait! Before you do, cook your mashed potatoes today. That’s right, get all that mashing and mixing and mess out of the way before the big day. Here’s a trick to re-heating the potatoes without scorching or ruining them.

On a recent episode of the Milk Street radio podcast, J. Kenji Alt-Lopez explained how you can keep your cooked and mashed potatoes in a ziplock bag, store them overnight in the fridge, and then place them in a sous vide machine at something like 150 degrees for an hour to re-heat them without scorching or drying the potatoes out.

Pumpkin pie
And while we are making things in advance, if you are more adventurous and willing to think outside the box and perhaps get a little more deconstructionist with your holiday meal, ChefSteps (maker of the Joule) recently included a recipe for sous vide personal pumpkin pies.

No, it doesn’t involve placing an entire pie in ziplock bag and submerging it. It does involve placing the pie filling in small, individual mason jars and sous vide-ing those. After they are done cooking and chilling, top them off with crumbled graham cracker streusel and some whipped cream. This way everyone gets their own individual dessert.

With a little bit of creativity the sous vide wand can help make your Thanksgiving easier and open up new avenues of creativity. And we’d love to hear about your creativity! How do you use the sous vide for holiday meals? Leave a comment and let us know.

Why Do Some Smart Kitchen Companies Succeed While Others Fail?

Teforia, the maker of a $1000 (originally $1500) connected tea infuser, announced this week that they would shut down immediately.

In a letter to customers, Teforia CEO Allen Han wrote: “we simply couldn’t raise the funds required in what is a very difficult time for hardware companies in the smart kitchen space.”

I’m not entirely surprised the company couldn’t raise funds. High-priced consumer product startups with a business model that feels even vaguely similar to that of Juicero have experienced pushback from potential investors ever since the high profile juice startup went under. While the two companies are certainly different in many respects, there were enough similarities (high price point, subscription business, easily replaced with alternative methods) to warrant the comparison among a jittery investor class.

But as I read Han’s letter, I started to wonder if what he said is true: are smart kitchen companies having a hard time? Or, as I started to suspect, are some having difficulty while others are flourishing?

On the one hand we have seen companies like Juicero and Teforia struggle and go out of business. But then there are companies like PicoBrew, Perfect Company, and InstantPot, all of which have thrived as they’ve brought new products and approaches to the kitchen.

As I thought about this, I started thinking about the differences between the companies that are succeeding in this space vs. those that go out of business. As it turns out, I think there are some lessons we can learn from observing companies that have had success in this market.

Here are a few characteristics of those companies who are succeeding in the smart kitchen market:

A product should give the consumer new capabilities that would otherwise be too difficult or time consuming without it

A good example is PicoBrew. If you’ve ever wanted to make beer but didn’t want to the mess of traditional home brewing, the PicoBrew is a game changer. By applying precision brewing, pre-proportioned ingredients and the ability to brew famous recipes for well-known microbreweries, the startup from Seattle has created a reliably successful model of creating new products every year as they march down the cost curve with each product.

Teforia, on the other hand, made tea, something billions of people do everyday in their home without much effort.  While the concept of adjusting flavor notes and antioxidants is an interesting concept for a tea aficionado, as it turns out tea is something that you can make rather easily.

A product should be either affordable or provide immense value 

The Thermomix TM5 is one of those products you’ve probably heard about but very likely don’t have. That’s because the 12-in-1 multicooker commands a pretty penny and has only recently become available in the US.

Normally one would not put the words  “$1500 countertop appliance” and “popular” in the same sentence, but Thermomix has seemingly cracked the code by creating an uber all-in-one appliance that slices, dices and cooks you dinner. The company continues to evolve the product as well, adding a connected recipe community and an associated app that continues to gain traction.

While the Teforia critical acclaim showed its value relative to the status quo, the value wasn’t differentiated enough from low-cost knock-offs like this Gourmia tea diffuser which sells for about a tenth of the price.

Smart Kitchen products need a community

Want to sell lots of product? Create an active and passionate community.

