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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Electrolux

In the World of Food Tech, The Big Guys Innovate Just Like Everyone Else. Sometimes

Two Stanford grads starting a Fortune 500 computer company in 1939 in their garages is a more than a twice-told tale. Same with a group of Harvard students coming up with a foundation to build Microsoft or Facebook. Less sexy, but equally important, are the innovations that happen at those same giant powerhouse organizations.

During the recent SKS Invent virtual conference, a pair of leaders from two such giants, Electrolux and BSH, spoke about the challenges and rewards that come with sparking innovation at a large, global brand. This post is a look back at my conversation and key insights gleaned from Tove Chevalley, Head of Electrolux Innovation Hub, and Lars Roessler, Head of Corporate Venturing for BSH Startup Kitchen.

What’s it like when a large, established organization pursues innovation? How does it happen? How does it start? Does it just kind of come to somebody in the shower?

Lars: No matter what type of innovation you’re talking about, it’s got to be consumer-centric, has to be customer-driven, customer focused. Suppose you innovate in a space where the consumer is not at the center of your thinking. You can do many things. But it won’t be successful.

Again, it starts with the consumer; we think about how we can improve quality of life, which is our old mantra, but how can we improve the consumer journey across the customer lifecycle? Of course, we are a big corporation and have resources and smart people. But in the end, you need to have the garage mentality is somehow getting inspiration from the outside world.

Tove: I don’t think it’s that different than what it is in the startup community. You know you need a good idea; you need an entrepreneurial spirit; you need to be a bit gutsy and be able to drive that forward.

Ensure you have availability for funding if you have ideas. We know which areas that we are interested in, in driving innovation. So we get to focus on everything that we do, which I think is critical for us when we crack that, that made a huge difference in our innovation funnel

What role does market research play?

Lars: Having market data is super important, but I think we all know typically, market research is kind of like backward-looking. Right? So, we know what happened in the past and what sales have been and what users might be thinking about. But you got to be more forward-looking as well. You could call it foresight management. Also, you can be more experimental, thinking about new needs.

Tove:  We also have a foresight team that helps us look at the biggest opportunity spaces in the future. Because I think that is key. What Lars is mentioning is, as a startup community, you need to look at the market right now as well. But it would help if you looked at other signals that are happening on and going on, you know, economically, politically, consumer, what’s happening around the world. And that gives us signals of where the future growth areas are.

Let’s talk about money. How are your projects and innovation financed? Or do you get kind of a budget? Is it a free flow of cash? Does it come with strings attached? And how do you set up goals and milestones?

Tove: We struggled with this setup because we started funding projects. That had a higher uncertainty. We realized quite quickly, of course, that that kills off ideas very quickly. What we did is we started looking at what the startup world looks like and venture capital. And how can we structure our funding, not only the funding we do with startups, but the funding that we do with their projects, in the same way, and looking at how you move through the funnel, you have different funding rounds. I think it takes a lot of training for leadership and how you look at projects, but also training for people internally and being comfortable in working that way. But that has given us risk mitigation and how we do risk in the company is a lot better.

Lars: When it comes to funding new innovation projects and startup collaborations, we run a very decentralized approach, meaning that money needs to come from business. So, we have had a learning curve on our end and many discussions. For projects, it depends, of course. How far out are you looking with the innovation you want to develop and a new business model you want to develop? But typically, if you don’t have a landing spot, how can you convince anyone within the company to fund, like the first couple of steps of an innovation project? How would you ever be able to convince them to do it by you when you got to be writing the really big checks?

What’s it like to pull the plug on a project?

