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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

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The Year In Smart Bar

Ah, 2016, the year we all needed to take a big ol’ drink. Fortunately a flurry of innovation in gadgets, apps, and platforms has helped make that easier in more ways than one. Here are the most notable happenings and advancements in the past 12 months.

Make It From Scratch

People have been home-brewing for decades, but in the past few years it’s reached a fever pitch, with every wannabe hipster (sorry, Mike) fermenting in their basement. The Pico simplifies this process with a plug-and-play model, including ready-to-brew PicoPak ingredient kits and the ability to brew five liters of craft beer in about two hours. Meanwhile Hopsy premiered its HomeTap so you can enjoy the mouthfeel of a freshly poured pint out of a tap, even if you didn’t brew the beer yourself. And just in case there’s not enough foam, get yourself the Sonic beer foamer device to add the perfect amount.

Even big players like Whirlpool entered this space in 2016: In July its crowdfunding project reached over 220 percent of its goal, and soon you’ll be able to buy the Vessi beer fermentor and dispenser for $1,800. (In other words, crowdfunding is finally legit, with Wired even profiling one of the first companies to run a successful crowdfunding campaign — for 3D-printed cocktail ice.) And foodie inventor Dave Arnold launched a crowdfunding campaign for his Spinzall, a small centrifuge designed for restaurant and home use for under $1,000.

Robotic Bartenders

The ready-to-drink (RTD) market is somewhere around $3 billion, and the hottest thing in the smart bar this year was clearly robotic bartenders. There are a spate of different companies vying for space: Bartesian raised an undisclosed sum, reportedly in the “millions”; Somabar raised $1.5 million; and Monsieur raised $1.2 million. In less professional news, the Open Bar robot was submitted to the 2016 Hackaday Prize contest and is actually open source, so all you eager coders can help perfect it.

Expect the playing field to become even more crowded in the next year with lookalike companies proving our eternal interest in robots.

Pour Yourself the Perfect Drink

Apps for the perfect cocktail, beer, and so on abounded this year. Competing with the Perfect Drink smart bartending platform, the Bernooli device and app make it easy to make a balanced drink, and even Alexa can help you figure out how to make a cocktail or give you wine recommendations. And Spanish chemists have created an app that will tell you if your beer is, for lack of a better word, skunked.

Meanwhile Hooch doesn’t want you to drink at home, alone: The company raised $1.5 million to expand its subscription platform that gives you one drink for free at bars all over New York and Los Angeles.

Totally Unnecessary Technology

What kind of year would it be without some totally ridiculous, over-the-top technology that we don’t need? A boring one, that’s what.

Enter the data cocktail machine that makes cocktails from tweets. Yes, the Arduino-powered robot pulls the latest five tweets from around the world that mention ingredients and then mashes them into a cocktail. Surprisingly, there aren’t any plans to commercialize the machine.

But who knows: 2017 is a whole new year.

Are These Crowdfunding Projects the Next George Foreman Grill?

We talk a lot about the high-tech kitchen here at the Spoon, but we’re also fascinated by low-tech kitchen sensations, and no low-tech kitchen gadget has been more successful than the George Foreman Grill.

A few weeks ago we interviewed the inventor of the George Foreman Grill, Michael Boehm, who told us the story behind the infomercial sensation. But that was back in the ’90s. These days blossoming startups don’t take to TV but rather connect on crowdfunding sites to make their fortune.

Here are seven low-tech projects that might just be the next George Foreman Grill:

Empanada Maker

Simplify the process of making empanadas by using this tortillas-press-like device that would make Boehm proud. No muss, no fuss, no electricity. It’s even got a snappy name: the margariteña. The company wants to make the device lighter, which is why they’re raising funds.

Portable Keg

Unless you’re in college, it’s absolutely unacceptable to keep your keg cold by floating it in a trash can full of ice. DraftPak has a cooler solution: Put the DraftPak (which looks suspiciously like a cooler/trash can) on top of the keg and add ice! On the positive side, it uses CO2, so you don’t need to pump the keg.