Perhaps the best example of this is the Instant Pot. The popular connected pressure cooker has an extremely active social community which includes a Facebook group of nearly three-quarters of a million Facebook users who share recipes and cooking tips online. Independent Facebook Instant Pot communities, each numbering in the tens of thousands, have also sprung up to facilitate recipe sharing.

While some might say a sizable community is the result of a viral product, Instant Pot’s case suggests the opposite where a product’s success was fueled by the community. Early on, the team behind the Instant Pot worked to actively build a community of Facebook influencers who would spread the word. Word got around, and the product started gaining traction. Eventually, the product moved up Amazon’s sales charts, and the combination of a strong community reinforced by sales momentum created a virtuous circle that continues to this day.

There are others ways to build and leverage communities to sell connected kitchen products. ChefSteps created a community around high-quality video content before they launched their first hardware product in the Joule, while Anova started its community with crowdfunding campaigns and the company continues to water and feed the #anovafoodnerd community even after they were acquired by Electrolux.

Smart kitchen companies need to experiment with multiple business models

Smart kitchen product success often relies as much on business model experimentation as it does on cool technology. The Perfect Company is a good example of this since the company has not only created a successful line of low-cost connected scales like the Perfect Bake and Perfect Drink, but they’ve also actively worked with large appliance brands to create a separate line of licensing revenue for their technology. Last year the company announced a deal with Vitamix for their tech, while this year they announced a new deal that provided the technology foundation for the newest generation of the Nutribullet. The company has also created a new business line that creates insights around consumption metrics tied to their scales.

I don’t know if Teforia was actively looked at other models (the company pointed us to their statement on their website), but I would have been surprised if they hadn’t at least looked for licensing partners for their tea brewing tech.

Of course, it should be noted that often times a fate of a company is due to a number of factors beyond their control. The Juicero news no doubt added strong headwinds for Teforia as they searched for more funding and, if Juicero never happened, we might not be talking about Teforia.

Lastly, while every segment, including the smart kitchen, has their share of Juiceros or Teforias, anything more than a casual look around shows there is no shortage of companies innovating and succeeding in the future kitchen space.

 

A Few Early Observations (And Pics) From The Smart Kitchen Summit

The Smart Kitchen Summit was last week and, just like many of you that attended, I had a blast. As it turns out, talking to the leading thinkers, innovators and executives across the food and cooking ecosystem about the future is not only inspiring, but it’s also really really fun.

When I decided to create SKS back in 2015, I suspected there might be a few others like me enthusiastic to get together and talk about how technology and innovation are helping us to rethink old approaches in the world of food and cooking.

I was right about that. What was I wrong about? I had no idea how many.

Since the first SKS, we’ve more than doubled the size of the event, expanded to two full days, and brought on amazing partners like Campbell Soup Company to highlight the innovation happening in the space. Leaders from global brands like Google, Whirlpool, Amazon, Sears and Vitamix spoke on stage at SKS about their visions for the future of food and cooking, while founders of leading startups like PicoBrew, June and Perfect Company told us about how they are reinventing old categories and creating entirely new ones.

I am really thankful to all who came to Seattle and shared their time with us.  I learned so much and will be writing about the things I’ve learned (and will learn; I will be watching the videos of the session in coming weeks and sharing them with you), but for now I want to share some pics taken by a few of us, including those captured by my friend Scott Payton, a wonderful event photographer who was on hand both days.

We will be share lots more pics in coming days via posts and over on our Facebook page, so you’ll want to check back here and there often.

Enjoy:

The stage. Image: Ashley Daigneault

The day before SKS, Ashley Daigneault, Tiffany McClurg, and a few other SKS team members were down at Benaroya Hall working to set up while I was working off-site on last-minute preparations for talks and for the speaker dinner. We had decided to get one of those fancy stage backdrops since we thought it would not only look cool but also because thought it would create a better backdrop for videos and pictures. Ashley texted me the picture above just after the sign company had set it up on stage.

