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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Dash

StoreBound’s Evan Dash Wants to Create a Housewares Brand for a New Generation

“Breville was doing incredibly well,” said Dash. “They were still fairly new. And a lot of brands were chasing them to the high end. And then you had this whole like lower end, that was just in shambles, fighting over price, price price.”

While Dash didn’t want to necessarily compete with Breville or fight over tiny margins in a brutal price competition, he saw an opportunity in between the two.

“It really left this beautiful gap in the middle that we felt like we could step into with great design, great quality, great value, and a social media strategy.”

Ten years later, he and his wife sold the company they had built after growing their revenue to $100 million by focusing on that neglected middle space with their flagship namesake brand, Dash.

While the terms of the sale to French consumer goods conglomerate Groupe SEB were not announced, a conservative revenue multiple of 3-5 times sales would easily put the acquisition within the half a billion dollar territory, which would put the deal possibly higher valuation than that of the Anova acquisition by Electrolux (but well below the Instant Brands $2 billion estimated deal size).

So how did Dash go from an idea to $100 million company in a decade? According to Evan Dash, it was in large part thanks to their focus on young consumers who didn’t feel any loyalty to the brands their parents had brought into the home.

“While everybody talks about how the ‘millennials are up and coming, but they really don’t have the money to spend,’ they absolutely do”, said Dash. “And they are so influential, they’re influencing their parents generation, even their grandparents generation and a lot of cases.”

A big part of attracting the attention of those customers was through the use of social media, primarily Instagram. According to Dash, that early emphasis on Instagram was influenced by his own kids.

“They were showing the way that they could build momentum,” said Dash. “And one of them had a sports page, and he was editing jerseys of doing jersey swaps of players. And he had 10,000 followers.”

Beyond speaking to younger consumers through social media, much of the focus by Dash was creating products that not only looked different than those he and Rachel had grown up with, but were designed to be more user-centric.

“We tended to look at products with fresh eyes,” said Dash. “For example, we launched a two slice toaster early on and my head designer for toasters came to me and they said, ‘Hey, Cuisinart has one through six on their control, and KitchenAid has one through seven on their control. Can we just say light, medium, dark, defrost and keep warm?’

Armed with the resources of a company like Groupe SEB, Dash doesn’t have any plans to slow down. The company will expand into products that focus on circular economy, and Dash also hinted at plans for bigger products like refrigerators.

Spoon Plus subscribers can read the full transcript of my interview with Dash or watch the full interview below. If you’d like to learn more about Spoon Plus, you can do so here.

Groupe SEB Acquires StoreBound, the Startup Behind Dash and Sobro Brands

French home goods conglomerate Groupe SEB announced yesterday that they had acquired a majority stake in StoreBound, a New York City-based maker of stylish and sometimes tech-forward kitchen gear.

StoreBound, founded by longtime housewares industry exec Evan Dash and his wife Rachel Dash, had built a reputation in recent years as a scrappy, youth-oriented housewares brand. Their DASH product line, which usually features styling reminiscent of SMEG’s popular retro look at a fraction of the price of SMEG, sprinkles Amazon’s the top 100 kitchen category with their low cost air fryers and egg cookers. According to the release, StoreBound had hit $100 million in sales over the past year.

StoreBound also owns Sobro, which started with the company’s Indiegogo campaign for a hybrid fridge/coffee table. A year later the company launched a smart side table and before long they had a standalone brand to sell, well, bro-focused frankenfurniture.

While StoreBound’s tech-forward products were often kinda weird and kitschy (i.e. Sobro), they sometimes released interesting products like their rapid cold brew coffee maker and the PancakeBot, a pancake “printer”.

The acquisition of StoreBound marks the first exit among a new cohort of stylish, youth-focused house and cookware brands to emerge out of the New York startup scene over the past decade, including Chefman and Gourmia as well as newer venture-backed cookware brands Great Jones, Caraway and Pattern Brands.

RIP, Plastic Amazon Dash Buttons

So long, li’l Dash button, your one-press re-ordering is no longer needed, and Amazon has stopped selling you (hat tip to CNet). You’ll now join other endeavors Amazon pulled the plug on, like the Fire phone and a New York City headquarters.

