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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

ColdSnap

Watch The ColdSnap Countertop Ice Cream Appliance In Action at CES 2024

It goes without saying that everyone likes ice cream, and that was never more apparent than at last night’s CES Unveiled press event.

The first thing I saw when I walked into the crowded room was a huge crowd of journalists lining up to get a serving of ice cream (another truism is journalists like free food). The ColdSnap machines were cranking away as ColdSnap workers – including ColdSnap CEO Matthew Fonte – handed over cups to attendees.

Last fall, ColdSnap expanded its production facility in the Boston suburb of Billerica, adding 20,000 square feet with an additional 24,000 square feet of space leased across the street. Now, as they look to scale, they’ve added automation equipment and project they will be able to manufacture 30 million pods per year.

Part of what makes ColdSnap intriguing is its ability to make instant ice cream from room temperature, shelf-stable liquid. As Fonte told me last year, a product like this could be potentially transformative for markets where cold chain storage is not widely available or cost-prohibitive.

“China’s ice cream market is as large as the United States, but they have 25% the amount of refrigeration per capita that we do here in the States,” Fonte said. “If you could circumvent the cold supply chain and give them shelf-stable pods, they can freeze their ice cream on demand, they can reach the masses there and grow that market four times.”

You can a peek of the ColdSnap in action below.

Three Years After CES Debut, ColdSnap Readies Launch of Countertop Ice Cream Making Appliance

Nearly three years after it stole the show at CES 2021 with its countertop ice cream machine, ColdSnap has readied itself for a commercial rollout of its system this fall.

In a recent blog post, the company shared a glimpse of the product’s development over the past few years, detailing its pod production capacity expansion, the development of its production partner ecosystem, and the continuing refinement of the ColdSnap machine itself.

According to the company, they’ve expanded their production facility in the Boston suburb of Billerica, adding 20,000 square feet with an additional 24,000 square feet of space leased across the street. After producing their initial batches of liquid in small batches in their test kitchen, the enlarged factory that is part of the company’s headquarters will support 300-gallon batches of their liquid mix that will fill the ColdSnap aluminum cans (think energy drink-size) on-site.

In addition to the company’s ice cream and frozen treat mix production within its own factory, they are working with co-manufacturers to ramp up production. According to ColdSnap, initial tests of its mix showed the product was too thick to flow through the pipes at third-party manufacturers because the liquid was different from commercial ice cream mixes commonly made at manufacturing facilities. The company’s food science team reformulated the mix for production in external factories and for large-scale production in-house.

Another big step towards its commercial launch was the addition of packaging automation. It’s hard to believe, but until now, the company has hand-packaged all of the pods to support the roughly one hundred trial machines in the field. Now, as they look to scale, they’ve added automation equipment and project they will be able to manufacture 30 million pods per year.

ColdSnap also detailed improvements to the countertop machine, including adding a QR code reader that will tell the machine which type of drink it is making and what the company describes as a ‘more powerful’ refrigeration machine.

Part of what makes ColdSnap intriguing is its ability to make instant ice cream from room temperature, shelf-stable liquid. As company CEO Matthew Fonte told me last year, a product like this could be potentially transformative for markets where cold chain storage is not widely available or cost-prohibitive.

“China’s ice cream market is as large as the United States, but they have 25% the amount of refrigeration per capita that we do here in the States,” Fonte said. “If you could circumvent the cold supply chain and give them shelf-stable pods, they can freeze their ice cream on demand, they can reach the masses there and grow that market four times.”

I agree that this type of machine could be really interesting in markets without substantial cold chain storage, my guess is clones would pop up pretty quickly in markets like China once the concept is proven out.

ColdSnap’s initial target is the office and business markets, but in the long term, Fonte says the company will enter the consumer kitchen. He said he’s open to partners for any expansion into the home market, and I’m sure he’ll be able to find him if he and ColdSnap can prove the technology works and there’s demand for it in the commercial space.

The Story of ColdSnap, the Make Anything Ice Cream and Frozen Beverage Appliance

If there was a gadget that won the hearts of the tech press at CES 2021, it was the ColdSnap.

The countertop appliance, which makes ice cream, margaritas, cold coffee drinks, and more in less than two minutes, had many declaring it the best of show. CNN featured it, Seth Myers talked about it, and CES awarded the ColdSnap with an innovation award. It was a cold treat-making miracle!

