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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

connected kitchen

Midea Patents AI-Powered Rice Cooker

Sure, it’s not a full-fledged robotic chef with hands and cooking moves modeled after Master Chef winners, but a smart rice cooker system patented by Midea looks like it will use some cutting-edge artificial intelligence technology to train itself to make a pretty good bowl of rice.

As described in the patent titled “Multi-Purpose Smart Rice Cookers,” the system is armed with a food-storage chamber with multiple compartments that can hold different types of rice and other ingredients like fruit, beans or nuts. Each compartment has a gate which can open and transfer food to the cooking chamber below in predetermined amounts. Above the top of the food storage chamber is a camera that identifies food and feeds information to the system’s machine learning feature.

The Machine Learning Model for Midea’s Smart Rice Cooker

Awarded on December 15, Midea’s patent also describes a multi-phased process to build the capabilities of the artificial intelligence over time to power the smart cooking. The first phase, training, would use image-based neural network systems like AlexNet or GoogleNet to train itself to understand the food.

The next phase in building out the AI smarts happens once the system is in the consumer home. Here, Midea’s rice cooker would get in-the-field updates to increase its understanding of food and cooking, but also learn and adapt its understanding of the process based on consumer cooking behavior.

Over time, the system would be able to personalize the food based on a user’s personal preferences and health and nutrition needs, as well as environmental factors such as season of the year or temperature. The system would also be able to understand optimal taste configurations of food based on ingredients.

Finally, the Midea smart rice cooker will connect to the home network, where it could be part of a smart kitchen system that incorporates profiles of different users as well as work in concert with other cooking appliances or home systems.

While patents are often just intellectual property land grabs to horde future potential product concepts and features and keep them from the competition, Midea’s huge market share — particularly with rice cookers (29 percent online and around 43 percent in brick and mortar) — makes it worth wondering if the company plans to roll out a cooker with this tech some time in the future . The company also announced in June it was working with Chinese tech (and AI) giant Baidu to codevelop AI-powered smart appliances, so it’s also conceivable this rice cooker concept shows up as part of a Baidu/Midea lineup of products at some point.

I Cooked With the BonBowl for an Entire Week and Now I’m Attached

I’m simultaneously the best and worst person to write a review of the BonBowl, a newly released personal induction cooker designed to make single-serving meals in about 15 minutes or less. On the one hand, I tend to make a lot of single-serving meals and, like any good Spoon scribe, I’m into kitchen gadgetry. On the other hand, I still tend to do a lot of actual cooking the analogue way and rather enjoy making a colossal mess in order to put a meal together.

Still, I pre-ordered the BonBowl, which arrived a few weeks ago, and decided to spend a week putting it through its paces. 

The device comes in two parts: a cooktop base that plugs into a wall and uses induction heating, and an accompanying bowl from which you can both cook and eat the food. The whole thing currently goes for $149 at the BonBowl website.

Before we get into the food, let’s talk about the setup. That won’t take long, because it’s literally a matter of removing the device from the box and plugging it into a wall. Bonus: I don’t have a ton of counter space in my kitchen. The BonBowl fits nicely into a little corner, where it now lives even when I’m not using it:

As far as what you can cook with it, the BonBowl site offers a range of recipes, including a handful by Trader Joe’s. There’s no app integration (yet), but if you don’t want to drag your computer into the kitchen, a handy card accompanies the device and lists multiple recipes with quick cooking instructions. Think single-serving pasta, mac ‘n’ cheese, or oatmeal.

I picked one of the Trader Joe’s recipes for my inaugural BonBowl meal, a simple tomato soup with gnocchi. The recipe has just four ingredients, and I was also struck by the convenience factor of not having to guess at a single-serving size (which I mess up on a daily basis). The meal took 15 minutes to make.

One huge plus is that the bowl itself is a non-stick dish with thermal insulation, so it heats the food but doesn’t become too hot to handle. Ever yank a glass bowl that’s been in a microwave out with your bare hands? Between the thermal insulation and induction heating of the device, that scenario doesn’t happen with the BonBowl. Cleanup is a matter of washing the bowl and spoon.

I made a couple other recipes from the BonBowl site, but what I really wanted to discover was whether the BonBowl could accommodate my weekly eating habits without my having to change them very much. For instance, every Sunday I make a huge pot of garlic rice and garbanzo beans, which serves as my go-to meal when I don’t have much time. Normally I reheat portions in a skillet, guessing at the serving size. (I don’t like microwaves and have never owned one.) For that week, I simply chucked the food into the BonBowl, set the time for 10 minutes, and went about my day until the machine beeped. 

One small quirk, if you can even call it that, is that a couple times the machine heated the food so well the meal had to cool for quite a while, though that problem was easily solved by adjusting the timer.

Beans, in fact, are an ideal food for the bowl. Garbanzo, black, pinto, the inimitable Heinz baked beans. I tried them all, and in fact the BonBowl is all I use now for heating beans, sauces, and other simple items. I reheated leftover pasta from a takeout order. I made a rice krispie treat that wouldn’t win awards for presentation but tasted great. I even scrambled an egg.