Lars: No one likes to do it. When people work together, they form some bond. Right? But at some point in time, and that’s, I guess, also the role of units like ours, to be that mediator, buffer in between the startup, the external partner, and the internal innovation team. So I mean, in the end, it’s like a failed relationship, where hopefully, all come to the same conclusion. But in the end, it’s to the benefit of all parties to move

Tove: It’s about killing your darlings, and I think we all have the darlings we work with. I think for us, it’s a lot of building that culture internally and ensuring that we have, you know, mental security coming into these projects because you are working with a lot of uncertainty. And we want people to be comfortable being uncertain. And one of the most important things when you work with uncertainty, is to feel trust in each other and that you trust both the stakeholders that you work towards, but also the team that you work with, and trust that we all have the same goal in this and that we do this together. And I think for us, it’s a muscle that you need to train over and over again to ensure that you have this trust among yourselves, but also trust with your managers. So, we worked a lot on the kind of governance of projects and working with leadership to ensure that they provide that trust to the people who work with us. Also, looking into our, you know, Swedish heritage, we come from a culture where we do work as a team, and we don’t look and celebrate an individual accomplishment; we celebrate team efforts.

You can watch the full season below.

Podcast: Electrolux’s Kitchen of the Future & Other Food Tech News of the Week

Can the design of your kitchen change how and what you eat? Electrolux thinks so.

In this week’s episode of the Spoon podcast’s food tech news wrapup, we discuss Electrolux’s new kitchen concept called GRO. Other stories discussed on the show include:

As always, you can click below to listen or subscribe to The Spoon on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts.

The Weekly Spoon: Electrolux’s Kitchen of the Future & Taco Bell’s Reimagined Restaurant

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Electrolux Launches GRO, a Kitchen System Designed to Encourage More Sustainable Eating

Can a kitchen’s design help us eat more sustainable, plant-forward diets?

Swedish appliance manufacturer Electrolux thinks the answer is yes and, to that end, has launched an ambitious new kitchen system concept to help us get there.

Called GRO, the new system is comprised of a collection of interconnected modules that utilize sensors and AI to provide personalized eating and nutrition recommendations. According to the company, the system was designed around insights derived from behavioral science research and is intended to help encourage more sustainable eating behavior based on recommendations from the EAT-Lancet report for planetary health. The company will debut the new system at this week’s EuroCucina conference.

“How can a thoughtful kitchen slowly nudge you to more sustainable choices,” asks Tove Chevally, the head of Electrolux Innovation Hub, in an intro video to the GRO system. “To make the most of what you have, to buy smarter, and eat more diverse?

To see a video of the new GRO and to read the full story, head here.

Do you have the next big idea for the future of food & cooking? Apply to tell your story at SKS INVENT!

Taco Bell’s Vision of the Future Includes High-Tech Dumbwaiters & Lots of Drive-Thru Lanes

I’ve always been fascinated with dumbwaiters. An elevator built specifically to deliver food between floors of a building, the dumbwaiter is an idea that is both ridiculous and fascinating.

And while I can’t be sure that someone like Donald Trump or Jeff Bezos doesn’t have dumbwaiters built into their homes (though Bezos would probably prefer robots and Trump manservants he could yell at), what I am sure of is the dumbwaiter has, for the most part, largely gone extinct as part of modern life.

Until now. That’s because Taco Bell sees them as a potentially integral part of their restaurant of the future. Called Taco Bell Defy, the taco chain’s new restaurant concept includes an elevated restaurant with multiple drive-thru lanes, food lifts, and a lot of digital integrations.

While I wouldn’t, unlike others, claim this new concept possibly “the most ambitious” prototype in restaurant history, I would say it makes a whole lot of sense for a restaurant chain that does most of its business through a drive-thru. While many chains have developed drive-thrus that have multiple order lines, the choke point always comes later when cars zip-up into a single line to get their food. By spreading out the hand-off of food to four lines, the choke point of a single window for food handover is eliminated.

You can read the full post here. 

Smart Kitchen

Meet Celcy, a Countertop Oven With a Built-In Freezer That Will Cook Meals For You

Say you’re leaving for work and want to come home to a fully cooked meal? Or better yet, you want to line up a work week’s worth of meals and just want them prepared when you get home?

You might be a good candidate for the Celcy, an autonomous cooking appliance that combines a countertop oven with a freezer that stores the meals until ready for cooking.

