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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Cortana

Podcast: The Future of (Food) Media Is Conversational & AI Driven

If you’re looking for someone who can build a media company with the future in mind, you could do a lot worse that Shelby Bonnie.

Bonnie first showed his ability to build forward leaning media properties with CNET, a company he cofounded that helped set the template for tech media for much of the past couple decades. For his next act, Bonnie cofounded Whiskey Media, a company that tapped into the power of passionate communities with brands like Tested, Screened and Giant Bomb just as social media platforms like Facebook were beginning to change the media landscape.

And Bonnie’s latest bet? A company called Pylon, which is leveraging AI-powered voice assistants and chatbots to create media properties that power content delivery in vertical interest areas such as food and cooking.

I caught up with Shelby to talk about those early days, how he sees media evolving over the next decade and how he thinks Pylon can help shape that new future.

If you are an appliance maker, food brand or any company that touches the consumer, you’ll want to listen to this podcast to get an understanding of the future of consumer media.

You can listen to the podcast below, download it here or subscribe to the Smart Kitchen Show on Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

“Alexa, How Can You Be Used in Restaurants?”

There’s a good chance that an Amazon Alexa or Google Home device is on a holiday wish list of someone you know. Consumer Intelligence Research Partners estimates that 15 million Amazon Echo units have been sold across the U.S. (Amazon does not disclose sales figures). As of now, Alexa’s use in dining out is centered more around at-home, consumer experiences. A quick glance through the restaurant related Alexa skills show an emphasis on discovery, information and ordering. Find a nearby restaurant. Order a pizza. Etc.

But is there a bigger opportunity for Alexa and Google Home inside the restaurant?

According to the National Restaurant Association, there are more than 1 million restaurant locations in the U.S. generating $799 billion in sales. One million on its own isn’t huge, but with some creative thinking, you could easily envision multiple devices deployed per restaurant, plus all the data captured from in-store interactions and you can see restaurants becoming a front in the voice assistant battle worth fighting over.

As a fun thought experiment, I put together a few potential uses for Alexa inside dining out:

An interactive table alert. Instead of a dumb, inert buzzer that flashes and vibrates when your table is ready, modify an Echo Dot to be the messenger. Instead of bugging the host, patrons could ask Alexa how much longer the wait time is, and be alerted when they can be seated. If you wanted to get real adventurous, in the right setting, you could even do ongoing interactive trivia games to keep people entertained.

Informed ordering. With its touch screen, an Echo Show would be an excellent way to show menu items, explain more about ingredients, and highlight popular dishes. You could also enable ordering and payment for a more streamlined experience. In a cruel, horrible world, one can imagine restaurants offer a cheaper meal if customers allow ads to be displayed while they’re eating (please don’t do that).

Back of house. Alexa could be used for quick ordering of ingredients, equipment or other sundries which, of course, could be fulfilled by Amazon that day. It could also be used to alert employees about their break times and inform them of any news or specials.

Communication back home. By gathering real time data inside a restaurant, Alexa at home could provide better, more informed real-time decisions about where and when to eat at a particular establishment.

Having said all this, there are some real world limitations to this type of implementation:

There’s a pretty small needle to thread in terms of the types of restaurant voice control will work. Too loud and voice control is useless and you can’t hear Alexa talk. Too quiet and voice control is annoying for everyone else.

It’s hard to imagine restaurants buying and modding Echo devices or writing their own skills. However companies such as Toast or Square could weave Alexa into their platforms and embed them on customized devices that are sold into restaurants.

We are still in the early stages of voice assistants and how far into our lives they will go. But as they get better, restaurant owners may not want to wait until the holidays to get their own.

Have you seen Alexa or Google Home used in interesting ways inside restaurants? Or have a wild idea about how they could? Leave a comment below and let us know what you think.

Five For Food: Cortana Skills Begin To Roll Out, Including A Handful For Foodies

Earlier this month, Microsoft finally debuted its own home virtual assistant/speaker combo alongside a developer platform for third party skills. A couple years behind Echo/Alexa, it’s no surprise the new platform has lots of catching up to do when it comes to third party skills.