Actually, that’s not entirely fair. Amazon Dash had a good run and was good at what it did. It’s just no longer necessary in an Alexa-powered — and increasingly connected — world.

For the uninitiated, in its first iteration, Amazon Dash was a small, five dollar, internet-connected device with a single button that could do one thing: re-order a particular product. Running low on Bounty Paper Towels or Tide laundry detergent? Press the Bounty button or Tide button to automatically order more from Amazon.

Back when Dash debuted, there weren’t nearly as many connected devices in the house, so the idea of replenishing often-used items with the touch of a button was actually pretty useful. We liked the simplicity of the Dash back in the day. In 2016, The Spoon’s Mike Wolf wrote:

Introduced a day before April Fool’s Day in 2015, it turned out the button was no joke, as the button (and the associated Dash Replenishment Service) represented an effort by Amazon to bring point-of-consumption ordering to the home and into the kitchen. ‘Why wait for consumers to go to the Amazon website?’ Amazon seemed to be asking with the Button, when they could move the point of replenishment and reordering to the actual point of consumption?

But now Amazon has built Dash Replenishment Services into a lot of different appliances (including the Amazon microwave) and rolled out virtual Dash buttons, not to mention the fact that you can simply ask Alexa to order your stuff — no button needed.

The other problem is that each button was brand specific, so if you outgrew the need for diapers or no longer liked a particular drink, you were stuck with a useless button stuck on your pantry.

But it wasn’t too long after our initial writing of the wonder button that we realized the jig was up for the Dash. In January of 2017, Mike Wolf updated his Dash assessment with:

The quiet CES for Dash replenishment makes me wonder if Amazon is beginning to look towards voice-assisted purchasing as the future for kitchen and smart home commerce. The company is making more things available to buy through Alexa, not altogether surprising give how focused the company is on sustaining its early lead in voice assistants.

Amazon is going to stop selling Dash buttons globally, but will continue to support orders through existing Dash buttons as long as people are using them. (Poetically, this seems to be the equivalent of the two times people die, the day of their actual death, and the last time someone says their name.)

Don’t cry for Dash, it had a good run and helped usher in a more connected home.

WePlenish Launches Kickstarter For Amazon Dash-Powered Grocery Reordering Container

You know that searing anger and frustration you feel when you think you have one more coffee pod (or energy bar, or teabag) left, but instead you’re greeted with an empty container? Meaning you either have to a) do without, or b) hightail it to the store and hope you’re not late for work?

WePlenish wants to make sure that terrible experience never happens to you again. The Fort Lauderdale, Florida-based startup has developed an IoT-enabled container which uses sensors and WiFi to automatically reorder pantry staples through an integration with Amazon’s Dash Replenishment service platform. Yesterday they launched a Kickstarter to try and raise $50,000 for their minimum viable product (MVP), dubbed ‘the Java Smart Container.’

When you receive a smart container, you’ll download the WePlenish app and enter in your chosen product for the container — anything from K-cups to snack bars is fair game. WePlenish then uses their patent-pending volume measuring technology to keep track of how full the container is at all times.

When the supply drops below 25%, they send you a Push notification to make sure they’re good to go ahead and reorder. At this point, you have a choice to stop the order or add extra items to your delivery.

As you use it, the smart containers also use a Nest-like algorithm to learn your consumption patterns. But WePlenish does have safety nets in place, so they can trigger an order even if you have relatives in town who are depleting your coffee supply at a much faster rate than normal.

So are WePlenish’s smart containers that much more useful or efficient than other grocery reordering methods? Using Amazon Dash buttons and voice assistants is easy, sure — but you still have to do something. “They require the user to take action, to remember to place the order,” WePlenish co-founder Ro Grosman told The Spoon. The Java Smart Container takes you out of the equation entirely.

“We believe that the smart home technology should work for you. The automation should be seamless,” said Grosman. Which means, if their product works well enough, customers won’t have to think about it at all. “We want people to almost forget about it and let it order for them,” he emphasized. 

Of course, seamless automated ordering is what Amazon had in mind with their integrated, in-device replenishment platform.  The question is — for WePlenish and Amazon’s Dash platform — do you need an IoT-powered device to reorder for you, or would it be better to simply create a “subscription” through Amazon or other providers to ship to you on the regular (Amazon being Amazon, they have both bases covered).