Less successful was my attempt at making a single-serving portion of a chicken recipe that’s been in my family for generations and is therefore about 150 years old, maybe older. The resulting sad little meal (see above) was probably a combination of a very old recipe, my trying to turn a four-serving dish into a one-serving meal, and the fact that the BonBowl is probably not the ideal gadget for highly experimental kitchen projects.

Which is totally fine, because I don’t think the makers of the BonBowl designed the device for complex recipes loaded with ingredients that have to be combined “just so” in order to create an edible meal.

Rather, the BonBowl seems designed as a way to make simple-but-healthy meals at home quickly and with minimal fuss (or cleanup).

But why, you ask, would I not just buy a hotplate for $30? Being able to cook and eat out of the same dish is one reason. Another is that the induction heating and precision cooking sensors properly cook the food, rather than zapping it to death (microwave) or burning it (hotplate). It’s also safer because rather than an entire hot surface, only the tiny button where the bowl sits heats up.

It’s also versatile. I can’t personally attest to using it in a college dorm room, but it seems ideal for that setting. I can attest to having in the past lived in some NYC apartments with dodgy kitchens, where a BonBowl would have saved a lot of money in takeout fees. These days, the BonBowl is not a necessity, but it’s proven itself a valuable addition to my kitchen and my weekly meal planning.

CES 2020: Julia is an All-in-One, Self-Cleaning Guided Cooking Machine

CookingPal debuted Julia, its connected countertop cooking device, at CES yesterday — though to call it simply a cooking device is a bit of an understatement. Julia is akin to a Thermomix, with 10 culinary functions that include weigh, chop, knead, mix, cook and steam. The device also comes with its own guided cooking system.

The brains of Julia is its Smart Kitchen Hub, which is an accompanying tablet with an 8.9 inch screen that offers step-by-step guided video recipes, recipe adjustment based on the number of people eating or preferences, and a built-in camera and computer vision to recognize food and suggest recipes. If you’re missing something, you can order ingredients for delivery straight from the device.

The Smart Kitchen Hub has a touchscreen as well as a large jog dial to control it. If your hands are too greasy or gummy from food prep, the Hub will respond to voice control as well.

Here are the Julia’s full specs:

Features – Smart Kitchen Appliance

  • Size: 440 x 310 x 370 mm, with a stainless steel 3L bowl
  • Scale: accurate to 5g
  • Motor: 10 speeds up to of 5200 RPM
  • Heating unit: cooks up to 130 degrees Celsius/265 degrees Fahrenheit
  • Modes: Chop, mix, blend, knead, weigh, boil, emulsify, steam, grind, grate, whisk and cook
  • Connectivity: Bluetooth 4.2 and Wi-Fi a/b/g/n (2.4GHz, 5GHz)
  • Cleaning and Care: Julia’s bowl is dishwasher safe or can self-clean by adding dish soap and water to the bowl and setting it to mixing mode

The whole point of the Julia is that the device can do most of the work so novice and time-pressed cooks can make actual meals and not just zap food in a microwave. All a user has to do is add ingredients when Julia says to; the machine does the rest. Julia even cleans itself (well, kinda, see specs above).

As mentioned earlier, Julia is similar to the Thermomix, which is wildly popular outside of the U.S. Thermomix released its latest iteration, the TM6, which also features guided cooking and a forthcoming collaboration with Drop for appliance control and grocery ordering. And while the TM6 is $1,500, the Julia, which CookingPal says will ship in Q3 of this year, will retail for less than $1,000.

CookingPal also said in its press announcement that it will be announcing more hardware in the coming months that work with its Smart Hub Platform, including a smart oven and smart pressure cooker.

This post has been updated to more accurately reflect the relationship between Thermomix and Drop.

Newsletter: My Smart Thanksgiving was Kinda Dumb, Ghost Kitchens and 3D Printed Vitamin Gummies

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A couple months back, The Spoon got in a little tiff with WIRED writer (and all around great guy) Joe Ray when he bylined an article that said the smart kitchen is very stupid.

As we’re a publication that’s all about the convergence of food and technology, this, naturally, got our goat. But here’s the thing, though. Ray wasn’t totally wrong. I experienced this firsthand over Thanksgiving when I tried my hand at connected holiday cooking.

Thanksgiving is typically the domain of my wife. But with an abundance of guests and a shortage of ovens, I decided to try my (slow) hand at smoking a turkey.

Armed with a Traeger pellet grill equipped with WiFire tech, and a block of Meater connected thermometers, I figured contributing to the holiday feast would be a snap.

I was wrong. I wrote about the whole experience, but the TL;DR version is this: Between getting the thermometers to actually connect (they didn’t) and a less-than-stellar app experience, my smart holiday cookout actually had to rely on the brains in my head and not in any device.

Thankfully, the turkey wound up tasting great, even if it did take a little more time and manual work than I was expecting. It tasted so good, in fact, that smoking another one next year is probably not a dumb idea (I just won’t be using any smart appliances).