But let’s give credit where credit is due: Not only did Microsoft beat Apple to market with a home voice assistant, they also have a decent early slate of skills. Checking in on the Microsoft skill listing, there are a total of 55 total skills as of today, of which five are food related.

Here are the five food skills currently available for Cortana:

Food Network: Like the Alexa skill, this Cortana skill allows users to ask Cortana for a recipe for a meal made on any number of shows. Users can “ask for recipes by ingredient, course or chef. You can also search our TV schedule by show, chef and time/date to find showtimes and episode details.”

Domino’s Pizza: Pretty simple: users can order Domino’s pizza with this Cortana skill. By adding Microsoft’s voice assistant,  Domino’s is available on all three of the big home assistant platforms, including Alexa and Google Home.

Open Table: The Open Table skill is also pretty straight forward: like the popular mobile app, the Cortana Open Table skill allows you to make reservations. To get started, the user has to do a little up front work and fill in their basic contact details such as name, email, phone.

Bartender: This one is a fun but simple skill – you can ask it to give you the recipe for your favorite cocktail and it will walk you through it. This skill is made by BigOven, a Seattle based digital recipe and food content startup founded by ex-Microsofter Steve Murch.

Cook.ai: Of the five Cortana food skills, this is my favorite. While I didn’t try it on Cortana (I don’t yet have a Cortana device), I was able to give it an Alexa version of this skill a test run and liked the concept. The neat thing with Cook.ai is it combines a voice assistant with a web app at Cook.ai to walk you through a recipe. You start by first enabling the skill, then you are instructed to pair a device (I paired my Mac). The skill then takes you through a recipe step by step, showing each stage of the recipe in the web app on the paired device. You give voice commands to move from step to step. Cook.ai is also working iOS and Android apps (and I assume also Windows), though I found the web app worked just fine.

Microsoft Unveils Echo Competitor Powered By Cortana

Microsoft is not necessarily a leader in the smart home these days, trailing Samsung, Apple and Google in platforms and hardware offerings and instead focusing on other core offerings. But as the Amazon Echo and then Google Home voice assistants jumped onto the scene, the tech world speculated about whether Apple and Microsoft would put their respective AI voice assistants – Siri and Cortana – into physical devices, too.

Rumors abound that Apple is about to do just that – but they’ll be last to the table as Microsoft previewed its Cortana-powered wireless speaker on Monday. Ahead of their BUILD developer conference, which starts tomorrow, Microsoft showed off the Invoke, a speaker manufactured by Harman Kardon and enabled by the company’s digital voice assistant.

Invoke does what Google Home & Echo do for the most part – weather reports, news, music, reminders, timers, etc – and the details thus far are fairly underwhelming. The company reported Invoke will offer “deep integration with Microsoft’s suite of knowledge and productivity tools,” making it a potentially interesting tool for home offices or businesses as a scheduling tool. The device will also have integration with Skype, allowing users to make calls via the platform.  It will certainly sound better than the Echo with Harman Kardon audio engineering and design behind the speaker – and that feature alone might drive audiophiles to Invoke over the competition.

Microsoft’s blog does not detail how or if the device will allow for third-party developers to build additional features and functions – something both Echo and Google Home are capitalizing on to add use cases and turn the speakers into sous chefs, personal assistants and smart home controllers.

Harman Kardon’s press release announcing the speaker definitely positions the audio brand to offer a competitive device to other premium smart speakers like Sonos – with a high-powered AI engine inside. The speaker will have seven microphones and advanced ambient noise technology to help Cortana hear you even in loud environments – another area where HK’s contribution could give Invoke an edge over the Echo. Pricing wasn’t given yet but the product should be available via Microsoft stores in the fall.

With the BUILD conference starting tomorrow, we’ll be sure to share updates and details about Invoke and the features it might bring to the home and kitchen.