Some will remember WePlenish from a 2016 Amazon announcement about a new crop of Dash Replenishment Service partners. The company was one of a handful of companies that Amazon had signed up to integrate Dash, and while Amazon has since put much of its focus in the intervening time period on voice ordering with the runaway success of Alexa, there are companies like WePlenish still pushing forward with Amazon’s integrated re-ordering platform.

WePlenish is Grosman’s second startup. Prior to WePlenish, Grosman founded a company called GoDataFeed in 2007, which is an ecommerce multichannel marketing platform. He still serves as executive chairmen. WePlenish and GoDataFeed are closely tied through a technology backend as well as through some employees; according to Grosman, he started WePlenish with a few GoDataFeed employees and has since grown the newer company to about 20 employees.

WePlenish isn’t the only food tech startup edging in on the grocery replenishment space. British company Pantri (finalist in the Smart Kitchen Europe startup showcase) is developing a maker platform to connect smart appliances with grocery delivery companies, and PantryChic (a SKS 2015 Startup Showcase veteran) has a patented system which stores, dispenses, and reorders dry pantry goods like flour and sugar.

Despite the name of their inaugural product, Grosman says they anticipate that their containers will be used for a lot more than just coffee. “Our goal is to moderate the entire pantry,” he said — and beyond. Grosman told The Spoon that WePlenish plans to eventually offer in-fridge grocery ordering. 

The Java Smart Container, which has already entered into production (a good sign for those leery of Kickstarter hardware fails), will be available on Amazon this fall for $39.99, but early backers can snag one for $20 through Kickstarter. According to Grosman, WePlenish has about twenty total employees and is largely self-funded, but he did say the company has taken an undisclosed amount of private investment.

Cuisinart & Dash Race To Bring Cold Brew Coffee To You Quicker

If you’re a cold brew coffee fan and want to make your own at home, the bad news is making a batch of this smooth tasting joe can take anywhere from 12 to 24 hours. Because of this, most folks just end up heading down to the local coffee shop or grocery store and spend anywhere from $4-7 to satiate their cravings.

But I have some good news for those who want to make their own cold brew and don’t want to wait 24 hours to pour the first cup: Over the past few months, both Cuisinart and Dash started shipping cold brew coffee makers that can put a cup of cold brew in your hands in less than 30 minutes. Each uses a slightly different technology to accelerate the brewing process, but both are drastically different than traditional slow steep makers such as the Toddy.

Let’s first look at Cuisinart’s entry into the quick cold brew market.

Cuisinart DCB-10

The Cuisinart DCB-10 Cold Brew Coffee machine, which debuted last fall, uses what the company describes as ‘rapid-spin technology’ to extract the flavor from the coffee grounds.  While the Cuisinart folks didn’t reveal any specific details about the technology, it sounded a little like centrifugal brewing method used in the Spinn coffee system to me.

The DCB-10 can make a pot of mild, ready-to-drink (many traditional cold brew makers like the Toddy only make concentrate) cold brew in 25 minutes, or you can keep dial up the time to 35 minutes for medium or 45 minutes for a bold brew.

The Cuisinart DCB-10 will set you back $99, quite a bit more than traditional drip cold brew makers, but again you are paying for convenience. Early reviews of the DCB-10 on Amazon seem to be fairly positive.

You can see Cuisinart’s head of marketing Mary Rodgers walk through the DCB-10 in the video below:

Automatic Cold Brew Coffeemaker (DCB-10) Talking Points

Dash Cold Brew Coffee Maker

The Dash Cold Brew Coffee Maker, which claims to make a batch of cold brew in only 5 minutes, was first teased a year ago at the 2017 Housewares show. The company went on to launch a successful Indiegogo and eventually shipped the product before the holidays and can now be found on Target.com.

Unlike the Cuisinart, the Dash cold brew machine uses a technique the company describes as “patent pending cold boil technology” with a pump to “create rapid circulation and create the same results you would get from the extraction of boiling without any added heat.” Also unlike the Cuisinart, you can brew either concentrated or ready-to-drink with the Dash machine.