Ghost Kitchens Are Very Much Alive
Everyone, it seems, is looking to get in on some of that sweet ghost kitchen action. Travis Kalanick, DoorDash, Chick-fil-A and now grocery retailer Kroger are making use of facilities that specialize in fulfilling meals for delivery (no dining in).

Yesterday, The Spoon’s Jenn Marson wrote about Kroger hooking up with the (fantastically named) meal delivery service ClusterTruck to launch multiple ghost kitchens. As Jenn wrote:

While the partnership is a high-profile one for a regional company like ClusterTruck, which is available mostly in the Midwest at this point, it’s also a smart move for Kroger. The concept of operating virtual restaurants out of ghost kitchens appeals nowadays to not just restaurants but also lifestyle brands, diet concepts, and celebrity chefs. Grocery stores were bound to follow at some point.

The line between grocery store and restaurant is already blurring, with many retailers offering fully prepared hot meals ready to go. So it makes sense that as off-premises dining continues to grow that we’ll see more retailers jump into the ghost kitchen delivery game. Why not order a hot dinner for tonight and get your groceries for the week dropped off on your doorstep at the same time?

Photo: Nourished

A 3D Printed Vitamin Gummy
Everyone eats their kids’ gummy vitamins, right? Or is that just me?

Well, my days of stealing vitamins may be soon be a thing of the past, if Nourished makes it to these shores. As my colleague, Catherine Lamb wrote about today, Nourished makes 3D printed gummies layered with vitamins personalized for your needs.

The vitamins won’t be cheap ($51 for a month’s supply), but Nourished says its 3D printed approached improves the pills’ efficacy. As Catherine writes:

Typically, active ingredients that show up in vitamins — like ashwagandha and Vitamin A — interfere with each other when combined into the same capsule. However, by printing these ingredients on top of each other, Nourished can fuse them into the same bite-sized supplement.

Nourished is only available in the U.K. right now, but the company is heading for the U.S. next year. Just don’t tell my son.

Nourished is actually part of a wave of startups bringing more personalization to the food we eat. The Spoon is giving a nod to that space with Customize, a new one-day summit in NYC in February that will bring together leading innovators across the restaurant, retail, grocery, food and consumer industries to explore how personalization is changing these markets. Get your (personal) ticket today!

The Three Stages of Thanksgiving Connected Cooking Grief

In retrospect, I was too cocky this Thanksgiving. Backed by cooking technology and cloud connected apps, I thought making my first turkey would be a breeze. I’d turn a dial, tap a button on my phone and voila! A perfectly cooked turkey would emerge.

Like some folktale about technology versus tradition, I was wrong. While the turkey did come out beautifully, it had almost nothing to do with any connections built into my appliances. In fact, the technology I used almost created more stress than relief.

Thanksgiving is already a stressful holiday. You want your guests to eat on time and enjoy delicious food and, especially with a turkey, you want to make sure no one gets sick. That is partly why I armed myself with so much technology when smoking my first turkey. I had the Traeger Pro 575 WiFire wood pellet grill and a Meater block of WiFi enabled meat thermometers.

Stage 1: Excitement

My initial plan was to use the Traeger app to monitor and control the cooking and the Meater thermometer to ensure that the bird was cooked thoroughly. Easy peasy.

In my previous tests with the Traeger, I noticed that while the accompanying app was useful for remote monitoring and control of the grill, the guided cooking features were a little too automated and on the rails. There wasn’t a place to pause the cook program, so it would just barrel through to the next step (like raising the temperature) even if you weren’t ready. I needed a little more flexibility with a 14-pound bird on a cold day.

For extra accuracy, my plan was to use the Meater thermometers not only to monitor the internal temperature of the bird, but to also help ensure accuracy of the ambient temperature inside the cooking cavity. This backup would just help make sure the grill was cooking at the right temperature.

I’ve used Meater before and found it to be a great experience. The app is intuitive, and while the probe itself is a little thick, it’s easy to set up and use. Or at least it was before. Almost immediately I had issues connecting my Meater app to a thermometer, and even when I managed to do so, that connection was lost as soon as I placed it in the grill and shut the door. After a half hour of re-starting and re-connecting, I just abandoned the Meaters altogether.

Stage 2: Mild Panic

Suddenly, I was left to my own devices and not the ones I thought were going to save me.

Again, this is the first time I’m making a turkey. I wanted it to be done and I didn’t want to get anyone sick. With its slick interface, tons of data and directions on when to pull out the turkey to let it rest, I was counting on the Meater to help me through. But now that was out of the picture.

And the Trager app wasn’t much help, either. The recipe had two main instructions: cook on low heat for a few hours and then move the bird into a foil pan and ratchet up the heat when the color of the bird looked right. Looking right may be the sort of vague direction that works for people with confidence in their cooking, but I only had sort of an idea of what a smoked turkey should look like two hours in.

As a result, I kept opening up the grill to look at the bird, which dropped the temperature of the grill each time and made the cooking process longer. Finally, after a few hours, it looked good and I covered it in butter, wrapped it in foil, set it in a pan and put it back in.

