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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

connected kitchen

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.

June Ships 2nd Gen Smart Oven, Reduces Price to $499

June, the company behind the eponymous countertop connected cooking oven, today announced the release of its second generation June Oven, which is available and shipping immediately for $499.

This is a pretty drastic drop in price for June, which debuted its first generation oven back in 2016 for a whopping $1,500. While expensive, the June was among the first wave of connected cooking devices that could use its HD camera to automatically identify food placed in it, as well as a host of presets to basically do all the cooking for you.

In a phone call with June CEO, Matt Van Horn, he likened the first generation June oven to the first generation Tesla roadster. That expensive electric car only sat two people, but helped pave the way for improved versions in later years. In much the same way, the first June helped clear a path for the much less expensive new one.

The new June features the same cooking area size and carbon fiber heating elements as the first gen oven, but now includes faster cooking and a streamlined touchscreen interface. June touts its oven as a seven-in-one appliance that can bake, toast, roast, slow cook, keep warm, reheat, broil and dehydrate.

One of the more versatile aspects of the June is its ability to add new functionality such as air frying and dehydrating via over the air updates (just like a Tesla!). It can also add new presets for specific foods like steamed corn, or add improve and expand upon existing presets. The June has 64 preset options just for bacon (crispy, chewy, thick-cut, etc.). Because both the first and second gen Junes are on the same software platform, when a new cook program is released, both ovens will get it (Van Horn says the company is working on a rice cooker function right now).

For those who are a little more hands-on with their meals, the new June can act like a regular oven, so you can manually set the temperature and the cook times however you like. The June is also Alexa-enabled for those who want to control their cooking appliance with their voice.

In addition to a new interface, the June also comes with an improved sealed cavity to keep more heat in the oven, this allows the new June to cook faster than its predecessor. Van Horn told us that cooking a salmon with the first gen June took 12 minutes to cook, in the second gen June, it takes just nine minutes — and there is no pre-heating required.

That’s right, no pre-heating. “People don’t like to pre-heat,” said Van Horn, “One hundred percent of our one-tap cook programs have no preheat.”

Van Horn actually demonstrated this for us during our video call by cooking a steak in real time. He just placed it on the rack and it went through its baking and broiling cycles and before we finished our call he had a completely cooked steak.

Internally, here at Spoon HQ we had been wondering what was up with June in recent months. We had noticed earlier in the year that the company was no longer taking orders for the first-gen and we feared the worst. While the first-gen was a powerful device, $1,500 for a second oven that takes up countertop space was cost-prohibitive for most people.

So now we know the company was working on this second-gen device. But the introduction of this new June comes at a very different time in the connected kitchen space. June is no longer the only countertop heating appliance to make cooking your meals easier.

Since the first June, rivals have come to market such as the Tovala, and the Suvie, with its four-zone cooking, is on the way. The June may have an edge over these devices, however, as it is more versatile, being able to cook anything easily, not just food from an accompanying subscription. And while the June’s carbon fiber heating elements are neat, they’re still fairly conventional as far as heating technology goes, while a raft of new ovens from Miele, Markov and Brava boast entirely new forms of heat application and are making their way to market.

June will have the jump on the competition as it is shipping today. You can order it directly from June’s web site. The actual retail price for the base model, which includes food thermometer, solid core aluminum cooking pan, roasting rack, wire shelf, crumb tray and companion app, will be $599, but is $499 for a limited time at launch. The Gourmet package, which includes everything in the base package plus an extended 2-year warranty, 3-year recipe subscription and set of 3 air baskets will be $799, or $699 for a limited time at launch.

Video: Regional Perspectives on the Connected Kitchen Market

At Smart Kitchen Summit Europe last month, a topic on everyone’s mind was the future of the connected kitchen market.

In fact, we had a whole panel devoted to analyzing the regional perspectives of the smart kitchen marketplace: Chris Albrecht of The Spoon moderated the conversation between Holger Henke of Cuicinale, Robin Liss of Suvie, and Miles Woodroffe of Cookpad, Ltd.

The speakers explored the evolving role of voice assistants, regional perspectives across Europe, Asia and North America on the smart kitchen, and what the consumer really wants (to save time and money).

Watch the full video of the panel below.

If you want to hear more deep-dive analysis on the connected kitchen from people in the business, join us at the Smart Kitchen Summit in Seattle this October!

Hearst Unveils Visual Guided Recipe Skill for Amazon Echo

Alexa, let’s have Pancetta Chicken for dinner.