View from the stage before the event. Image: Michael Wolf

This is the view from the stage at 8 AM, about half an hour before we opened the doors to the room.

SKS morning during Evan Dash presentation. Image: Scott Payton

This is a great shot of the audience during the first session where Evan Dash talked about how to innovate in the kitchen and cooking.

Surj Patel talks with Chris Young of ChefSteps. Image: Scott Payton

One thing I wanted to do this year was capture some of what happens backstage. I love this photo of Surj Patel, who has taught me so much about the events business.  Here he’s talking to Chris Young, the CEO of ChefSteps. That’s Chris Albrecht, our Master of Ceremonies for the day, in the reflection.

The sponsor area on the promenade at Benaroya Hall. Image: Scott Payton

One of the things I love about Benaroya Hall is the view from the grand lobby out onto the city. This shot is a view from up on the promenade level looking towards the sponsor area.

Institute for the Future’s Rebecca Chesney wows the audience at SKS. Image: Scott Payton

Here is Rebecca Chesney giving a talk about creating a kitchen of actions.  I met Rebecca when I was visiting Google earlier this year and knew her perspective would be great for SKS. I was right. Her talk was excellent; deeply researched and unique. (Yes, we’ll have videos of the talks available soon).

Backstage at SKS. I’m talking to Brett Dibkey of Whirlpool and Brian Witlin of Yummly. Image: Scott Payton

Another backstage shot. I usually spend time talking to my panelists before we go out on stage, going over topics, formats, etc. Here I am talking to Brett Dibkey, head of brands at Whirlpool and Brian Witlin, CEO of Yummly. Ashley Daigneault is talking to Surj Patel in the background. I think Brian Witlin might be my long-lost brother.

Amanda Gold interviews Tyler Florence. Image: Scott Payton

The room is packed for Tyler Florence and Amanda Gold. They didn’t disappoint.

Andrew Deitz of Verdical pitches his company. Image: Scott Payton

Each year we try to make the Startup Showcase better. Last year we mixed the showcase part with happy hour, which was a hit. This year we decided to add a pitch session, which allowed the founders to articulate their company’s vision. This is Andrew Deitz, CEO of Verdical, giving a three-minute pitch for his company.

The judges listen to startup pitches. Image: Scott Payton

We had a rock star lineup of judges this year. This is a great shot of them sitting in the front row listening to the pitches. From closest to farthest: Evan Dash (StoreBound), Lisa McManus (America’s Test Kitchen), Brian Frank (FTW Ventures), Maura Judkis (Washington Post), Shakeel Farooque (Campbell Soup Company).

Richard Gunther and I enjoying a beer served up by HOPii. Image: Scott Payton

After the startups pitched from the main stage, we all went to happy hour where the startups then showcased their products.  After a long day, I made a beeline for HOPii’s table, where I knew I could get a beer from their beer brewing appliance. Richard Gunther of the Home: On podcast also partook.

Those are just a few shots from the first day. I and others from the team at the Spoon and SKS will be sharing more in coming days and weeks.

Again, I can’t thank those who came and spent time with us enough. We are so excited to be building this community with you. Keep in touch, send us your ideas for how to improve, and we look forward to bringing SKS back next year (including to Europe).

Podcast: The Chefs

We’re busy preparing for Smart Kitchen Summit 2017, which is only one week away.

To prime the pump, I thought we’d release some of our favorite sessions from SKS 2016 as podcasts.

This session, entitled The Chefs, features none other than Kenji Lopez Alt (Serious Eats & James Beard award winner), Chris Young (ChefSteps CEO & coauthor Modernist Cuisine) and Philip Tessier (Hestan Smart Cooking Culinary Director & Head Coach, Bocuse d’Or Team USA).

If you haven’t purchased your tickets for SKS 2017, you can do so at the Smart Kitchen Summit website by using the discount code PODCAST to get 25% off of tickets, or just use this link at Eventbrite which has the discount code applied.