I had started the process at 8 a.m. and it was coming up on noon. Guests would arrive in an hour and we were eating at 3, and this bird was nowhere near done.

Long story short: while the recipe said it would take five hours, the cook actually took more like seven hours, and I had to make adjustments like turning up the heat beyond what was instructed to get the internal temperature to a safe 165 degrees.

Stage 3: Relief

Despite technological shortcomings and my steady worrying, the turkey came out beautifully and was delicious. Really. Not to brag, but it tasted better than the turkey we cooked in a traditional oven and was so good that I’ll probably smoke another one next year.

What I learned is that I can’t rely on gadgets to make it happen though. The connected kitchen still has lots of idiosyncrasies to work out. Devices should connect without hassle and the design of apps should not be an afterthought.

Hopefully the industry can come together to create technology that helps cook the turkey — not be the turkey next Thanksgiving.

Hey Joe, the Smart Kitchen Isn’t Stupid, It’s Just Getting Started

We have a rule in our house where we try to use the word “and” instead of “but.” So it is in that spirit that I write how I’ve met WIRED’s Joe Ray. I’ve eaten dinner with Joe Ray. I think Joe Ray is a brilliant writer and product reviewer.

And.

I think his recent piece on how “The ‘Smart Kitchen’ Is Very Stupid,” misses the mark and is worth responding to.

You should read the full piece, but the gist of what Ray’s complaint can be summed up in his opening graph:

The app-connected kitchen gadgets, the experimental tiny ovens, the microwaves you can talk to, and the recipe apps? They’ve failed. While our first whack at the connected home kitchen was interesting and occasionally even fun, for the most part, it has flopped like a soufflé.

To be fair, there is a lot Ray gets right: kitchen appliances should have controls on the actual devices, not just controls via an app; the apps themselves have pretty weak content; and don’t even get me started on voice-controlled microwaves.

I think the underlying issue is that Ray likes to cook. Though I haven’t eaten his food, he’s probably a really good cook. I, however, am not. And honestly, I don’t really want to learn all about cooking. Food tech, however, and connected kitchen appliances in particular, have actually helped me become a decent cook.

For example, a few weeks back I made ribs for the first time, thanks to the Traeger WiFi-connected electric smoker. I had never tried making ribs before because they seemed to take such a long time and be so complicated. Who wants to spend that many hours making something that doesn’t work out? Or, my greater fear, makes people sick because it wasn’t cooked properly.

While the Traeger had controls on the device itself, I was also able to follow the in-app recipe and more importantly, monitor the smoker remotely. Rather than going out to the smoker itself, I just pulled out my phone to make sure it was still at the right temperature and check on the timer.

The same goes for my June oven. Sure, with some practice, I could probably learn how to make cod well. But the June does it all for me with the tap of a button, and the fish turns out great. Plus, the June has multi-generational appeal in the Albrecht house. My septuagenarian parents like the fact that the oven shuts off when you’re done so they won’t forget (my dad literally used to touch all the oven burners with his hands before leaving the house to make sure the stove wasn’t left on), and my 9 year old son is able to make pizza and chocolate chip cookies (super healthy eating in the Albrecht house) on his own thanks to the June’s computer vision and automated cook programs.

It’s important to realize as well that food tech is an entirely new category in cooking; there will be some bumps in the road as appliances and consumers figure out the best way to work with one another.

I think Ray is right that if startups and appliance makers are going to disrupt the kitchen, they should spend a lot more time working on creating products that are intuitive and make the act of cooking easier. There needs to be a particular emphasis on not just hardware design, but app UI design as well.

And what I want to remind Ray of is that the needs of cooking experts are not the same as those of the n00bs or the never-want-to-be’s.

Having said all that — see you onstage at SKS in two weeks, Joe!

June to Release Software Update to Prevent Accidental Oven Preheating

UPDATE: A little more than a week after we broke this story, The Verge wrote a story of its own which garnered a lot of attention. In the wake of increased press scrutiny, June sent us the following statement.

Safety of our product is June’s number one priority, and the company took a number of precautions in the production of the June oven. We have worked directly and quickly with the few June owners who have experienced accidental preheat. These instances are concerning for sure, and we have a team of engineers working to ensure this doesn’t happen in the future. We have had ovens deployed in the market for 4 years now and have a large passionate community. The best-case scenario is hearing from customers in real time, like June does, to address any issues as they arise.

OUR ORIGINAL POST:

One of the things I like about the June oven is that it shuts off when I’m done cooking, so an OCD-esque person like myself doesn’t have to worry about it being on when I leave my home. But evidently, a couple of June users discovered that their smart ovens were accidentally preheating on their own, without being turned on by a user.

Having an oven turn on and heat up all by itself without the user knowing — or being home — is obviously bad. So June Co-Founder and CEO, Matt Van Horn, took to Facebook this week to let owners know that a fix is on the way.

When you open the June mobile app, there is an option to preheat your oven with the tap of a button. This could be helpful if you’re busy outside or on your way home from work, so the oven is ready to go when you get home. But in both of these scenarios, the user understands what is happening, and is actively instructing the oven to turn on. “The majority of our customers really like this feature,” Van Horn told me in a phone interview this week.

