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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

connected appliances

The Kitchen 2030: How Food & Cooking Will Change in the Future (Video)

If you’ve been following The Spoon since the early days of 2015, you might remember that our flagship event that started it all was the Smart Kitchen Summit. Dedicated to the quiet revolution that was happening in the consumer kitchen, SKS became the event to examine the tech disruption upending business models and changing the way we source, cook and eat our food forever.

So it was fitting that our opening panel at the first CES Food Tech Conference was “The Kitchen 2030: How Food & Cooking Will Change in the Future,” featuring some of the leading companies in the kitchen and appliance industries. The panel discussion was hosted by Michael Wolf, CEO and founder of The Spoon and included Khalid Aboujassoum, Founder & CEO of Else Labs, Dochul Choi, Senior Vice President at Samsung, Robin Liss, CEO at Suvie and Kai Schaeffner, executive at Vorwerk (Thermomix).

The panel talked about where and how cooking, storing and even shopping for foods has shifted in the last several years; with more transparency and information about the foods we eat, the digitization of the recipe, guided cooking features and a whole new wave of kitchen appliances that may change the entire layout and function of the consumer kitchen.

“The Kitchen 2030” panel can be viewed in its entirety below — leave a comment with your predictions for the next decade of innovation in the connected kitchen.

June’s Third-Gen Oven Goes on Pre-Sale with New Heat Controls and Premium Memberships

June announced today the third generation of its eponymous countertop smart oven. The latest version of the June Oven features more control over the heating elements, new cook modes, enhanced food detection and membership options.

One of the biggest changes June has made to its oven is that each of the six heating elements can now be controlled individually. This improves upon the second-gen version, where heat elements were controlled in three groups. The new individual controls allow for new types of automated cook programs like a virtual rotisserie. Instead of putting something like a whole chicken on a spit and rotating it, the heating elements alternate around the chicken. These more precise heating controls, in conjunction with an in-oven camera, also allow for zone cooking through focused heating elements.

Additional hardware improvements also include guard rails on the top heating elements and new convection fan motors that reduce vibration and sound. There’s also a new chipset to improve connectivity.

On the software side, June has added new cook programs like the aforementioned virtual rotisserie as well as a stone fired pizza setting (there’s an optional pizza and grill kit that can be purchased). The company now bills the device as a 12-in-1 appliance (up from a 7-in-1).

June is also adding membership options in 2021. The press release didn’t offer much detail, but various levels will include features like additional remote controls, exclusive recipes, live videos and more.

The new Junes are available for pre-sale today and will come in three packages that will begin shipping in late November:

  • June Smart Oven Bundle
    Price: $599
    Accessories: Food Thermometer, Nonstick Pan, Stainless Steel Crumb Tray, Wire ShelfOne Year Warranty
  • June Smart Oven Plus Bundle
    Price: $799
    Accessories: Food Thermometer, Nonstick Pan, Roasting Rack, Stainless Steel Crumb Tray, WireShelfTwo Years Warranty and One Year June App Premium Membership
  • June Smart Oven Premium Bundle
    Price: $999
    Accessories: Pizza and Grill Kit (​Enameled Cast Iron Grill/Griddle​ with Pizza Peel),​ Three AirBaskets, Stainless Steel Pro Food Thermometer, Silicone Food Thermometer, Two Nonstick Pans,Two Roasting Racks, Stainless Steel Crumb Tray, Wire Shelf
    Two Years Warranty and ​One Year June App Premium Membership

As I’ve written before, I’m a big fan of my June Oven and use it every day. Having said that, June is not the only smart oven player on the scene, and I’m intrigued by Anova’s countertop combi-oven that features steam cooking and costs $599.

Regardless, advances like the third-gen June continue to make cooking easier for non-cooks like myself.

The Food Tech Show: The People Are Growing Yeast and Plants at Home Episode

It’s a very specific cultural moment when a Twitter thread about deriving yeast at home from the skin of fruits goes viral, but here we are.