Hestan Cue & ChefSteps Integrate Apps, Show Us Glimpse Of The Future

Today Hestan Smart Cooking and ChefSteps debuted a deep link integration between their two cooking apps. What this means is the user can initiate a cook within the Hestan app, seamlessly transfer to the ChefSteps Joule to sous vide a protein like steak, and then finish the cook with the Hestan Cue smart cooking system.

This from Hestan’s app page:

“We’ve come together with the team at ChefSteps to bring you a new “Sous Vide” mode for Mix & Match with sear-only recipes. Each recipe links directly to the corresponding protein in the ChefSteps’ Joule app for seamless sous vide cooking. Our team of culinary scientists developed these recipes to give you the best sear and the crispiest skin to pair with all of your favorite Cue sauces (plus a few new ones from our friends at ChefSteps)!”

While this may seem like a relatively small piece of news, I think it’s an interesting glimpse at what a more fully evolved connected kitchen could look like.

Before I get to why I think that is so, let’s step back and look at the problems the smart home industry has had with broken and incompatible experiences in multibrand, multi-device smart homes.

The Smart Home Is Often Not So Smart

One of the biggest problems with the smart home is consumer confusion and frustration over the incompatibility of different products and consumer experiences. More devices often mean more apps and more connections to manage, the result of which for the consumer can be a growing number of disjointed experiences that often require more work than less technology-centric approaches.

When I surveyed smart home industry executives at the end of last year, they identified consumer confusion over technologies as the biggest hurdle preventing greater adoption in their industry.

Efforts to create widely adopted frameworks like HomeKit have helped, but these are still vendor-driven offerings that don’t eliminate a consumer’s exposure to incompatible apps and broken user experiences. Universal front-end interfaces like Alexa offer great promise and will no doubt play a big part in more seamless and unified experiences across a multi-vendor smart home environment, but today’s voice integrations are often shallow and usually don’t enable inter-product integration experiences.

Which brings us to the kitchen. While the connected kitchen is embryonic compared to the broader smart home, 2017 has seen strong movement among appliance makers, housewares companies and technology vendors who see an opportunity to make their products more connected. Of course, the danger here is the same as with the smart home, where consumers have a bunch of non-interoperable devices and apps and give up because trying to make it all work is just too much work.

In my kitchen, I have a variety of connected food appliances, none of which work together. This includes three sous vide appliances, a connected grill, a beer brewer, and coffee maker. All connected, but none to each other. And while I may not have much need for my coffee maker and my sous vide machine to communicate now (or ever?),  I can see an obvious reason for my sous vide app and my grill app to work together. Taking it a step further, it makes sense for my shopping app, food storage app (smart fridge), oven, countertop cooking apps (sous vide, etc.) to work together to hand off between stages.

But it goes beyond connecting the various cooking steps.  Take health and nutrition, where there are companies like Bosch who are working on food scanners to let us know instantly the nutritional makeup of food in our kitchen There would be tremendous value in allowing that info to instantly be shared with any of my cooking devices, my fitness wearable, and my fitness apps.  I also believe Apple’s HealthKit will someday incorporate info in realtime about the caloric and nutrient makeup of your food intake; that info is not nearly as valuable if it is not useable with a connected kitchen.

So you can see where I’m going. The ability to connect devices, even at the app level, will ultimately reduce consumer frustration and likely result in faster adoption of these products. Longer term, there is great promise in better integration of appliances, and only through greater integration will we realize the promise of a connected kitchen.

Oh yeah, About That News

Still interested in the specifics of the announcement? I caught up with Hestan’s product software lead Jordan Meyer, who told me the three components of the latest version of their app:

The availability of new sous vide recipes. These recipes will walk you visually through cooking sous vide and will work with any sous vide circulator.

The ChefSteps integration. This is where the sous video recipes go next-level. Jordan said that Hestan recognized their smart pan and induction heating system would not cook a 2″ steak as well as a sous vide circulator, so they decided to work with the ChefSteps (he tells me the Hestan folks are fans of the Joule). Where the Hestan does excel, such as sauces and finishing a steak, the user can then use the Cue.