Hipster Ice Cubes

You know how when you go to a fancy cocktail bar these days, it takes the mixologist about 30 minutes to make your drink? Well, part of that is the bespoke ice cubes. Skip the line and make your own ice and cocktails at home with the Ice Ball Press, which makes a 2.5-inch sphere. (Note: It would also make a killer snow ball to throw at that neighbor you hate.)

Edible Non-Drip Ice Cream Cones

No more melted ice cream dripping down your arm! More importantly, no more melted ice cream dripping down your kids’ arms! Halo Cone stops that in its tracks, with a weird plastic device that catches the liquid. We’re not exactly sure how it’s edible, but we believe in the future.

Water Purifier

This one is essentially a plastic bag that harnesses UV light to kill bacteria in water, making it safe to drink. The company is aiming to help during and after natural disasters like the hurricane in Haiti, and they’re raising funds to scale production of the bags.

Manual Espresso Makers

There are actually two crowdfunding projects right now that do the same thing: help you make espresso the “old-fashioned” way. With both the PREXO and the Flair makers, you tamp the coffee grounds yourself; in the PREXO a piston extracts the espresso, and in the Flair you push down on a lever with your hand. It seems like a fair amount of work, but both are small devices that can easily be stored, not like the massive La Marzocco machine.

So what’s the takeaway here? There’s much innovation in the kitchen that doesn’t necessarily have to do with technology. In particular with the espresso makers, it’s clear that people are interested in returning to making food “by hand.” Does that mean it will taste better? Not necessarily. It’s about both accessibility and the desire to be involved in the food-making process. Even if that means ridiculous sphere-shaped ice for your craft cocktail.

Cluck Is The Smart Kitchen Timer That Keeps Track Of Cooking So You Don’t Have To

When Arne Gaenz asked his wife the number one problem that she would like solved in the kitchen she responded – make boiling eggs easier. So he and partner Doon Malekzadeh got to work making prototypes of products that could help boil eggs in a way that wouldn’t under or over cook them and take the guesswork out for the consumer. The end result? Cluck – a smart kitchen timer that makes boiling eggs – and a lot of other foods – much more precise and simple.

cluck - the smart kitchen timer

Launched today on Indiegogo, Cluck by Seattle-based startup Orbsense Technologies is a new take on the kitchen timer, a staple in the kitchen that’s only been disrupted perhaps in recent years by the Amazon Echo and its addition of a voice-controllable timer. But the problem with Echo – and any kitchen timer, smart or dumb, is that it doesn’t exactly assist you with your cooking but rather delivers information. When prompted, it well tell you your food is done – or, the time you think it will take to cook your food has passed.

What it doesn’t account for is the actual cooking environment. Potato salad recipes (like the one Arne’s wife was trying to perfect) might give an estimated time to boil a dozen eggs, but it doesn’t know the precise settings of any one user’s stove and doesn’t have any clue how not to overcook the eggs. That’s where Cluck comes in. Designed with a nod to the product’s origins, the device resembles an egg with little feet and it can be dropped into any pot of water to monitor the cooking using its embedded temperature sensor. Connected to a smartphone app, Cluck gives the user a selection of foods it’s able to monitor and will send alerts when action is needed.

OrbSense founders Gaenz and Malekzadehsaid said their focus on the kitchen helped them hone their product idea to one that focused on a “micro-moment of utility.” With over 30 years of product design and development at big tech names like Samsung, Microsoft and T-Mobile, the pair sought to achieve the right combination of simplicity and usefulness – something they say the larger smart home industry has struggled with in the journey to mainstream adoption.

“If your product is too complex or too hard to use, the value of the product will be overshadowed by its complexity and adoption will be a challenge.”