However, two different June owners posted messages, one as recently as July 28, on the Official June Owners Facebook page about their ovens accidentally remote pre-heating on their own. On July 30, Van Horn posted the following message on Facebook to outline two forthcoming adjustments, writing:

All – I want you to know that we take accidental preheating seriously. We care about all of our owners and want you to be happy about your experience with June. The June team is actively working on a safeguard which includes two phases to prevent unintentional preheating from occurring. Phase one, which will be launched in a September software release, will include:

  • Owners will be able to disable remote preheat within their oven settings (below is a mockup of what this will look like)
  • The remote preheat option will default to On, but at any time you can choose to turn this off through Settings on your June
  • If you have turned remote preheat to Off and are cooking a recipe within the June Cookbook, you will get a notification that you need to change the setting on your oven to turn remote preheat back On to cook the recipe (this will allow the app to set the oven to the right cook mode and temperature for the recipe).

Phase two will include the ability for the June to recognize that there isn’t food inside the oven using our door and internal camera sensors when the oven is on. June will turn off the heating elements after a set amount of time if food isn’t detected inside the oven. This will be released early next year.

Van Horn told me that these features had been on the product roadmap for a while, but got prioritized because of the aforementioned user issues.

There are a lot of things wrong with social media, but situations like this show that it can be a powerful customer service and corporate communications tool. And speaking as a June owner, this fix will certainly ease my OCD.

Genie Launches its All-in-One Cooking Appliance and Meal System in the U.S.

When she was a child, Ayelet Carasso-Sternberg would watch episodes of Star Trek with her father and marvel at the show’s technology-filled future. Fast forward several decades later and during one particularly hungry day at the office, Carasso was lamenting the fact that there was still no food replicator like they had on the Enterprise.

It was that love of sci-fi and an empty stomach that set Carasso-Sternberg in motion to co-found and become CEO of Genie, which makes a countertop appliance that will cook you a meal with the push of a button.

There are two parts to the Genie system: the hardware, which is a small, squat device resembling a vintage refrigerator, and the cups-in-a-meal, which are filled with freeze-dried ingredients. (Carasso is quick to stress that these aren’t frozen pre-made meals; rather, they’re individual ingredients assembled into one vessel). There are 30 Genie meals that run the gamut of breakfast, lunch, dinner and dessert.

To make something such as penne bolognese or a rice and lentil bowl, you scan the meal cup with the machine, insert it into the cooking cavity, puncture the lid with the water/steam attachment and push a button. The Genie device does the rest, heating and mixing all the ingredients together and giving you a hot meal in three minutes.

The Genie uses three types of heat: precision microwave targeting, the company’s patented steam technology, and conduction heating via the cradle that holds the meal container. After scanning the meal, the Genie’s algorithms know how much water to add, and how much of the three heating types to use and when to properly cook each element within the container.

The only thing that enters the pod is the steam or water supply, which heats, reconstitutes and and acts as a directional mixer for the ingredients.

Hungry people reading this who are interested in the Genie will have to get a job to find one as it’s strictly a B2B play right now. There’s no consumer version available yet. The hardware itself is free with a subscription to the meals, and while Genie won’t reveal specific pricing, Carasso told me in an interview that the cost for the end user would typically be between $4 and $7 per meal.

Genie raised $10 million in 2018, and the product is already available in Israel. With today’s announcement, the company is expanding into the U.S. It will face some competition in the North American office space from startups like Markov, which sells a hardware/prepped meal combo with the Level 1 (and also has special microwave technology), and Kitchenmate, which has its own cooker + meal solution.

Going after the corporate market is a good starting place for Genie. Companies are looking for a meal solution for their employees that is somewhere between offering nothing and the massive expense of providing free catered meals. Meal-in-a-box solutions like Genie’s help fit that bill. Now we’ll just have to see if American businesses will beam these food pods up.

Newsletter: Food Tech is Going Big Time in 2019

My dad is buying a June Oven.

Normally, I wouldn’t foist the day-to-day tech purchases of the Albrecht family on our Spoon readers, but it occurred to me that this particular decision is somewhat emblematic of where the entire food tech sector is at, and why 2019 could be a watershed year for the industry at large.

Why does my septuagenarian father, who normally doesn’t give a whit about gadgets, want a June? Because it’s automated, repeatable and to him, safer. He likes how the June will cook meat to the proper temperature automatically, that he’ll get the same result every time, and how he doesn’t have to worry about whether or not he left the stove on when he’s out and about. And I’m sure he’s not an outlier.

The second-gen June is among a raft of smart cooking appliances coming to market. The Brava, second-gen Tovala, and the forthcoming Suvie have the ability to turn everyday people into people who cook every day. And as these appliances get more affordable, the audience for them is moving beyond early adopters and into the mainstream.

We’ve seen this greater interest in food tech reflected in our readership. Our audience grew by 186 percent since January of this year, and we had our fourth and biggest ever Smart Kitchen Summit in Seattle this October. It’s not just smart ovens that people want to know about. This year, our readers have loved stories on alternate proteins, news about the changing delivery landscape, CBD products, food robots, food personalization and more.