Lastly, Hestan also took some of ChefSteps recipes and added their step-by-step cooking guidance within the app.

Bottom line, this type of device and app integration makes these appliances more usable. If you are a cooking enthusiast who embraces modern tools as a way to put food on the table, eventually you’ll want to ensure your tools work together without suffering from app fatigue or a lack of interoperability.

Today Hestan and ChefSteps showed us what such a connected kitchen might look like.

Company Which First Made Sous Vide Affordable Reinvents Flagship Product With Wi-Fi & Alexa

Long before there were low-cost sous vide immersion circulators from companies like Anova, ChefSteps and Nomiku, there was the SousVide Supreme.

The SousVide Supreme, first available in 2009, was arguably the first consumer-priced sous vide appliance on the market.  And unlike today’s popular sous vide immersion circulators that are essentially long cylinders that combine with a pot full of water to create a sous vide water bath, the original SousVide Supreme “water oven” is a fully contained sous vide machine not unlike the expensive commercial water ovens first used by professional chefs

It’s easy to forget how instrumental this product was in its early days of sous vide, but consider what Kenji Lopez-Alt wrote after attending an early demonstration of the Sous Vide Supreme by Heston Blumenthal back in 2009:

“I’ll be getting one of these puppies in my kitchen some time in the next couple weeks, and I plan on putting it through some serious paces, so stay tuned to find out what it can do. If the Showtime Rotisserie taught us anything, it’s that kitchen appliances come and go. The difference here is that the Sous-Vide Supreme is more than just another well-marketed appliance. If it really does what it claims to do, it offers home cooks something that has never been offered before: the opportunity to cook their food in exactly the same way that every three-Michelin starred restaurant cooks. Not just a pale imitation of how they cook, but exactly how they cook.”

And while since the SousVide Supreme has seen companies like Anova since steal much of their early sous vide thunder, the company is hoping to steal some back with a complete revamp of their water oven. The company’s new product, the SousVide Supreme Touch+, launched this past week on Kickstarter and surpassed its funding target of $250 thousand in just four days.

So what features does the Sous Vide Supreme Touch+ have that earlier generations of the product does not?

Quite a few:

Touch screen.The old SousVide Supreme control screen, which had buttons similar to those of an Instant Pot or Crockpot, will give way to a new touch screen on the front of the Touch+ (though the video of the touch screen makes it seem the screen requires pressure similar to that of the old buttons)

Wi-Fi

This is the first Sous Vide Supreme model with Wi-Fi, which allows for remote cook enablement, alerts and app based control.

Speaking of app…

App

With Wi-Fi on board, the SousVide Supreme finally enters the app-control age. The app includes the usual remote on-off control features, but what is most intriguing is the new app will include the ability to program recipes.

Clear lid

This is the first Sous Vide Supreme model with a clear lid. A fairly obvious improvement, but a welcome one since who doesn’t want to see what they’re cooking?

Alexa

Finally, the new SousVide Supreme Touch+ will have Alexa. While voice control almost seems like a requirement for those of us who buy connected kitchen products, the company could have easily just added Wi-Fi and app control and called it a day. Kudos to the creators for future proofing their newest version with Alexa compatibility.

Overall, this new generation of the SousVide Supreme looks to be a major step forward for a company founded by Drs. Patrick and Mary Dan Eades, a married couple that first cobbled together their own DIY sous vide bath after tasting a room service pork chop that was cooked sous vide. The new machine, which is available for $349 on Kickstarter (early bird pricing of $249 and $299 have already sold out) will be available to backers in March of next year and will retail for $599.

If you want to hear about the future of precision cooking and the connected kitchen, make sure to come to the Smart Kitchen Summit. Just use the discount code SPOON to get 25% off of tickets.

Amanda Gold Wants Smart Kitchen Companies To Think About The Consumer First

Amanda Gold spends a lot of time thinking about ways companies are succeeding – and failing – when it comes to delivering new technology in the kitchen. Gold Culinary, her Bay Area based consulting firm, works with food tech and food manufacturing companies, restaurants and other culinary businesses to more effectively bridge the gap between corporate, tech-minded companies and a consumer base that is passionate about food.