Malekzadeh told The Spoon that they believed their primary consumers will be tech-savvy and willing to use tech in the kitchen, but that the problem of distracted cooking that they are working to solve has broader appeal. “I don’t know how often I’ve talked to people about my forgotten pot of boiling water for pasta story and seen their eyes light up and hear them exclaim, ‘That happened to me just yesterday!'”

The focus on solving one problem and doing it well is a consistent theme in kitchen tech as we see new and legacy companies trying to create better ways to cook, shop and eat food at home and on the go. But as we saw at Smart Kitchen Summit 2016 last week, some of those products may have mainstream appeal but come with high initial offering prices, above what mainstream consumers typically spend. Malekzadeh is quick to point out that price and its retrofit nature is another differentiator for Cluck. “Since Cluck works with the pots and pans you already own, we can develop a product which provides basic “cookware connectivity” to address the needs of busy — and sometimes distracted — home cooks.”

Cluck is now available for pre-order on Indiegogo – early bird backers can nab the smart kitchen timer for $25, $10 below the planned retail price.

Disclosure: The Spoon founder Michael Wolf is an advisor to Cluck, mainly because the Cluck guys live in the same town and their kids go to the same school as Mike’s kids. Plus Arne and Doon promised to give Mike a “Mother Clucker” t-shirt.

Bringing Connected Kitchen Products to Market With GE’s FirstBuild

It used to take years for GE to bring a new product to market. With FirstBuild, their innovation community/incubator/maker space, they’re compressing the development cycle to months. FirstBuild is helping GE conceptualize and productize for new ideas in the kitchen and beyond, and it’s also helping them enter test market viability through new mechanisms such as crowdfunding.

In this podcast, Mike talks with Taylor Dawson, the lead evangelist for FirstBuild.

You can find out more about FirstBuild at www.firstbuild.com

The Catalyst Takes Aim At The Mess In Homebrew Fermentation

Homebrewing is a hot area in the smart beverage space. With startups like PicoBrew, a Seattle-based company making complete homebrewing systems designed to take the guesswork and mess out of making beer at home to Alchema, a company that’s crowdfunding a product to make cider at home from fruit and yeast, there’s no shortage of new stuff to report.

The success of these early systems is prompting others to jump in and create products that all serve the growing demand to make alcohol at home. Enter The Catalyst. The Catalyst Fermentation System just a piece of homebrewing equipment that simplifies the fermentation process, making it easier than ever to make great beer at home.

Fermentation is arguably the trickiest part of the home brew process – the temperature of fermentation and the sanitation requirements can make or break a batch. There’s such a need for easier solutions, in fact, that The Catalyst isn’t the first crowdfunding attempt at making fermentation easier for homebrew enthusiasts. Whirlpool, through its W Labs incubator, raised over $220k on Indiegogo earlier this summer for their homebrew fermenter, Vessi.

The Catalyst’s successful Kickstarter campaign is yet again another demonstration for the demand in the market for better homebrew equipment. Touting improved form and function, The Catalyst quickly hit their $50,000 goal and at the time of this piece is closing in on $300k in funding from over 1300 backers. The product is the creation of a homebrew kit and recipe company called Craft a Brew based in Orlando, FL. Looking to give customers an even simpler way to brew at home, Craft a Brew created its first hardware product.

“With the Catalyst, we’ve simplified the steps that come after brewing so you can do all of them without having to siphon, transfer, or use any more tools until bottling day,” the company’s crowdfunding pitch reads. The device allows you to complete several steps in the home brew process all in the same container and then allows for a clean and simple transfer to the bottle.

It might help the spouses and roommates of homebrew enthusiasts as well; The Catalyst is designed to be smaller, cleaner and more aesthetically pleasing than most brewing equipment. The Craft a Brew team has actually been researching, testing and prototyping the idea for almost 2 years and has promised to ship The Catalyst to backers by October. The company is still taking pre-orders for the time being on their Kickstarter page.