The Spoon editorial team got together this week to discuss said Twitter thread from a Ginkgo yeast geneticist Sudeep Agarwala. We also chatted about a few other stories, including:

As always, you can find the Food Tech Show in Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts.

You can also download this episode to your device or just click play below.

If you’d like to join the Spoon editorial team next week when they record the podcast, our next live podcast recording on Crowdcast is next Tuesday at 10 AM PST. You can sign up here.

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Pyrex Parent Company and Instant Pot to Merge

Corelle Brands announced Monday that it plans to merge with Instant Brands, the decade-old startup best known for turning the Instant Pot into a consumer favorite in the world of cookware. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed, although the Wall Street Journal estimates it could be worth $2 billion.

That’s not too surprising, given the popularity of the Instant Pot, a hybrid product that acts as a slow cooker and a pressure cooker in one device. It regularly tops holiday shopping sales lists, and since launching the original product in 2010, the company has released multiple other products and amassed an online fanbase with a jaw-dropping level of enthusiasm for the company’s wares.

As we wrote last year, when including the company in our FoodTech 25 list: The Instant Pot is not the highest-tech gadget around, but its affordability, versatility, and speed have made this new take on the pressure cooker a countertop cooking phenomenon.

Besides making dishes that don’t break when you throw them, Corelle also owns ktichenware brand Pyrex, food-storage product maker Snapware, and Japanese knife manufacturer OLFA, among others. Cornell Capital bought Corelle back in 2017 for an undisclosed sum; once the deal with Instant Pot is finalized, both companies will be owned by Cornell Capital.

Instant Brands will keep its Ottawa, Canada headquarters. Meanwhile, Robert Wang, who invented the Instant Pot with $350,000 of his own money, will become the CIO of the combined business.

The deal will give Instant Pot access to new markets, particularly on the international front. From Corelle’s perspective, it’s a chance to refurbish a century-old brand and pair it with an Internet age startup that’s, according to Corelle CEO Ken Wilkes, “fundamentally changing how consumers think about cooking.” Indeed, the almost 2 million users in Instant Pot’s public Facebook group are constantly slinging new recipes at one another, along with cooking tips and problem-solving advice. I’m not so sure a Pyrex Facebook group will pop up anytime soon, but association with that kind of internet-centric kitchen activity will no doubt get Corelle’s family tree a more solid place in today’s connected kitchen.

Smart Kitchen Appliances: What If “Smart” Means Superior Instead Of Connected?

One of the core discussions around the smart kitchen at SKS over the past three years has been the function and usability of smart devices in the kitchen. What devices will actually help us cook better food more easily and what are just silly attempts at connectivity for connectivity’s sake?

Breville has a different take on what makes an appliance smart, and it goes well beyond the ability to connect to its devices via a smart app. The new Breville Smart Oven Air has unique technology that allows for incredibly precise temperature control and can actually change how the heat is distributed. In other words, depending on the requirements of the specific dish you’re cooking, you can make the oven hotter at the front, top, bottom, or back of the chamber.

Allen Weiner of The Spoon sat down with Scott Brady, General Manager of Global Marketing at Breville at the 2017 Smart Kitchen Summit to talk about how Breville’s smart oven makes life easier in the kitchen. According to Brady, “this precise heat distribution lets you complete a lot of simple cooking tasks a lot better.”

For example, if you’re baking a cake, you’ll want the heat focused on the bottom of the oven to prevent it from cracking; whereas, for a pizza, you’ll want the heat evenly distributed throughout. Both are possibilities with the Breville oven, so that you can get the perfect finish no matter what you’re cooking. And the guesswork of how to heat and at what temperature isn’t left up to the user – the oven will course correct and heat to perfection no matter what the dish.

Another trend in kitchen appliances seems to be more all-in-one functionality. The future kitchen will likely not have a slow cooker, an oven, a toaster, a microwave and a sous vide machine but rather one or two devices that does most of that with ease. Breville is trying to pull that off with the Smart Oven Air. For one, it’s bringing in air-frying, which is a much healthier way to prepare your favorite fried foods. Instead of using hot oil, the oven uses fast-moving convection heat to mimic the effect of a traditional deep-fryer. Precise temperature control and regulated air movement mean that this oven can also dehydrate fruit, as well as act as a slow-cooker.