The Celcy, which is currently in development, will store up to four meals in a freezer. Cooking can be rescheduled via an app or on-demand via request. When it’s time to cook, the meal is shuttled from the freezer compartment on the left side into the cooking compartment side on the right. A built-in elevator lifts and deposits the frozen meal in the top upper right cooking chamber where it is cooked for consumption.

You can read the full post here. 

Food Retail Tech

Circle K Planning To Deploy Seven Thousand AI-Powered Self-Checkout Machines

Mashgin, a maker of computer-vision-based self-checkout machines, announced today it has signed a deal with Circle K parent company Couche-Tard to deploy seven thousand self-checkout machines at the convenience store chain over the next three years.

The move follows the initial deployment of Mashgin systems at nearly 500 Circle K stores across the United States and Sweden since 2020. The move by the second-largest convenience store chain in North America with almost seven thousand stores will represent one of the largest ever deployments of self-checkout systems to date.

For Mashgin, the deal represents its biggest customer win yet and is yet another sign of why the company was able to recently raise a $62.5M Series B round at an impressive $1.5 billion valuation. The move represents a 700% total increase in deployments over its current installed base.

The Mashgin self-checkout system is installed at the checkout counter and enables customer checkouts without scanning barcodes. As seen in the video interview from CES in January, customers can essentially toss their items onto the small checkout pad, and the system will automatically recognize and tabulate the products.

To read the full story, head here.

Future Food

Cocuus Raises €2.5M to Scale Industrial 3D Food Printing for Plant & Cell-Based Meat Analogs

According to a release sent to The Spoon, 3D food printing startup Cocuus has raised €2.5 Million in a Pre-Series A funding round to scale up its proprietary 3D printing technology platform for plant-based and cell-cultured meat analogs. The round was led by Big Idea Ventures, with participation by Cargill Ventures, Eatable Adventures, and Tech Transfer UPV.

Founded in 2017, the Spanish startup has developed a toolbox of different 3D printing technologies under its Mimethica platform to enable the printing of different types of foods. These include Softmimic, a technology targeted at hospitals and eldercare facilities that transforms purees into dishes that look like real food (think of a vegetable or meat puree shaped into a “steak”), LEVELUP, an inkjet printing technology that prints images on drinks like coffee or beer (like Ripples), and LASERGLOW, a laser printer platform that engraves imagery onto food.

Read the full post at here.

SCiFi Foods Raises $22M With Andreessen Horowitz’s First Investment in Cultivated Meat

SCiFi Foods, a Bay Area-based food tech startup, announced that it has raised a $22 million Series A round led by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), making it a16z’s first investment in the growing cultivated meat market. The company, formerly known as Artemys Foods, also announced that it will be adding a new board member, Myra Pasek, the General Counsel of IronOx, who will be utilizing her expertise from Tesla and Impossible Foods to help SCiFi Foods bring its novel plant-based and cultivated meat hybrid through regulatory approval to the market. 

The new funding raises SCiFi Foods’ total funding to $29 million and will primarily be used to scale R&D efforts, build out the leadership team, and market the company. 

The Spoon sat down with CEO and co-founder, Joshua March, to learn more about SCiFi Foods’ new name, a hybrid meat product, and what it looks like to raise funding from one of the most famous venture capital firms during a recession.

Read the full interview with Joshua March here.

Food Robots

Xook Raises $1.3 Million to Roll Out Robotic ‘Food Courts in a Box’ in The US

If you’ve ever visited a cafeteria at a tech giant like Google or Facebook, you probably found that the food is just as tasty (or tastier) and often better for you than what you might order at a corner restaurant or make in your own kitchen.

But according to Xook CEO Raja Natarajan, this kind of access to an abundance of tasty, healthy, and free food is more the exception than the rule for US office workers. This is very different from countries like India, said Natarajan, where most corporate employers provide access to cafeterias stocked with food options for employees. This is why, after trialing a prototype for what he and cofounder Ratul Roy describe as a “food court in a box” in Bangalore, they are eyeing the US for the rollout of their robotic kiosk.