All this is to say that food tech is being called up to the big leagues in a big way in 2019. Speaking of which, you should check out some of our specific predictions for the coming year. Catherine Lamb wrote about the coming rise of CBD edibles. Jenn Marston said to watch out for more ghost kitchens and drone deliveries. And I raised my articulating hand to say that 2019 will be a breakthrough year for food robots.

But before we pop the champagne get all Auld Lang Syne, let’s take a look at the last bit of big food tech news in 2018.

Mike Wolf got the scoop on the much-delayed Spinn Coffee maker raising $3 million. Will this cash infusion mean that the connected coffee maker will finally make it to market?

For those budding or serial entrepreneurs looking for a little help with their food tech ambitions next year, Jenn put together a list of big CPG company accelerators like those from Land O’ Lakes and Coca-Cola.

As Amazon Gos continue to pop up around the country, the debate over who gets to participate in the cashless retail revolution will heat up. One company looking to make the Go experience available to all is All_ebt. We confirmed this week that All_ebt’s users on SNAP assistance will be able to shop (for USDA approved items) at cashless grocery stores like Go.

And finally, if you are looking for a new holiday tradition — may we suggest you be like Catherine and her family and hold a White Castle eating contest which, thanks to the Impossible slider, is now open to vegetarians!

It’s been a fantastic year. Thank you for being with us throughout 2018, we look forward to even bigger and better things in 2019.

Happy New Year!

Be kind.
-Chris

In the 12/28/2018 edition:

Burritos by Air Highlight Noisy Headaches Associated with Drone Delivery

By Chris Albrecht on Dec 28, 2018 08:08 am
There was a lot of chatter about drones this past year: Uber Eats is accelerating its drone ambitions, Zomato acquired a drone company in India, Amazon got a patent for in-flight drone recharging. There was so much activity that my colleague, Jenn Marston predicted that 2019 will be a big year for delivery by drones. […]

Big Food Has Big Plans for Foodtech Accelerators in 2019

By Jennifer Marston on Dec 27, 2018 01:39 pm
Just a little less than a year ago, we highlighted what was then a new trend the foodtech space: major CPGs launching food accelerators geared towards emerging brands. From Chobani to General Mills to Kraft-Heinz, it seemed Big Food had an appetite for assisting younger, trendier, and often healthier brands to grow in 2018. Some […]

Video: Bellwether Cuts Out the Coffee Roasting Middleman

By Catherine Lamb on Dec 27, 2018 09:00 am
“A lot of people don’t realize just how big coffee is,” said Nathan Gilliland, CEO of Bellwether Coffee at the 2018 Smart Kitchen Summit. Seriously, though: according to him, coffee is the most consumed beverage in the U.S., with people drinking more cups of joe than bottles of water, wine, and beer combined. Not only are […]

My Whole Family Tried the Impossible Slider from White Castle (and Loved It)

By Catherine Lamb on Dec 27, 2018 06:00 am
My family has a… rather unique Christmas tradition. For Christmas Eve lunch, when the 15-odd crew of us gather at my grandparents’ home outside of Cincinnati, OH, we have a White Castle slider eating competition. The record: twenty-one. (Blegh.) As a vegetarian I usually have to abstain from this tradition. But this year, oh this year, […]

What Amazon Did (and Didn’t) Mention in its Holiday Sales Press Release

By Chris Albrecht on Dec 26, 2018 11:00 am
With Christmas now over it’s time for the annual releasing of the vague holiday sales stats from Amazon! This year, Bezos’ behemoth did not disappoint and shared with us a press announcement filled with unspecific terms like “record breaking” and “millions more.” As we said back in November, though these puff pieces from Amazon are […]

Spinn Raises $3 Million As It Eyes Production Of Long-Delayed Coffee Machine

By Michael Wolf on Dec 26, 2018 09:00 am
Spinn, the grind and brew centrifugal coffee machine that is nearly two years past its original ship date, has raised an additional $3 million in funding that it plans to use to ramp up production of its coffee maker. The funding announcement came as part of an update to early buyers via the company’s community […]

Delivery in 2019 Will Be About Ghost Kitchens, Drones, and Boone, North Carolina

By Jennifer Marston on Dec 26, 2018 06:00 am
The food delivery craze will normalize at some point, but not soon. Right now, it’s a segment projected to be worth $365 billion by 2013, and even companies with inherently undeliverable foods are delivering. All of which is to say, food delivery holds a well-earned spot on the list of 2019 hot topics. Major delivery […]

2019 Will Be a Breakthrough Year for Food Robots

By Chris Albrecht on Dec 25, 2018 06:00 am
Right now the year 2019 is still (slightly) in the future, but 2019 will also be a year where we start to feel like we’re living in the future. The reason for that can be summed up in one word: ROBOTS. The food robots are coming and while they won’t become ubiquitous next year, 2019 […]