Last month, publisher Hearst expanded its Amazon Echo- and Spot-enabled Good Housekeeping skill to include connected recipes. Dubbed Good Housekeeping Test Kitchen, the skill provides simple “meal ideas” that can be thrown together in 30 minutes or less. The recipes will be curated by Susan Westmoreland, food director of Good Housekeeping, and, in addition to being speedy, are said to be easy to execute.

Previously, the Good Housekeeping skill only included step-by-step advice to remove stains. (Don’t worry—it can still help you get out that wine spill from your carpet.)

With the Good Housekeeping skill, users can select a recipe based on a photo and short description (or tell Alexa to do it for them). The smart display then provides a step-by-step guide through the recipe. Users can swipe around to see more recipes, skip ahead in the steps, and reference the ingredients. They can also use voice commands like “Alexa, tell Good Housekeeping to continue” if they want to move forward in the recipe but don’t want to touch the screen with, say, raw chicken hands.

Hearst’s expansion into recipes isn’t exactly surprising. At the end of 2016, the media company took a big leap into the realms of AI and AR by establishing the Native and Emerging Technologies (NET) group, which focuses heavily on voice-activated experiences for virtual assistants and smartphones.

This new skill speaks (literally) towards the growing role of voice assistants in the connected household, and the kitchen in particular. “We’re raising the stakes from what a user can expect [in terms of] information and utility from these devices,” Chris Papaleo, executive director of emerging technology at Hearst, told AdWeek. Which is something we’ve predicted but haven’t seen developed in as big a way as we’d thought—yet.

Photo: AdWeek

It also brings us one step closer to the integration of recipes (and other food media) and AI-enabled voice technology.

We’ve seen a voice-enabled smart kitchen assistant before with Freshub, which lets users add items to their shopping carts using voice commands. Then, at last year’s Smart Kitchen Summit, Emma Persky, who runs point on the Google Assistant’s guided cooking team, talked about Google’s work combining recipe content with their voice-enabled AI platform by offering video aids for recipe steps (say, sautéeing an onion). And Amazon’s 2016 partnership with AllRecipes allowed users to access voice-guided cooking instructions of their 60,000-strong recipe database.

But by combining recipes on a visual display with voice-enabled controls—albeit simplistic ones like telling it to move to the next step—this new skill from Good Housekeeping is the first time that virtual assistants have really entered the hands-free recipes zone in a synched-up visual and auditory way. While the Google Assistant can show you a video of how to sauté an onion if you’re stuck, it doesn’t have a connected visual element that takes you through each step of the recipe, since it relies almost entirely on voice guidance. This is nice since you don’t have to add another piece of equipment to your virtual assistant lineup, but not as helpful when you’re wondering how small the recipe wants you to dice your pancetta.

With this new skill, Hearst is betting on more voice assistants expanding into smart displays and a corresponding need for more visual content in the sphere. As the number and popularity of voice assistants grow and become a more commonplace part of consumers’ homes, I imagine we’ll see a lot more skills aimed at facilitating the home cooking process, from expanded shoppable recipe applications to visual cooking aids.

As of now, the Test Kitchen skill doesn’t have a sponsor. But with so many large companies trying to carve out a space in the trending foodtech world, it seems only a matter of time before a big-name recipe site or even CPG brand (who have been trying to get into foodtech in any way they can) snags the title.

The success (or lack thereof) of this skill could indicate where we are in that process.

 

Thermomix Head of Product Talks Community, Kitchen Gadgets, & Broccoli Salad

If there was ever such thing as an all-in-one kitchen gadget, Thermomix would be it. Over the last few years, it has attracted a cult-like following with its promise to replace over 12 kitchen appliances. From mixing and kneading to chopping, weighing, and steaming, the device lets users create restaurant-quality meals in a fraction of the time it would take with the usual arsenal of kitchen tools. Its German parent company Vorwerk is edging further into the smart home space by adding connected recipes and guided cooking accessories for step-by-step kitchen assistance.

We recently chatted with Dr. Stefan Hilgers, Vice President of International Product Management at Thermomix, to learn more about the appliance’s secret to success, its struggle to enter the U.S. market, and his favorite dish to whip up in his Thermomix at home.

Head over to the Smart Kitchen Summit Europe blog to read the full Q&A with Dr. Hilgers. 

If you want to hear him speak in person about what Thermomix is doing to further the future of food and cooking, make sure to get your tickets for SKSEurope in Dublin June 11-12th!