The question is: The Breville oven may be smart, but where does the company stand on connectivity?

For Breville, Brady says, “We don’t want to be connected for connected’s sake.” Instead, their goal is to create products that offer unique, new technology that’s truly helpful—not cumbersome. The future of smart kitchen devices is creative technology that actually makes culinary tasks easier for the user when combined with the convenience of an app, a built-in recipe database and intelligence baked into the device itself.

Brady says Breville is working on products that meet this promise, and you can expect them in 2018.

SideChef Plans To Be The Engine Behind Sharp’s Smart Kitchen Appliances

SideChef began in 2013 with a mission to make cooking easy and fun and to take the guesswork and heavy reading out of recipes. Over time, the recipe app startup has evolved to think of itself as a platform for the connected kitchen and today announced a partnership with electronics and appliance giant Sharp at the Smart Kitchen Summit in Japan.

SideChef will now be the smart software behind Sharp’s connected appliance lineup, powering the mobile app and recipe content to provide guided cooking tools when using the brand’s products. The first internet-enabled appliance from Sharp that will include SideChef’s intelligence is the Sharp SuperSteam+ Convection Oven, an oven that includes a new way to grill, brown and even roast foods using super heated steam.

This announcement builds out SideChef’s vision of being the de facto smart kitchen platform, giving manufacturers software that can bridge the experience and control of different kitchen devices and engage users to go beyond basic connectivity. The Sharp “powered by SideChef” app will include over 5000 machine ready recipes with built-in control for the integrated appliances. The recipes give users a guided cooking experience, automatically setting timers, playing educational videos or suggesting helpful tips based on the ingredients, time of day, season or location.

SideChef’s CEO and founder Kevin Yu says that the company will also help Sharp build an engaged user community and drive relevant content – which is a core strength of SideChef’s business. But Yu hopes to help manufacturers think differently about their IoT strategies and move past connectivity as the end goal.

“We’re not just here to connect things or teach people how to cook. That’s a great goal, but that’s 1.0. We want to help manufacturers see how they can create real engagement and monetization from these platforms,” commented Yu in an interview with The Spoon.

It’s not a surprise that SideChef is thinking beyond the intelligence inside the app to the user experience and engagement. Yu’s background is in game design and development, so he’s often thinking about the gameification of activities in the kitchen.

“The goal is to get the user engaged and willing to spend more money in micro transactions. This is what we think of as modern monetization for the smart kitchen,” he adds.

Sharp is one of a handful of appliance manufacturers looking at third party companies to connect and serve as the content partner behind their connected appliances. Earlier this year smart kitchen startup Drop announced an integration partnership with GE and later Bosch and Innit, a kitchen platform and data company also explored work with Whirlpool in the past.

“Sharp was looking for ways to combine convenience with perfect cooking results from our next generation of smart connected home appliances,” Jim Sanduski, President of Sharp Home Electronics Company of America said in a prepared statement.  “SideChef already offers an award winning mobile culinary platform so partnering with them to integrate cooking operation and control was an easy decision.”

The company plans to roll out its internet-connected line of products starting with the SuperSteam wall oven along with the Sharp app powered by SideChef in fall 2018.

SideChef and Sharp announced their partnership at the first-ever Smart Kitchen Summit in Japan. To see Kevin Yu and others speak at the 2017 Smart Kitchen Summit in Seattle in October, use code SPOON for 25% off tickets.

Tovala Pairs Smart Appliance Innovation With Meal Kit Convenience

Last year at the Smart Kitchen Summit’s Startup Showcase, David Rabie stood next to a black box, one that resembled a microwave of the future or maybe even a toaster oven. Rabie’s company Tovala was making a smart steam oven that was connected to an app and able to perfectly cook certain meals with a catalog of food data and recipes. But the even bigger story behind Tovala wasn’t in the room at all; the company planned to launch an accompanying service designed to take on the meal kit delivery giants.