All_EBT Allows Those Underbanked to Participate in (Some) Cashless Retail

By Chris Albrecht on Dec 24, 2018 12:00 pm
The number of Amazon Go stores are set to explode over the coming years, and while the grab-and-go convenience stores are a marvel of modern technology, they also raise thorny ethical issues surrounding cashless retail. You can only use Amazon Go if you have an Amazon account, and to get an Amazon account you need […]

Whirlpool Awarded Comprehensive Patent For Kitchen-Centric Computer Vision System

By Michael Wolf on Dec 24, 2018 10:00 am
Over the past couple years, there’s been what can only be described as an intellectual property land grab in the world of computer vision as Google, Amazon and Microsoft file more patents in an effort to establish foundations from which to launch an innumerable amount of AI-driven products and services over the next decade or more. […]

Brava Ships its Countertop Oven that Cooks with Light

Brava announced today that it has started shipping its high-tech countertop oven that uses light to cook.

The Brava oven differentiates itself from other countertop ovens on the market by using what it calls “Pure Light” technology to cook food. According to press materials, the Brava heating elements can go from 0 to 500 degrees in less than a second, and using a combination of sensors and a temperature probe, promises to automatically and precisely cook your meals. The Brava also features multi-zone cooking so you can cook proteins, veggies and carbohydrates on the same tray at the same time.

Brava’s announcement comes just one day after Tovala announced it is shipping its second-gen smart oven, which uses more traditional heating elements and steam to cook food. Though both companies are vying for the (limited) space on your kitchen counter through a combination of high-technology and convenience, they are approaching the market differently.

First, the two are priced at opposite ends of the spectrum. Brava starts at $995, while Tovala is just $349. Both companies offer meal kits customized to their device, but where Tovala is providing its own meal kits, Brava is building out a marketplace of third party providers. As part of today’s announcement, Brava said it has partnered with Atlanta based meal kit maker PeachDish to provide food for Brava customers. PeachDish will join Brava’s other food partners, Good Eggs and Greensbury in Brava Marketplace by the end of this year.

More broadly speaking, Brava is part of a wave of new connected countertop cooking devices hitting the market and aiming for your kitchen. In addition to Brava and Tovala there is the second-gen June, the forthcoming Suvie, Amazon’s Alexa-powered Microwave, and the Rotimatic, just to name a few.

We got to see the Brava in action at our recent Smart Kitchen Summit and the results were quite good. Now that it’s shipping, the question is whether the light-based tech of Brava help it break away from the pack and generate light-speed growth?

John Pleasants Thinks the Oven of the Future is Powered by Light

We at the Spoon have long been curious about Brava, the stealthy smart kitchen startup which recently debuted its first product: an oven which uses the power of light to cook food quickly and precisely, with low energy usage.

Brava’s CEO John Pleasants be speaking at the Smart Kitchen Summit this October on a panel entitled “Reimagining The Cooking Box,” alongside Lisa McManus of America’s Test Kitchen, Matt van Horn of June, and Robin Liss of Suvie. To heat up (zing!) a little excitement for Pleasants’ panel, we asked him a few questions about Brava’s quest to create an oven so good, they’re calling it “the future of cooking.”

This Q&A has been edited for length and clarity. 

Brava’s oven cooks with the power of light — how did you land on the concept and develop it for the consumer?
The idea for Brava started in our founder’s home thinking about how to solve the age-old problem of the family provider having to frequently go back and forth to the kitchen during a Holiday meal. The idea was to liberate them from that stressful distraction so the family could enjoy each other’s company without worry of burning their food.

At the same time, we believed that cooking technology had remained relatively static for 50 years (i.e., basic convection and conduction in ovens and stovetops) and that to truly revolutionize in home cooking, a better, faster and more dynamic heating method was needed. This spawned the birth of Pure Light cooking: our patented direct energy transfer methodology via highly controllable infrared light. We marry our custom Pure Light heating elements with a sophisticated cooking engine and an array of sensors, machine vision and AI that together delivers fantastic results with very minimal cooking effort.

Why did you decide to pair the Brava oven with a food delivery service?
Our mission is to empower anyone to make amazing food at home, any day of the week. For some people, they will want a full and turnkey solution, including ingredient delivery and preparation. So we will give them that option.

In addition, all the recipes are developed by our culinary team (including the on-oven cooking recipes/instructions) and the food is sourced from some of the finest purveyors in the world. We take great pride in our menus and the quality of our ingredients, and we think our customers will appreciate all the quality and attention to detail we bring to bear here.

Why did you decide to build your own brand with Brava, instead of licensing out your light-cooking tech to larger manufacturers?
We are a technology food and cooking company, focused on a direct to consumer model. We believe all elements ‚ from recipe development to hardware to constantly updating software — all have to come together under a single entity to deliver the type of service we think can truly change people’s routines and lives for the better. We seek to build that company.

Do you think that connected appliances will eventually become the norm in the kitchen, showing up in the homes of everyone, even non-tech-forward consumers? Or will they continue to be a niche product?
Connected appliances are definitely going to become a staple in the home, specifically in the kitchen. But the connection or “smarts” has to be valuable and actually improve people’s everyday lives…and today that’s not always the case.