Anova Opens Pre-Orders For The Sub-$100 Nano

This week, Anova opened up pre-orders for their Nano, the company’s first sub-$100 sous vide circulator.

The device, which ships in October, is 25% smaller and a full pound lighter than the company’s Wi-Fi Precision Cooker. Perhaps more importantly, the Nano comes in about $70 less than the company’s flagship product. The full price for the Nano is $99, (if you move fast, you can preorder the Nano for $69), marking the first time Anova has dropped below the $100 mark.

The new lower-priced machine comes at a time when the sous vide market is getting more competitive. ChefSteps has been doing well with the Joule (and recently released a lower-cost version of their own), and low priced competitors like Gourmia have attracted budget conscious consumers. With the Nano and its $99 price tag, Anova hopes it can attract value customers looking for a low-priced sous vide circulator.

Later this year the company will ship its second generation Pro circulator for $299.  The company’s Precision Oven, a combi-oven that the company announced last year at the Smart Kitchen Summit, was originally expected to ship this summer, but the ship date has been bumped back to summer 2018.

Want to see Anova CEO Steve Svajian speak about building a smart kitchen company? Come to the Smart Kitchen Summit.  Also, make sure to subscribe to get The Spoon in your inbox. 

Inirv Retrofit Kitchen Kickstarter Surpasses Goal

The 2016 Smart Kitchen Summit’s startup showcase was home to many exciting new companies showing off connected and high-tech devices for kitchens of the future.

One of those companies, Inirv, had a safety system designed for stoves that highlighted the importance of retrofit solutions in the smart home. While many are building connectivity and smarts into their ovens, stoves and fridges, the team at Inirv is tackling a common problem with an add-on system. With a wireless sensor that can detect the presence of gas, the absence of motion for prolonged periods of times and smoke coupled with retrofit stove knobs that can control your stove’s burners, Inirv is designed to prevent overcooking and fires from unattended food.

Credit: Inirv

The Inirv knobs give you remote control of your burners via the smartphone app so you’ll never burn your food – but the sensor will actually remind you if it senses a lack of motion around the stove for too long and left your food unattended. The product is designed to be less of a reactive solution (aka smoke alarm goes off because something is burning) and more proactive to prevent your food from turning into a house fire.

Inirv’s Kickstarter ends on Wednesday and backers can be pretty confident they’ll get a product as the campaign is fully-funded and already passed a few of its stretch goals, including adding Amazon Echo functionality. Alexa, turn off the stove! At $229 for four knobs and a sensor, it’s not the cheapest smoke alarm solution on the market, but it is much smarter than most.

The Inirv team plans to ship the product in December, hopefully in time for the holidays.

These Design Trends Will Help You Create a Winning Product (VIDEO)

So you’ve finally finished creating your connected kombucha maker! But there’s only one model, it feels pretty cheap, and the app interface is built into the side of the device. Hmmm. According to Carley Knobloch of HGTV Smart Home, consumers may not be so excited about your product.

At the 2016 Smart Kitchen Summit (watch the video below), Knobloch detailed the latest trends that can make a product stand out from the crowd.

“It should really be a sensory experience that tells our body in every way that we are home,” she said.

Personalization

First off, that means it should be unique to each person’s home. Consumers are looking for custom looks and features “so that everything looks as unique as the person,” Knobloch said. “The more you can accommodate different features and the ability to change features depending on every person’s or family’s needs, the better,” making the customer a partner in the design experience and that much more invested in your product.

This flexibility for the oh-so-precious millennials, who want an authentic space, as well as boomers, who are all about individualism. Two age groups, one stone.

Sensory Experience

Don’t stop at the visuals. Consider the sounds your product makes to create a happy Pavlovian response. Pay attention to touch, “the weight of it, does it feel substantial or does it feel flimsy; what’s the quality of the finishes, do they look polished do they look casual; is it fun to touch the touchscreen?” Knobloch asked.

She said that natural products are very en vogue at the moment: bamboo, plant life, woven baskets, pottery, macramé. Just as valuable: touchless faucets, induction burners, disappearing devices that can hide behind cabinets.

The Right Kind of Smart

Most of all, consider what kind of connectivity your consumers want. “They don’t want smart that isn’t future-proof,” she said, and “they don’t want smart that doesn’t respect their privacy.” On the other hand, they want smart that connects them with their food (think grocery shopping, meal prepping, and knowing what’s in their fridge) and smart that connects them to their family and the world.

Follow these guidelines and your connected kombucha maker might just become a hit.