Amanda’s first experience with the divide between food technology and consumer understanding began in an interview about a seemingly crazy new device for the kitchen. “During the interview, the co-founder started telling me all about the product and spent about 15 minutes talking about the cool technology inside it – there were cameras built into the top and sides, weight sensors across it – but I didn’t understand where the value add was,” says Amanda on the conversation. “Yes, this is all great, but how does that make a better piece of salmon?”

This question sparked the realization for Amanda that she was in a unique position to help technology companies better communicate their products and solutions, and their value to consumers in the kitchen. As a 12-year veteran of the food section for the San Francisco Chronicle (with her last two years focused on food tech) Amanda knows the food and restaurant industry. A trained chef, Amanda’s practical experience in the kitchen lends a hand in her ability to see emerging food technology from both the business and consumer perspective. “We’re helping companies in the industry tailor their product or content so that it makes sense from an everyday standpoint, not just as a once-in-a-while cool machine,” says Amanda. At Gold Culinary, Amanda offers strategy, recipe and content development, product testing, and training for food industry giants like Hidden Valley and Soy Vay.

Through her work, Amanda has seen a common thread in addressing the reality of connected living from the food industry’s perspective. “There’s still a disconnect between what’s cool versus expensive and what’s helpful versus realistic,” she says. “Though there are certainly plenty of companies that are doing it right, it’s important to recognize that most people might ultimately choose just one or two smart devices, so it’s essential that what they do choose makes life easier and more streamlined. Ideally, it will also get them back in the kitchen on a more regular basis, especially if the process, once they get there, is simplified.”

Outside of Gold Culinary, Amanda’s pursuits include working as the executive producer for Food Network chef and host Tyler Florence’s Wolf it Down podcast. Although Wolf it Down is not strictly a food tech podcast, it does focus on every aspect of the kitchen and what’s current – including discussion around the smart kitchen. A recent episode, for example, featured an interview with food tech innovators Hestan Cue and Chefsteps on the future of technology in the kitchen.

Amanda and Gold Culinary’s mission is an important one to the smart kitchen space. As technology grows and more consumers seek out new gadgets to simplify life in the kitchen, so does the need for companies to better align their messaging with consumer product knowledge and understanding. Amanda sees herself as the mediator between the two parties, simplifying and streamlining consumer understanding.

“I love the communities that are being built around specific devices and their content. I think in many ways that’s a bonus that nobody would have predicted. I am at the core simply a content creator who is interested in helping companies tell their story, both through the recipes and food-related content they provide and in the way they market themselves,” explains Amanda on her work with Gold Culinary. “There are many ways to tell a story and that story needs to be constantly changing in the smart kitchen space. Now, more than ever, that’s incredibly important to understand.”

Don’t miss Amanda Gold of Gold Culinary at the 2017 Smart Kitchen Summit. Check out the full list of speakers and to register for the Summit, use code GOLD to get 25% off ticket prices.

The Smart Kitchen Summit is the first event to tackle the future of food, cooking and the kitchen with leaders across food, tech, commerce, design, delivery and appliances. This series will highlight panelists and partners for the 2017 event, being held on October 10-11 at Benaroya Hall in Seattle.

The Tasty One Top And The Rise Of Content Powered Cooking

Back in 2008, Techcrunch founder Michael Arrington wrote a manifesto in which he announced plans to build a low-cost tablet computing device.

While the idea of a technology blog beating computing giants like Apple and Microsoft to market with a tablet seemed preposterous at the time, Arrington continued to pursue his crazy dream. Before long a team had been assembled, prototypes built, and eventually the Crunchpad got pretty darn close to becoming a reality before everything fell apart and instead we got something called the JooJoo.