How do you envision the kitchen of the future? Is it full of connected appliances? Voice assistants? Paint us a picture!
Pure Light Technology in every kitchen 🙂

You can try Brava’s Pure Light Cooking tech (AKA bake things with light!) for yourself at the Smart Kitchen Summit on October 8-9th! Tickets are going fast, so don’t delay — we’ll see you in Seattle. 

I Got the June Bug. Now I Want to Cook Everything with the Smart Oven

“This alone is worth the money.”

That was my wife sitting on our couch eating day old pizza she had reheated in our recently purchased (and now sold out) second-generation June Oven. Looking at the slice in her hand, she remarked “I can’t believe they have engineers working full time to algorithmically figure this out — but it is [expletive] amazing.”

She’s right. If there is a killer, groundbreaking feature of the June Oven, it’s reheating leftover pizza. This may sound like a small reason to pay a big price ($599) for what is essentially a second oven that takes up a lot of countertop space in your kitchen, but it is actually quite [expletive] amazing.

But let’s back up.

Since I write about food technology for a living, people often assume that I love to cook. I do not. It intimidates me, I’m not good at it, and the process gives me no cathartic joy. The June seems to be custom built for someone like me. It’s a connected countertop smart oven that recognizes your food and can cook it automatically using a variety of pre-set programs (or just be used as a regular oven, or air fryer, or toaster, or dehydrator, or slow cooker…).

After spending a week with my new June, I can say that now I actually like cooking! (Though to be fair, using June may not be considered “cooking” at all.) All I have to do is insert the meat thermometer, make a few taps on the touchscreen and June does the rest. I can check in on the dish via the live video feed on the June mobile app if I want, or just wait for the notification that everything is done.

In my first week using June, I made:

  • Salmon
  • Broccoli
  • Flank steak
  • A whole chicken
  • Re-heated pizza
  • Bacon
  • Toast
  • Chicken breast

The Good
The June immediately recognized almost all the above items, displaying a small picture and caption of the food you placed in it (it only missed the flank steak). I used the automatic pre-set cooking program that popped up for each food, and because of improvements made to the June, there was never any pre-heating necessary. This means that I cooked a salmon filet in 10 minutes and it was done to perfection.

When we first wrote about the new June, company CEO Matt Van Horn told us there were 64 pre-sets for bacon. While I didn’t put that full number to the test, the bacon I made was also cooked just right; as a bonus, I did not have to stand over a griddle, getting splattered in grease.

But it was the pizza re-heating that captured the hearts and minds of the Albrecht house. The problem with re-heating pizza is that if you do it in the microwave, the crust turns weird and there are still hot and cold spots. Putting it in a pan with a splash of water works a bit better, but requires more work and the results still aren’t that good. By contrast, the June, using whatever combination of underneath, overhead and convection heating magic it has crafted, creates a hot slice with just the right amount of crisp to the crust. It really is a revelation.

The Not So Good
Not everything went smoothly with the June, however. The directions are so sparse that it can actually make cooking with it harder in some instances.

In the case of the flank steak, June said the cooking was done, but gave me no indication as to whether or not the cooked meat needed to rest and for how long (something the Meater thermometer does expertly). There was no pre-set for flank steak, so I’m not sure if I should have used the generic “steak” cooking program or just tried it manually (I used the steak pre-set). Also, though it does have a broiling feature, steaks should be finished on a hot grill or pan for a nice sear on the outside to truly finish it. Honestly? For something like flank steak, I would just grill it, given how little time it takes to cook.

The idea of expanded instructions would have also come in handy when cooking the whole chicken. I thought I stuck the thermometer in properly, but the June said the cooking was done and the internal temperature of the chicken was still only 158 degrees. Safe cooking temp for chicken is 165. There was no indication as to whether thermal inertia would bring the chicken up to the right temp, how long I should wait for that to happen, or how to make it work best (wrapping in foil? Leaving it in the June? etc.).

Also, I naively assumed that since there was a broccoli setting, if I just put broccoli in the machine it would turn out as good as everything else I cooked. I was wrong (again, I’m not a great cook). I threw a bunch of raw broccoli florets on the pan threw some salt on there and hit the cook broccoli button. The result was severely burned and bitter broccoli that was inedible.

I tweeted out about these issues and Van Horn actually replied to me saying that the company is aware of the undercommunication issues and has an over-the-air update in the works that will address them. So there’s that to look forward to.

Unexpected Bonus
My seven year old actually loves cooking with the June. Though, if we’re being honest, it’s because it has a touch screen. Regardless! He can read and after a couple tutorials will be able to make a decent chicken breast on his own without my worrying about his burning either himself or the house down.

Overall
I recognize that $599 is not cheap for many people. For my personal situation as someone who doesn’t enjoy cooking, it’s worth every penny. Using it has a sense of practical permanence, it’s not fad-ish like the sous vide wands I rarely break out any more. Soon enough, June’s cooking smarts will be built directly into more traditional ovens eliminating any space issues. But until then, I’ll be to make some [expletive] amazing pizza, and pretty much anything else I want.