After a successful Kickstarter, Tovala is shipping to early backers and launching its flagship product offering to the masses this week. Tovala’s a smart steam oven comes with a ready-to-cook meal kit delivery subscription – focusing on drastically cutting down the time from food pickup to cooking to table. Using convection technology, a water chamber circulates heat to more evenly cook food and the oven is capable of steam, convection and broiling.

But the real innovation here is in the meal kit delivery service; unlike traditional meal kit delivery companies, Tovala sends customers their meals completely prepped and ready to stick in the accompanying smart oven. The customer scans the barcode using the connected app and tells the oven what you’re about to put inside, pulling the recipe down from the cloud to ensure your meal is cooked perfectly.

The meals might look a little like frozen dinners or airplane meals, but the results from early writeups like this one from Washington Post food writer Maura Judkis say otherwise.

Judkis writes, “I tried the Thai turkey meatballs with a hoisin glaze, served on cilantro brown rice with roasted asparagus, and was pleasantly surprised: The meatballs, studded with water chestnut, were crunchy and moist, the asparagus wasn’t overcooked, and a sambal sauce finish added a lot of kick. Another meal, miso salmon with roasted broccoli, delivered a velvety-soft piece of perfectly-done salmon”

Rabie spoke at last year’s Smart Kitchen Summit and described the target customer they are trying to lure – the ones who want even more convenience from a Blue Apron-style meal service. Perhaps the ones who stop using the service after just a few months – which according to the company’s S1 filings right before their IPO seemed to be a large majority.

“We’re trying to solve a common pain point – no time, want a delicious, healthy meal without the work. This seems to resonate across demographics.” – David Rabie, CEO, Tovala

Judkis also experimented with non-Tovala food, reporting that in general, the machine did well but (unsurprisingly) the ideal use for it was with the subscription service meals.

The Tovala Oven comes at a premium – $399 – but in theory could replace your wall oven if you subscribed to the meal service. It too has a higher sticker price than competitive meal kit delivery services, but not by much – charging $36 for 3 meals a week meals for a single person and $72 for the same amount for two people.

So far, Tovala is the only company combining a connected appliance with a prepared delivery service and is tapping into something core to our changing world. People have less time than ever but are more aware of the needs to eat healthy. For those willing to pay for convenience, the startup may be the answer.

SKS17: Barilla Wants To Be The Expert On Food Science In The Smart Kitchen

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. 

When you think about technology and innovation, the first thing that comes to mind probably has nothing to do with spaghetti. But for food makers like Barilla, thinking about the future of the food they create means thinking a lot about technology and how it will impact the design, production, cooking and consumption of their products.

They even have a Chief Technology Officer.

Behind the scenes, Barilla has – without much fanfare to date – been engineering partnerships and strategies that will allow them to take a leadership position in the food tech conversation. In the movement to create more visibility around supply chains and how food is produced, Barilla has partnered with Cisco in a “field to fork” pilot project that creates digital footprints for every food item that gets created. With complex supply chain technologies and delivery systems, it’s often hard for the end consumer to know where every element of their meal came from. Barilla aims to change that.

“Great work is going on about adapting new technologies to the foods as we know them. But what if we could imagine foods that are wholesome, natural and delicious that can work synergically with the technologies to come?” commented Victoria Spadaro Grant, Barilla’s CTO and 2017 Smart Kitchen Summit speaker.

Barilla is on the hunt for ways to use their vast technical knowledge in areas like food science, food engineering and industrial processes for foods. Last year, the company debuted a 3D printer for pasta – using the same high-quality ingredients the Italian gastronomy leader is known for – to show how technology will fundamentally shift the way food is made in the future. They also want to examine what partnerships with kitchen appliance makers might look like – and how the food they create might “talk” to the devices that are used to prepare them for consumption.

We asked Spadaro Grant why Barilla considers the smart kitchen an important space. “Barilla would like to become the Italian gastronomic “sparring partner” for appliance inventors. We are inspired by good food that is also sustainable and we want to explore ways that marrying gastronomy and technology can help drive the future of food.”