Early reviews of the Dash Cold Brew system are mixed, with some customers complaining about what one Indiegogo backer described as an “exploding coffee machine” where the top of the brewing chamber comes off during the brew cycle and sprays coffee around the room.

Storebound CEO Evan Dash told me via email that the company is working on “some big improvements” they will be rolling out in the next month or so. Let’s hope one of those improvements is removing the ‘exploding coffee’ problem some users seem to have with the machine.

You can see an explanation of the Dash machine below:

Dash Rapid Cold Brew System

It’s not surprising that as more consumers look for ways to brew cold brew coffee at home, companies look to step up with new products to make the process more convenient. I imagine that we’ll see more solutions in the coming year that accelerates the brewing process.

Now if someone could just figure out how to ferment kombucha quickly to satiate my craving for the fizzy probiotic-laden drink, that’s something I’d be on board with.

Here’s The Most Exciting New Coffee Tech Of 2017

Ready for a jolt of innovation with your morning caffeine fix? Good thing, because 2017 looks like it could serve up a double shot of disruptive coffee technology.

Due to a combination of emerging taste trends, technologies, and good timing, 2017 is shaping up to be an exciting year in the world of coffee. Here are the products that I’m most intrigued about:

Spinn Coffee

(Update: Read my November 2017 update on the status of Spinn here). Spinn Coffee is a San Francisco startup that is expected to ship its centrifugal brewing system this summer to early backers.  The Spinn coffee maker uses the same centrifugal technology that Nespresso uses in its Vertuoline coffee and espresso maker line (Nespresso licenses the technology from Spinn), only instead of creating a centrifuge within the pod, the Spinn uses its patented technology within an internal centrifuge system.

The new machine will grind whole beans for each cup and brew the consumer’s choice of espresso or drip coffee. The centrifuge spins the brewing coffee spins at a high rate within the chamber to extract flavors from the ground coffee beans.

As would be expected from a modern coffee maker, the Spinn is connected and app-controllable. The company is also working to develop a coffee marketplace that delivers beans from local roasters. While the first batch of Spinns is sold out, the company has made a second batch available for preorder that is expected to ship in the second half of this year.

Spinn - The key to the Best Cup of Coffee

Bonaverde Berlin Roast-Grind-Brew Machine

(Update: You can see our November 2017 video review of the Bonaverde Berlin here). Bonaverde is one of the connected kitchen’s longest running crowdfunding sagas, having raised funding for its roast-grind-brew coffee machine back in 2013. While over two years late, the company finally started to ship to beta testers (aka Kickstarter backers) and are fine-tuning the product for a broader release.

The Bonaverde Berlin is a unique idea and will test just how far coffee lovers will go for a unique cup of coffee. While the home coffee roasting movement has picked up steam in recent years, the typical method for home roasting is to use a dedicated home roaster.  By combining roast-grind-brew into one single device, the Berlin will certainly provide extra convenience and space savings for those interested in home roasting, but it’s too soon to tell how many average consumers are willing to go this far for a unique and fresh cup of coffee.

The Berlin, which will be available to non-Kickstarter backers at the end of this year, will run for $800 or more at retail. The device requires its own special filters to mask the roasting smell as well as – at least initially – that you purchase the coffee pouches from the company that can cost between $1 and $5.  Consumers will eventually be able to insert their own beans to roast, but for now users of the Bonaverde will need to buy their green coffee through the Bonaverde curated marketplace.

You can watch a CNET video review of the product below.

Seva Coffee

In many ways, Seva is a similar concept to the Bonaverde Berlin in that it has created a roast-grind-brew machine that starts with green coffee beans and delivers a full cup of coffee, but the main difference being that Seva uses a proprietary capsule system. The capsules, which are compostable (unlike traditional Keurig based pod system), will allow the user to create a single cup of coffee, unlike the Bonaverde system which brews between 5 and 8 cups with a pouch of their coffee.

Pricing and availability for the Seva Coffee machine are currently not available.

Dash Cold Brew Coffee Machine

While companies like Toddy have enabled consumers to make cold brew coffee at home for decades, a recent surge in interest in the low-acidity coffee brewing method has some wondering if there’s a faster way to make coffee than the usual 8 to 12 hours required for a cup of cold brew.

