Close Ad

The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Desora

Cinder Launches Chef Partnership Program

Cinder, the precision countertop grill that was saved from extinction by Desora, announced today that it is launching a new Chef Partnership Program, which will make Cinder-specific recipes available through the Cinder mobile app and website.

The Chef Partnership Program will feature recipes developed by Michelin starred chef John Critchley, who is Head Chef of Culinary Innovation at Chew (which Spoon readers might remember as the company that was going to — but then decided not to — take over the shuttered PilotWorks location in Brooklyn).

The Cinder is a unique device in the connected kitchen world that combines sous vide and conductive cooking. It’s a big machine that looks like a George Foreman grill on steroids that cooks food with precise temperate control. But unlike a typical sous vide circulator, the Cinder can also ratchet up the hot plates to sear as well.

According to the press announcement, the recipes “are meant to highlight Cinder’s unique Sous-Vide and grilling capabilities.” Critchley’s recipes have been designed exclusively for the Cinder grill, and users can expect a new recipe every week. The company will also be adding recipes from more chefs to the program throughout the year.

Access to these recipes will be free to all existing Cinder customers. Michel Maalouly, Co-Founder and CEO of Desora, told me via email that eventually the “recipes and resources” from the Chef Partnership Program will become a paid subscription service. All existing Cinder customers will be grandfathered into the program free of charge.

As part of today’s announcement, Desora also said that the company has released an all-new Android app for the Cinder that “now guides users through every step of the cooking process, from ingredient selection to food preparation.” An iOS update will arrive in the next few months.

Both Spoon founder Mike Wolf and I have tested the Cinder and found it to cook steaks perfectly. It’s bulky and heavy, and because it’s using precision cooking it’s not a fast way to prepare a protein, but the results are tasty. Now we’ll have to try the new recipes to see how easy they are to prepare.

A Quick Q&A with Desora’s CEO About the Cinder Acquisition

As we reported this morning, the Cinder smart grill was resurrected from the crowdfunded hardware deadpool when Desora announced it had purchased the company. The announcement sparked a bunch of questions, so I followed up with Desora Founder and CEO, Michel Maalouly. Here’s a brief summary of what I learned.

  • Desora bought “every single thing under Cinder,” said Maalouly. That includes hardware, trademarks, and the IP portfolio.
  • Palate Home, parent company of Cinder, never actually filed for bankruptcy. Maalouly said he learned about Cinder shutting down (our October coverage played a part!) and immediately reached out to the previous owner to talk about an acquisition; Palate Home never even got to the filing stage.
  • Units were built and waiting in a factory. Maalouly didn’t give a specific number but said that at the time of the acquisition, there was a factory in China “full of completed products.” Maalouly went out to China to do QA to make sure the units could be sent to Indiegogo backers.
  • “Every single person who backed it and didn’t receive product yet, will receive [a Cinder],” Maalouly confirmed. He couldn’t provide a timeline for when people would receive units, but the company has started the process of reaching out to Indiegogo backers.
  • The company will keep making Cinders. Maalouly said the asset portfolio around Cinder was incredibly rich, and the technology “very valuable.” Desora will keep making Cinders and will use its own Chinese manufacturing experience to improve the supply chain going forward.
  • Desora is also paying attention to the software. Cinder isn’t just hardware: there is also the software side, which the company will continue to support. The Cinder Android app is already in private beta and software going forward will work on legacy units.
  • The company is also expanding the software functionality. Desora has 14 Cinder-powered recipes on its site and the company will be integrating those recipes (and more) into the app.

All this is great, but really, we’re just happy that people who put money down for their Cinders will finally be getting them. And with new units now for sale online, we’ll see if Cinder’s grill technology is really as hot as Maalouly thinks it is.

Cinder Rises From the Ashes, Backers to Get Their Grills Courtesy of Desora

Cinder Grill, the crowdfunded smart countertop cooking device that, errr flamed out last year (read our coverage of the legal saga), appears to be reborn, courtesy of an acquisition by Desora, who announced the news today.

In a pretty rare turn of events, the nearly 1,000 people who backed Cinder on Indiegogo will actually be getting the product they paid for! Most backers of failed hardware project get bupkis, but Desora posted the following on the crowdfunding platform today:

The Cinder Grill and its technologies were acquired and absorbed by Desora. Cinder is now being reintroduced as part of the Desora family of precision grilling and food products, including iKamand, a smart grill controller, ProJoe, Classic III, and Big Joe III, high-caliber grills powered by Desora. All of you who have supported Cinder previously will be receiving your grills as we bring the product to the U.S. market.

The Cinder can also be purchased online now for $429.

Upon hearing the news, we had a few questions, the first of which being, who is Desora? The company hadn’t come across our radar, but it has the aforementioned line of outdoor grill and grill control products including the iKamand smart grill temperature controller, so the Cinder acquisition is on brand for the company. According to Crunchbase, Desora has raised an undisclosed Series A round from Morningside Group, a Shanghai-based “private investment group founded in 1986 by the Chan family of Hong Kong.”

In the press announcement, Desora said it acquired Cinder in November 2018, which is a month after Cinder filed for bankruptcy UPDATE: Following the publication of this article, I learned from Desora’s CEO that his company’s acquisition offer was made before Palate Home actually filed the bankruptcy paperwork.. As we wrote back in October:

Chapter 7 bankruptcy means that Palate Home’s assets will be sold off to pay its creditors. What this means for the future of the technology behind Cinder is unclear. Will the underlying IP be acquired and baked into a different product?

We reached out to Desora to see if we could suss out any further details around the acquisition, the state of manufacturing and the future of the Cinder.