Don’t miss Victoria Spadaro Grant, CTO of Barilla Group at the 2017 Smart Kitchen Summit. Check out the full list of speakers and to register for the Summit, use code BARILLA to get 25% off ticket prices.

The Smart Kitchen Summit takes place thanks to our sponsors; if you’re interested in sponsorship opportunities, reach out to the SKS team to discuss options. 

Turning Text Messages Into Machine Language For The Smart Home

There’s a new race in the smart home – it’s not about who will control your home but rather how. The introduction of voice assistant devices Amazon Echo and Google Home have definitely changed the conversation and the market for how we interact with the tech inside our homes. But if speaking commands to things in the house to turn them on or off or check their status seems unnatural, you could always text instead.

That’s the premise of Unified Inbox, a small company based Singapore that’s developed soon-to-be-patented software that delivers smart home control via text messenger. It’s easy to see the appeal of texting your home – it’s an easy and common way for humans to communicate with each other and it removes the awkwardness of barking out orders to an inanimate object.

The CEO of Unified Inbox, Toby Ruckert, makes the case to Reuters, saying “Think of it as a universal translator between the languages that machines speak … and us humans.” Though the company is small and privately funded, it has companies like Samsung, Bosch and IBM jumping on board to integrate functionality into their own devices. Using Unified Inbox’s platform, manufacturers can add a text assistant to their product, capitalizing on the ubiquity of smartphones in every home.

The API developed by Unified Inbox is called UnificationEngine or UE and works by taking text inputs to a messenger app and translates the human words into machine language. Described as an “IoT messenging platform,” UE was developed to bridge the language gap between people and the things around them.

Credit: Reuters

Text commands such as “turn off the lights,” “start the coffee machine at 6,” and “preheat the oven to 450” can be typed into over 20 different messenger apps along with Twitter and SMS to control a variety of home devices. From ovens and kettles, the platform can work with many appliances and Unified Inbox is testing more including garage door openers and toasters.

But why have “more than half of the world’s appliance makers” – according to Ruckert – signed up to partner with this small startup? Reuters reports that Ruckert and other tech leaders like Mark Zuckerberg see a huge future in text control – and think that big companies are worried about Amazon’s dominance.

“They’re worried the big tech companies’ one-appliance-controls-all approach will relegate them to commodity players, connecting to Alexa or another dominant platform, or being cast aside if Amazon moves into making its own household appliances.”

Check out the full story on Unified Inbox, their API and how machine learning that continues to change how we talk to our things.

Smart Kitchen | Food Tech Wrap-Up From CES 2017

Is it fair to say we’re all collectively exhausted from CES news? The first few weeks of the year are just a deluge of tech press releases about all the things manufacturers plan to do, make, ship, partner with and promulgate during the rest of the year. And even though CES has yet to carve out a specific floor area for food and kitchen related tech items, we definitely saw an uptick in announcements in this emerging space.

We saw smart kitchen products and integrations from larger companies and startups alike across the connected home, appliances and wearables – here’s the rundown.

Alexa, has the smart kitchen arrived? (And have you seen Google?)

It seems no one is sick of Amazon Echo quite yet and we saw even more manufacturers outside of the traditional smart home adding Alexa integration to their product lines. The biggest announcement came from Whirlpool, who made a splash last year with Amazon Dash integration at the show and this year adds voice functionality to its Wi-Fi connected ovens, fridges and washing machines. Alexa, is my laundry done?

And now, if you own a Ford with the Sync 3 platform, you can ask Alexa to preheat the oven from your car.

LG announced a competitor to the Samsung Family Hub with its own smart fridge (more on that later) – with a gigantic touch screen that looks like you might need a step stool to reach the top of, the appliance also integrates with Amazon Echo. Alexa, can you reach that icon for me?

Speaking of Samsung – the upped the ante this year with Family Hub 2.0, adding a bunch of new service integrations (GrubHub and Spotify, to name a few) but not much else. And LG jumped in the smart fridge game with giant touchscreen game with new Smart InstaView Model, boasting much of the same features as the Family Hub, including voice integration, cameras to see what’s inside your fridge when you’re away (or too lazy to open the door) and software to help run your house. LG’s model also has grocery ordering but theirs is Amazon-powered.