Enter Storebound, the company behind the PancakeBot and the SoBro connected coffee table. The company showed off a prototype of its Dash Rapid Cold Brew Coffee Maker at the Housewares Show, a device that is expected to short cut the process of cold brew coffee to 10 minutes.  According to Digital Trends Jenny McGrath, the Dash Cold Brew machine uses something called ““cold boil” and lots of filtration.”

Storebound isn’t the first company to take a swing at a quick cold brew machine. First Build, the incubation group for GE that created the Paragon precision cooker, had a fast cold brew prototype called the Prisma that it came about $3 thousand short of funding on Indiegogo last fall, which caused them to put the brakes on development.

Chime Chai Tea Maker

Ok, so admittedly I’m cheating here by including a chai maker, but hey, who doesn’t like chai tea? The Chime connected tea maker, which is expected to start shipping later this year, uses a pod-based system that allows you to brew a highly optimized cup of chai.

Jacked-Up Nitro Cold Brew Keg System

Since so many us like our beer to taste like coffee, it’s only natural that we’d eventually have coffee that tastes like beer.  Or, at the very least, coffee that has a Guinness-like head in the form of nitrogen-injected coffee.

While nitro-injected coffee has been gaining in popularity in recent years, it’s still hard to find unless you live near an adventurous coffee bar. But don’t worry, you can always make nitro-coffee at home if you’re willing to try some of the early nitrogen coffee makers such as the Jacked-Up Nitro. The system, which is available online through a home brew specialty retailer, is available today for $230 and looks fairly straightforward to operate.

However, being the tech nerd that I am, I’m still on the hunt for a home nitro system that is connected and doesn’t require me to go to a home brew specialty shop. Who knows, maybe there’s an innovative startup (hint hint) that will create one that I include in my top coffee tech list of 2018.

Want to meet the leaders defining the future of food, cooking and the kitchen? Get your tickets for the Smart Kitchen Summit today.

Research: People Prefer Grocery Stores To Automated Delivery…For Now

You know those time when you’re standing at the fridge,  pulling out the things to prepare dinner, and realize you’re missing a key ingredient?

Frustrating, right?

But here’s the thing: nowadays all this could have been avoided with a little planning and the automated delivery services now available.

And make no mistake: grocery delivery services are popping up everywhere. Some of straightforward online grocery services, while others are increasingly relying on order automation enabled by subscriptions, while some replenishment programs are starting to use scanning devices to monitor use/replacement needs.

But as online replenishment services become more commonplace, the question is will people using them? The answer for now is…maybe not so much. According to a recent survey of over one thousand US Households conducted by NextMarket Insights and The Spoon, it appears most people at this point still prefer the old standard – the grocery store – to procure the groceries they need.  In fact, when asked why people are not using  some form of automated delivery, over half (56%) of respondents said it was because they would prefer to go to the grocery store.

So why would a person prefer going to the grocery store over the clear convenience of automated delivery?

The short answer is a lack of familiarity with new services that are different than traditional services. According to the NextMarket Insight survey,  consumers cite privacy concerns (21%) over having companies using  in-home sensors such as those used with Amazon’s Dash.  Many also feared being charged for unwanted products (11%).

Concerns over automated services do differ by age group.  Respondents under the age of 30 were most concerned about money—having to pay for items they didn’t want.  Older respondents (60+) said privacy was more of a concern, that they felt uncomfortable with sensors in their home being monitored by some company.

The good news is that while consumers may still be unfamiliar with these services, comfort levels can change.  As automated delivery services become more widespread, more common, comfort level will rise.  As with many things that technology brings us, at first there is a great deal of skepticism and hesitancy.  If the product or service, however, is shown to improve on some aspect of our lives, then it will transcend that skepticism and achieve wide scale adoption.  The challenge for automated product delivery services will be to streamline the grocery procurement process, delivering the right goods, when needed, and at minimal cost to the consumer.

Freshub Launches Second Generation Kitchen Commerce Platform & Hardware Partner

Freshub, a maker of a kitchen commerce platform, announced its second generation platform and its first hardware partner this week.

With Freshub 2.0, the company has created a platform for ordering groceries using natural language interfaces such as voice and gesture recognition. As part of the announcement, the company said it is working with third-party hardware makers to build Freshub 2.0 into devices, and identified XtremeMac as its first consumer device hardware partner.