“In countries with high labor costs and high food costs, it is very hard to offer this kind of experience unless it comes with automation,” Natarajan told The Spoon in a recent interview.

To read the full story, click here!

Electrolux Launches GRO, a Kitchen System Designed to Encourage More Sustainable Eating

Can a kitchen’s design help us eat more sustainable, plant-forward diets?

Swedish appliance manufacturer Electrolux thinks the answer is yes and, to that end, has launched an ambitious new kitchen system concept to help us get there.

Called GRO, the new system is comprised of a collection of interconnected modules that utilize sensors and AI to provide personalized eating and nutrition recommendations. According to the company, the system was designed around insights derived from behavioral science research and is intended to help encourage more sustainable eating behavior based on recommendations from the EAT-Lancet report for planetary health. The company will debut the new system at this week’s EuroCucina conference.

“How can a thoughtful kitchen slowly nudge you to more sustainable choices,” asks Tove Chevally, the head of Electrolux Innovation Hub, in an intro video to the GRO system. “To make the most of what you have, to buy smarter, and eat more diverse?

The GRO is a modular system that can be tailored around a user’s preferences. Some of the modules in the GRO system include:

  • The Plant Gallery: A glass-enclosed showcase for fruits and vegetables.
  • Pulse and Grain Library: A transparent storage system for beans and grains.
  • Fermentation Pantry: A temperature-controlled home fermentation cabinet.
  • Nordic Smoker: a countertop kitchen smoker.
  • Steam Oven and Grill Drawer: An appliance garage.

The system will also have a touchscreen with a digital system called the ‘GRO Coach’ to provide the user with personalized eating recommendations, goal-setting, dietary and cooking guidance, and progress measurement over time. The system will also provide visualization of the user’s eating habits and how those impact the planet. The system will also possibly understand a consumer’s food inventory, making recommendations based on what is already in the fridge.

Something I might expect from another Swedish company in IKEA, the GRO system is unlike anything I’ve seen from a home appliance maker. It’s less a new appliance or even a series of appliances, but instead a fairly detailed vision of the future of the home kitchen. And not just a vision around space design, but in many ways around how consumers should live and eat in the future.

All of which is, in some ways, a real credit to Electrolux. It’s not often a company makes such a declarative values statement when introducing a new product, especially a product like an appliance or kitchen cabinetry system. It’s also, in my opinion, a vision that will probably play better in Europe than other regions, given the typical European’s (and especially northern European) higher level of awareness and concern about climate change.

At this point, Electrolux has not announced when the GRO system will be available to consumers. My guess is it may take a little time to roll out, given that it’s a brand new concept and might need to leverage home builder channels pretty extensively (it’s a complete kitchen system, after all, not just a single appliance upgrade).

No matter when it comes out, I’m interested in seeing how the industry and the consumer react to Electrolux’s future kitchen vision.

You can see a concept video of the GRO below:

An Airbnb for Air Fryers? How the Sharing Economy is Slowly Coming to Home Appliances

Back in 2016, the CEO of Swedish appliance company Electrolux floated the idea of possibly using a sharing economy model for washing machines.

“We have a few fun ideas we are testing, like: how about a laundry Uber, where people share their unused laundry time?” Jonas Samuelson said at the time.

While Electrolux never did launch an Uber-for-laundry service, it did eventually launch a subscription vacuum-as-a-service business in Europe for its robotic vacuum. Even so, the idea of sharing economy meets home appliances really hasn’t gotten much traction.

Until now. Kinda.

That’s because Tulu, an Israel/NY startup is bringing a version of the appliance-as-a-service concept to apartments and condos in the United States, the UK, Ireland, the Netherlands, and Israel. The company, which just raised a $20 million Series A funding round, offers short-term rentals on everyday household items like air fryers, printers, micro-mobility products (e-scooters), and more. They also power small shops for consumables like food.