Google Home, the Echo’s main competitor, was announced in a few integrations. Conversation Actions, their equivalent to Alexa’s Skills, hasn’t shown us much that is kitchen or food related (with the exception of a Dominos pizza ordering action) as of yet, so Alexa is still your main sous chef for the kitchen. For now.

For their part, Whirlpool had a host of announcements around their “Smart Kitchen Suite”, including their first step into guided cooking. Their assisted cooking will guide users through three step recipes that will send instructions to the oven and program it for the cook. They also introduced “scan-to-cook” which will allow the user to scan barcodes to “send the right directions, temperature and cooking time settings straight to the appliance.”

The smart bar gets customized….and sees more competition

PicoBrew showed off its now-shipping Pico unit at CES and announced that it will offer customized PicoPaks, the pods used to make different types of beer with the device. Previously, PicoPaks were premade by the company’s professional brewers, making it more of a do-it-for-me experience. Now, you can create your own beer selecting flavors and ingredients on the platform with some guidance from the pros.

The area of smart beverages is one we’ve kept our eye on for a while, with device makers and beverage companies all vying for a piece of the pie. But The Spoon’s Allen Weiner found an interesting story NOT at CES, writing, “while companies such as Picobrew and Whirlpool’s Vessi were showcasing their high-tech methods for brewing beer at CES, two giants of the beverage industry confirmed a partnership.” Turns out that AB InBev, the world’s largest beer brewer and the makers of Keurig are teaming up to create a home-brewing system designed to deliver homemade beer and cocktails. Will it do for cocktails what the Keurig did for coffee? We’ll see.

Food waste prevention goes mainstream

The prevention of food waste has been an area I’ve been fascinated with for a while – especially as it relates to technology’s potential to really change our bad habits and help us stop bludgeoning our environment with trash. But so far, most of the solutions are niche or designed for commercial use. But -CES saw the introduction of some smart solutions that might actually change things.

First, there’s the Zera Food Recyler from Whirlpool – which is basically a fancy name for a tech-savvy composter that can live in your kitchen and turn food scraps into fertilizer with very little involvement from you. Composting is a cool idea, and the earth-friendly concept of it appeals to this generation of more health-conscious, organic-buying consumers, but is generally not pursued by the vast majority of us. Whirlpool smartly saw this as a way to use technology and create a one-button solution to this. Zera is on Indiegogo now for a little under $1k (fully funded and still taking backers as of this posting) and expected in stores later this year.

Also pretty cool – the GeniCan, a smart device you place on your trash can that scans items as you toss them in the bin and creates a grocery list from which you can reorder. You can also set it up to connect to Amazon Echo and have it automatically reorder items for you (from Amazon, of course). This might not prevent food waste in the traditional way, but it could stop you from ordering too much food and help you be more accurate with the stuff you need. If you scan everything you throw away first.

The robots are here, and they’re going to teach you how to cook

Robots at CES are not a new thing. For years, companies have been using them – sometimes in the form of product announcements, sometimes just as booth eye candy to lure traffic in – to make a splash. This year, the name of the robot game was giving arms and legs to Alexa – and making her dance, apparently.

But one appliance maker decided to create its own smart robotic assistant for the kitchen, bypassing the popular “put Alexa behind everything” trend. Bosch launched its Wi-Fi and Bluetooth-connected appliances last year and this year introduced Mykie (my kitchen elf, shortened) which is basically an Amazon Echo voice device with a small touchscreen that helps you out in the kitchen. Need a recipe? Want to know what’s in the fridge? Want to listen to some music? Mykie’s got you covered. It seems odd that Bosch would want to compete with Amazon in this category, but Mykie does do some cool stuff that the Echo doesn’t, including project images onto a wall via the tiny projector in its rear, allowing you to blow up a recipe video you’re following. Mykie also offers virtual social cooking classes so you can learn to cook with an actual human instructor and the AI assistant. Is it enough to compete with the Echo? Time will tell.