Over a year after ColdSnap’s time in the national spotlight, I caught up with company founder and CEO Matthew Fonte to hear the story behind his appliance and to get an update on how things are tracking.

According to Fonte, the idea for the ColdSnap came from his daughter. Every night while reading to his kids before bedtime, he’d ask them to come up with an idea for a new invention. One night in 2018, his daughter suggested a machine that made single-serve ice cream at the push of a button, and Fonte told her he didn’t think such a machine existed and explained why.

“I said, Well, it’s kind of a pain,” Fonte said. “Sometimes, you have to put the bucket in the freezer for a few hours. You can only make one flavor. That consistency is never repeatable. You have to wait about 40 or 50 minutes for it to freeze. There’s always cleanup associated with the process. It’s a big ordeal.”

As he explained why someone hadn’t yet made an instant ice cream machine, Fonte realized this could be both a lesson and an opportunity.

“I said what else can we do about it? And talking with them, this idea emerged, well, could we use a pod where we put in a machine and flash one ice cream at a time?”

The next day at work, Fonte set about finding out. He asked some coworkers if they thought it would be possible to freeze six ounces of ice cream in a couple of minutes, and they were skeptical. But Fonte knew that there were machines that could freeze a quart and a half in about 40 minutes and thought if the volume of liquid was reduced, it could freeze much quicker.

Fonte put the question to a friend who does computational fluid modeling. After running the numbers, his friend told him he thought it was possible.

“Armed with that knowledge, I said, ‘Okay, let’s give it a try.’ I wasn’t sure how we were going to be able to do it, but I knew it was possible.”

An engineer by training, Fonte got to work 3D printing parts in his garage and building prototypes. He soon realized one of the biggest challenges would be the pod; if he could find a container that enabled quick freezing and was also low-cost, Fonte knew he could make it work.

After trying out all sorts of vessels ranging from soup to soda cans, he eventually settled on the energy drink can.

“What we settled in on was Red Bull aluminum beverage can,” said Fonte. “It’s called a slim can and has a lot of surface area per volume, which enables us to freeze quickly.”

They’re also widely available, which meant they would be affordable, and they’re recyclable.

As Fonte worked on the system, he realized his machine was more than an ice cream-making appliance. He began testing alcohol and coffee drinks, frozen yogurt, smoothies, and more.

He also realized that because the system used a pod with a long shelf life, his product could be potentially transformative for markets where cold chain storage is not widely available or cost-prohibitive.

“China’s ice cream market is as large as the United States, but they have 25% the amount of refrigeration per capita that we do here in the States. If you could circumvent the cold supply chain and give them shelf-stable pods they can freeze their ice cream on demand, they can reach the masses there and grow that market four times.”

Over the next couple of years, Fonte continued to work on the system and started to build a team. The company raised money via a friends and family funding round and filed for patents. When the pandemic hit, a manufacturing plant in the Boston area shut down, and Fonte and his team swooped in.

“Opportunistically, we went and purchased the building,” said Fonte. “And now we have just over 40 employees. We are canning or putting the dairy in our cans, or sterilizing the cans to make them shelf stable. We’re painting the cans, we’re building machines. We do all the old food science here on site.”

Nearly four years after the initial inspiration, Fonte and his team are looking at rolling out about 100 machines to businesses around the Boston area this year and are eyeing a wider rollout in 2023. He’s also started talking with large CPG brands who could possibly license his technology to enable a new way to offer their products to their customers. And while he does see the commercial market (office spaces, restaurants) as his first market, he intends to create a product for the home.

As for his daughter who came up with the idea, I asked Fonte if she would get free ice cream for life or even stock in the new company.

“I think both,” said Fonte.

You can listen to my full conversation with Fonte by clicking play below or by listening to it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

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

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

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

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

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

Moley Robotic Kitchen

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

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

The Moley Robotic Kitchen System at CES 2021

Oliver

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

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

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

Oliver, the smart cooking robot

iWonderCook

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

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

iWONDERCOOK robotic chef does the cooking for you.

Yo-Kai Express Takumi

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

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

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

Day With Yo Kai Final

Samsung Bot Handy

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

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

Julia

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

ColdSnap

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