The Crunchpad

The story of the Crunchpad seemed so improbable in part because of the difficulty of Arrington’s day job. When I went to work for one of Techcrunch’s biggest competitors (Gigaom) during this time, it made me even more fascinated with the story since I saw first hand just how hard it is to run a company tracking the fast-moving world of technology. The idea of actually building the technology in addition to writing about it seemed insane.

I also think part of what made the idea of the team behind a tech blog creating a piece of computing equipment so hard for me and others to wrap our minds around is most of us still view people – and companies – through a Richard Scarry lens on the world. In other words, content companies make content, hardware makers make hardware; food companies make food and so on. Sure, there are weird conglomerate mashups like when GE owned NBC, but often these types of weird combos were the result of merger and acquisition sprees in the 80s.

But if there’s anything we’ve learned from watching companies like Amazon or Google, the old rules don’t seem to apply anymore.  These companies have taught us that once you build a competency in one thing – whether e-commerce or transportation – that strength can often be leveraged to build a competency in an adjacent (or often non-adjacent) space.

Amazon started with books, eventually moved into web services, then to hardware, and now they’re on to grocery stores. Google started with search, moved onto mobile, then IoT and now all sorts of crazy ideas whether its VR, healthcare or balloon-based broadband.

And so while I was surprised when I learned last week Buzzfeed had launched its hardware device called the Tasty One Top, I also instantly knew this made sense at some level. We are, after all, living in the “throw the rules out” era of Amazon. And yes, the story of Crunchpad showed us that that occasionally a content company can break the Richard Scarry mold.

People – and companies – don’t live in a Richard Scarry world anymore.

But I also realized what I was witnessing with the Tasty One Top made sense because it was indicative of a trend I’ve been thinking about for some time, an idea that in the future cooking companies need to become content and community companies.  I’d witnessed it with the acquisition of Yummly by Whirlpool, and before that, I saw that ChefSteps had been building a large community around its content which it then leveraged into willing customer base for its cooking device called the Joule.

As I wrote when Whirlpool acquired Yummly, the deal “gives Whirlpool a massive infusion of cooking content and community. As newer companies in the connected kitchen like ChefSteps have shown, having strong recipe content and an associated community can create fertile soil upon which to launch new hardware products. With Yummly, Whirlpool now has a built-in community to tap into as it expands is smart kitchen product lineup in the coming years.”

I realized this is the same principle Buzzfeed was capitalizing on, the idea that they could tap into a large community built around compelling content to find a friendly and willing audience into which to tap.

But I also knew it was more than that. What the Tasty One Top further validated for me was the idea of content-powered cooking, where cooking content becomes more than just a dry recipe on a page or a simple YouTube video which we watch to learn a new skill. The idea of content powered cooking is central to guided cooking, something I first started writing about after I first saw the Hestan Cue. In short, guided cooking is where the cooking content not only acts as a helpful set of instructions for the cook but works with an app and sensor-powered appliance to become the guidance system for the entire cooking experience.

When I talked to Buzzfeed Labs’ Ben Kaufman last week about the One Top, he told me that they wanted to turn their Tasty cooking videos into a utility.  To do so, they went back and did the arduous work of breaking down each video into single steps, time-stamping and logging each, and then building an app that would work with the One Top itself.

The result is a content-powered cooking experience, where what began as quick viral cooking videos ultimately become part of the cooking system and experience itself.

Together, the idea of a large community built around content coupled with a cooking product and associated experience powered by the product makes lots of sense. In many ways it’s indicative of what companies like ChefSteps and Hestan Smart Cooking were already building, only coupled with the world’s largest cooking video site in Tasty.

Kaufman told me last week that this is the only cooking appliance Buzzfeed plans on making, in large part because they built the Tasty One Top as a Swiss army knife type of sorts that can work with nearly any type of recipe. But he also said they had more products ideas in mind in which they can build around the “utility” they’ve created in the Tasty cooking videos and app.

I can hardly wait to see what type of Richard Scarry busting concept they dream up next.

Want to hear about the future of connected cooking? Make sure to not to miss the Smart Kitchen Summit. Just use the discount code SPOON to get 25% off of tickets.