Cooking tech heats up

Drop adds a second appliance manufacturer to its roster – announcing its recipe platform can now control GE Wi-Fi appliances (it announced Bosch integration in September last year.)

Panasonic showed off an entire smart kitchen with technology like a smart wine fridge with different temps for each shelf and a cool display, inductive heating built into countertops and tables to discretely heat and keep food warm and a machine learning / camera combo that lets appliances react to and adjust cooking based on the recipe you’re trying to follow.

The Smart Kitchen Show hits the CES floor

The Spoon’s Mike Wolf hit the CES floor in search of interesting conversations on food tech and smart kitchen – check out The Smart Kitchen Show’s newest podcasts.

Hear from the CEO of nutrition and food delivery startup Habit about their offerings and how they’re building the next generation of personalized nutrition.

Mike caught up with AppKettle’s founder Robert Hill to talk US shipping dates and what’s behind the company’s initial delay to bring the product to market.

Mike and I catch up on all that we saw at CES in our CES smart kitchen wrap-up.

Over the next few weeks we’ll continue to analyze what we saw in smart kitchen and future of food at CES. Stay tuned! If you want to get all our analysis in your inbox, make sure to subscribe to our weekly newsletter.

Sears Gets Serious About The Smart Home (But Will It Enter The Smart Kitchen?)

Sears debuted a line of private labeled smart home products last week, including a water heater retrofit module and a connected riding mower.

Our Take: Like many brick and mortar retailers, Sears is struggling in the age of Amazon and Costco. Also like many others, the iconic retailer is beginning to turn to connected devices as one way to possibly reinvent itself.

Sears has always derived a significant amount of its business from its own private label brands such as Kenmore and Craftsman, and given the retailer’s historically strong market share in its core markets (like tools) it’s worth noting the move. While the company has yet to announce any connected kitchen appliances, we think doing so would be an interesting move since Kenmore appliances appeal to middle and modest income households and could help mainstream the connected white goods category.

Bottom line, Sears may also want to rethink attention to its traditional sales floor plans and formats in its effort to sell connected devices. Its customers are generally middle to late stage adopters, so it would benefit them to show product benefits through in-store experiential retail formats. I’ve written a lot about how it often takes a new approach to selling products in the era of IoT, one that focuses on experiential retail and possibly even entirely new models like that from B8ta.  While Sears may have a hard time remaking themselves overnight, they could at the very least begin to experiment with lab-style offshoots like B8ta or Target’s Open House in San Francisco.

Samsung Begins To Ship The Family Hub Refrigerator

The Gist: Samsung had the most high profile of the smart kitchen product debuts at CES this year with the Family Hub refrigerator, an Internet-connected fridge with a massive 21-inch screen and a hefty six thousand dollar price tag.  This week Samsung announced commercial availability of the product.

Our Take: Of all the categories in the connected kitchen, the connected refrigerator is most likely to receive a healthy dose of skepticism. That’s because companies like Samsung, LG and Whirlpool have been trying to fuse the Internet with the fridge since the early 2000s, and the result has been a string of fairly clunky products with little staying power and even less tangible consumer benefits. However, in recent years the arrival of low-cost cameras and internal sensors have intrigued consumers and, as a result, Samsung and others have decided to give the connected fridge another go.

While we felt the LG smart fridge was perhaps the most interesting of this year’s CES crop due to intriguing features like the ability to see what’s inside by knocking on the front of the fridge, the Samsung Family Hub also was interesting for different reasons. For one, the massive Tizen-powered touch screen on the front offers a lot of screen real estate for tailored apps. The inventory manager app also appears interesting, giving consumers some new ways to do fairly easy (but not perfect) inventory tracking using photo-tagging (as demoed here in the initial CNET review).

Bottom line, the challenge for Samsung will be adding enough value to make the fridge’s big price tag seem worth it, while also managing to keep the device relevant and up to date from a technology perspective in a category where consumers expect 10 or 15-year life spans from their fridges.