The XtremeMac device is called KitchenHub, is described as “a high-end touchscreen-enabled, voice-activated music player that comes bundled with an array of kitchen applications, including grocery shopping, music playback, recipe lookup, cooking timers, weather forecasts and more.”  The two companies did not give a shipment date for the KitchenHub.

By focusing on natural user interfaces like voice, Freshub offers a potential alternative to grocers or food retailers who are wary of standardizing on Amazon’s Alexa and Dash platforms. Amazon’s own home commerce efforts seem to be slowly shifting towards Alexa and away from Dash, in part because of the runaway success of Alexa and Echo.

Freshub’s ace in the hole still seems to be its relationship with NCR, a retail point of sale Goliath, who probably sees Freshub’s technology as a necessity to fight back against Amazon’s effort to push the point of sale into the home.

Freshub also has a relationship with Gourmia, a fast growing maker of connected kitchen equipment. The relationship was announced last spring, but at this point it doesn’t look as if Gourmia has shipped any products powered by Freshub’s platforms.

You can see Freshub CEO Iri Zohar speaking about its technology and the smart kitchen commerce market with the head of Amazon Dash Daniel Rausch and Hiku CEO Rob Katcher at the first Smart Kitchen Summit below.

Food Commerce and The Smart Kitchen

Amazon Dash At Over 250 Buttons, But Is Voice The Future of Kitchen Commerce?

Amazon added 50 new Dash Buttons this week, including such names as Colgate, Kingsford, and Rogaine. These new additions bring the total to over 250 buttons almost two years after the launch of Amazon’s connected commerce platform.

The company also recently rolled out “virtual buttons” for Dash, which are on-screen versions of the button that pop up as a shortcut on Amazon.com for things you buy on the regular. Amazon auto-generates buttons for certain high-frequency purchases and also allows you to create your own custom buttons.

This news comes after what was a relatively quiet CES for Dash replenishment service, the built-in version of Dash that companies like Whirlpool touted as part of their smart home rollouts at last year’s CES. Outside of a smart garbage can with Dash inside, there wasn’t a whole lot of news for Amazon’s push-button commerce effort as the company and its partners focused on touting Alexa at the big consumer tech show.

The quiet CES for Dash replenishment makes me wonder if Amazon is beginning to look towards voice-assisted purchasing as the future for kitchen and smart home commerce. The company is making more things available to buy through Alexa, not altogether surprising give how focused the company is on sustaining its early lead in voice assistants.

I have a feeling we should know by next year’s CES.

Looks Like Amazon May Be Building A Kitchen Computer After All

Whaddya know: The long-rumored kitchen computer from Amazon may be real.

One can’t be blamed for having doubts, because ever since the device code-named Project Kabinet was first rumored last year, info – in typical Amazon fashion – has been scarce.

And while I recently speculated that Alexa’s fast growing library of kitchen-centric skills could constitute a virtual kitchen computer, it looks like Amazon may have something a little more literal in mind.

Back when I first wrote about Project Kabinet for Forbes in August of 2015, I speculated about what such a product would be:

If you take all the pieces of Amazon’s strategy to enter the kitchen – Dash, Alexa/Echo, and Amazon Fresh (the company’s home grocery delivery service) – they are interesting but disjointed pieces of the same puzzle, one in which Amazon is trying to figure out how to bring all the things we do in a kitchen into Amazon’s orbit. Whether it’s discovery of food or recipes, restocking our shelves or cooking itself, Amazon knows technology will have a bigger part to play in all of these in the future. Kabinet will likely attempt to unify all of these activities together and manage them using one device, by not only incorporating technology from all of these efforts but also integrating with a variety of third-party appliances to manage all of these activities for them.

In short, Kabinet will likely be Amazon’s physical manifestation of a kitchen operating system

How does that compare to the Bloomberg report? Here’s how they describe the new Amazon device:

The new device will have a touchscreen measuring about seven inches, a major departure from Amazon’s existing cylindrical home devices that are controlled and respond mostly through the company’s voice-based Alexa digital assistant, according to two people familiar with the matter. This will make it easier to access content such as weather forecasts, calendar appointments, and news, the people said. They asked not to be identified speaking about a product that has yet to be announced.