The company, which started its shops in 2019, sees its concept of household goods-as-a-service as being in line with the mindset of everyday consumers who have gotten accustomed to sharing economy models.

“So I think that the best way to capture what Tulu is is that we’re part of a fundamental shift in consumption paradigms that are moving from this equation of ‘I want something, so, I buy it,’ into the equation of ‘I need something, therefore, I use it,” Yishai Lehavi, CEO and co-founder of Tulu, told Techcrunch. “We’re accelerating this already existing mindset and saying that everything in our daily life can become such a service.”

While I do think he’s right and the idea of short-term rentals for home goods is a perfect fit for those living in multi-family housing, it’s worth noting that Tulu isn’t a true two-sided peer-to-peer marketplace like Uber or Airbnb. It’s closer to a Lime e-bike model, where the supplier of the goods is the platform owner, while the other side is the consumer. This might be a small distinction and ultimately one that doesn’t matter to customers of Tulu (and future services like it), since in the end they still get the benefit of temporary ownership & usage no matter if the appliance is rented from a company or a private owner.

Where we are seeing true peer-to-peer sharing economy models in kitchens is via home cook marketplaces like Dishdivvy and Shef. These platforms give those with a kitchen and a little cooking capability an opportunity to monetize their ability and appliances, while also giving buyers a faster way to get what they want: finished meals.

It wouldn’t be surprising to see companies like Tulu, cottage food marketplaces, and even surplus food sharing services like Olio continue to gain traction in coming years. Inflation, increased urban density, and acceptance of new sharing models will continue to push many consumers to reject ownership as the default model when it comes to home appliances.

Electrolux Launches Connected Multi-Function Blender Powered by Drop

Swedish appliance maker Electrolux announced yesterday the launch of its Master 9 Multi Blender, a connected multi-purpose countertop device with an accompanying app powered by Drop.

The press announcement didn’t have many details, but a video posted by Electrolux last month shows a rendering of what the Master 9 is capable of. Depending on which model you get, there are three attachments that allow you to make smoothies and juices, or chop up vegetables for thicker pastes and sauces, or grind spices and coffee.

Electrolux Master 9 Multi Blender

Once connected to the blender, the Master X app, which was developed with Drop, offers up a number of recipes, step-by-step instructions, and blend programs that automatically adjust the speed and duration of a blend, depending on what you are making. The recipes in the Master X app were created in partnership with Le Cordon Bleu.

This blender continues Electrolux’s guided cooking push deeper into the kitchen and beyond just heating things up. The company already owns Anova, which makes sous vide wands, and has partnered with both Innit and SideChef.

This also adds another appliance arrow to Drop’s quiver. Last month cooking OS company partnered with Thermomix to control that appliance as well as order groceries.

No word on price for the Master 9, and even if you are interested in it, Electrolux is launching it first in Thailand and Korea this month and will roll it out to other markets in Asia in March.

If you can’t wait that long for a fancypants blender, you could always pick up the NutriBullet Balance ($149) or Instant Pot’s Ace Blender ($124), though that one doesn’t have an app.

Smarter Launches Software Platform for Appliances, Partners with Electrolux for New Fridge Cam PLUS

London-based connected appliance company Smarter announced the launch of its new “Powered by Smarter” software platform for appliance makers at the IFA show in Berlin today. The company also announced a partnership with Electrolux for its new Fridge Cam PLUS, which will run on the Powered by Smarter platform.

According to Smarter’s website, the Powered by Smarter platform offers small, pre-configured chipsets that can be integrated to “power almost any sensor, product, interface, protocol, or functional requirement to connect your devices.” Smarter then provides “device firmware and software execution, hardware interfacing, cloud connectivity, and remote device management for your product.”

Additionally, Powered by Smarter will offer appliance Smarter Assist, an AI-powered object recognition system for refrigerator replenishment, and Smarter Analytics for targeted marketing based on insights into consumer behavior. Powered by Smarter devices will also feature support for Siri, Alexa and If This Then That (IFTTT) and other systems.