In Techcrunch’s report, they speculate that the new touchscreen Echo was designed, in part, to be “tilted to different viewing angles for easier use in the kitchen.”

While it’s hard to say if this new effort from Amazon would come close to the futuristic kitchen computer concept that unifies the different experiences of shopping, delivery, prep and cooking that I described in my Forbes piece, it’s intriguing that the company sees enough potential to create a device tailored towards the kitchen.

At last month’s Smart Kitchen Summit, Charlie Kindel talked about how the kitchen is the likely landing place for many – if not a majority – of Echos, and with over 100 Alexa food and drink skills alone, voice is rapidly emerging as the future interface for the kitchen. Throw in Amazon’s efforts to kill the middle of the grocery store with Dash, and this new Echo makes more and more sense.

Amazon Wants To Send An Assistant To Your Home. Could That Include Cooks?

Amazon is full of ideas. Some good, some bad, some even a little weird, but there’s no doubt the company never seems to run short on new business concepts.

One of these new ideas apparently has Amazon getting into the home helper business. As first reported by the Seattle Times, the company has a job posting on its website for a ‘home assistant,’ a position that would involve “working with customers each day with tidying up around the home, laundry, and helping put groceries and essentials like toilet paper and paper towels away.”

In other words, just like it sounds: a home helper.

As weird and wide-ranging as Amazon is with their moonshots, creating a home cleaning business is a bit of a stretch even for them. For that reason, it’s worth speculating (as I did over at NextMarket) about what exactly they may be up to. While there’s a good chance this may be an experiment or some form of market research, there’s an equally good chance the company is trying to create an Amazon-branded services market or a “truck roll” into the consumer’s home to help set it up on Amazon platforms like Dash.

But what if one of their ideas is to help the home CEO run their kitchen? While the list of tasks on the job posting includes things like cleaning and organizing, it doesn’t talk about cooking and with good reason: While putting away groceries is straightforward, making food requires knowledge of the unique tastes and dietary needs of a family. It also is pretty labor intensive.

Still, what if straightforward tasks like putting a pre-prepared meal in the oven became part of the portfolio of services? And, thinking higher-end, what if Amazon offered ways to match cooks with consumers in some form of home chef marketplace?

While I wouldn’t rule anything out for Amazon, I think these ideas are probably not what Amazon has in plan with its current home assistant effort. But,  given the company’s constant rollout of new ideas, it wouldn’t surprise me to see Amazon’s plans for food, cooking, and the kitchen expand in the future.

Amazon Announces The PoopBag Button (And 59 More Brands) As Dash Continues To Grow

If you think Amazon is betting the future entirely on the voice interface, think again.

That’s because despite a huge bet on Alexa and all things voice, the company is also ensuring our homes will be filled with lots of new physical interfaces in the future, especially those tailored towards replenishing our cupboards and closets with everything from toilet paper to garbage bags.

Towards that end, the company announced a slew of new brand partners, bringing the total number up to 200 different types of Dash buttons .  The new brands partners include some well known such as Purell and Cheez-it, as well as some lesser known products like PoopBags.

Amazon also revealed that orders using the Dash button have increased fivefold over the past year, although it’s unclear what exactly that means. As with most data that Amazon releases regarding its own products, a 500% increase is impressive on its own, but also leaves you wondering just how many people are using the technology on a regular basis. It could be they’ve shipped five times as many buttons and most people are only ordering once in a while, or they have figured out a way to actually get people to engage with their button more frequently. Until Amazon actually releases more data, we’ll have to keep making educated guesses.

I wrote last week that the company risks the Dash button becoming less important over time unless they enable a more universal button. I still believe that, but given what may be growing concern among consumers around connected devices in light of the recent Mirai botnet attack, the Dash button continues (for now) to be a low-risk and easy-to-understand way for the company to bring auto-replenishment to the masses while it continues to attack the commodity section of the grocery store.

If you want to hear Amazon Dash chief Daniel Raush talk about his vision for Dash, you can watch the video of his session at the Smart Kitchen Summit below.

The Subscription Kitchen: Connected Kitchen and Home Delivery from The Spoon on Vimeo.