One of the devices Powered by Smarter is the new FridgeCam PLUS, launched in partnership with AEG/Electrolux. The FridgeCam PLUS builds on Smarter’s previous FridgeCam, which was a camera that could be retrofitted into any fridge allowing you to remotely check on its contents via mobile app.

The new FridgeCam PLUS features a wider and higher-resolution image, as well as SmarterAssist, so it can recognize items in your fridge. The accompanying app, which is new, gives users an inventory of their fridge, an expiration date tracker, shopping lists and automated links for item re-stocking through Tesco and Amazon Fresh in the UK.

The press materials provided didn’t disclose pricing or availability details other than saying “Now with FridgeCam PLUS and Electrolux, users will have the benefit of a smaller, more accessible device that will be available in thousands of appliances across Europe.”

Are In-Store Fridges for Selling Food Near its Expiration Date Becoming a Thing?

I know there’s supposed to be three of something before it becomes a trend. But there are now two startups using almost the exact same combination of apps and special fridges in grocery stores to sell food nearing its expiration date at a discount, and I don’t think we have to wait for a third.

Supermarket News reports that grocer Hy-Vee has started a pilot program with Toronto-based company Flashfood in which Hy-Vee will sell food nearing its expiration date at a discounted rate via in-store fridges. From the story:

To use Flashfood, customers download the free app (available in iOS and Android versions) and then start shopping deals on items such as meat, dairy, bread and snacks. Purchases are then made directly from their smartphone and picked up at any time from the Flashfood Zone shelves or refrigerators in the store.

If that sounds familiar, thank you for being an avid reader of The Spoon! Back in November I wrote about a partnership between Swedish appliance giant, Electrolux and food waste fighting startup (and fellow Swedes) Karma to sell food nearing its expiration date at a discounted rate. From that story:

The fridge acts as a locker/waystation where unsold food that would otherwise be thrown away is held. Karma users can purchase that food through the Karma app, then pick it up from the new smart fridge in the store. The user unlocks the fridge by displaying a QR code and shows the product at checkout to complete the transaction.

According to the press announcement, the Hy-Vee/Flashfood program is currently running in three stores in Wisconsin. The Electrolux/Karma fridge was testing in Stockholm, Sweden.

Just to be clear, I’m not accusing anyone of stealing anyone’s idea (Wasteless is another company working with grocery stores for dynamic pricing). The point is, if two companies on different sides of the globe can bring together fighting food waste with app and discounts, let’s hope there is a third, fourth, and even fifth company trying to make it happen as well.

Electrolux and Karma Team up for Smart Grocery Fridge to Reduce Food Waste

Electrolux announced today that is has partnered with startup (and fellow Swedes) Karma to create a new smart refrigerator that helps grocery stores fight food waste.

As my colleague Catherine Lamb wrote this past summer, “Karma is a mobile app that helps retailers sell excess food to consumers at super-reduced prices. The only rules are that the food can’t be past its legal sell-by date and that retailers must list it for at least 50 percent less than its original price.”

Electrolux is also an investor in Karma, and as part of that investment, the two companies agreed to partner up to find ways to fight food waste. One of those ways is this new smart refrigerator, which launched its beta today at the ICA Kvantum Liljeholmen grocery store in Stockholm, Sweden.

The fridge acts as a locker/waystation where unsold food that would otherwise be thrown away is held. Karma users can purchase that food through the Karma app, then pick it up from the new smart fridge in the store. The user unlocks the fridge by displaying a QR code and shows the product at checkout to complete the transaction.

While we haven’t used it, this actually seems like a really smart marriage of hardware and software to fight the food waste problem. It gives Karma shoppers a more streamlined user experience when purchasing food. It gives Karma some in-store advertising. And it provides stores an elegant means of keeping food that would otherwise be thrown out while weaving that experience into broader shopping trips.

Karma says their app has been downloaded 400,000 times (though didn’t mention usage). The startup works with 1,500 food-sellers (grocery stores, cafés, bakeries, etc.) and is also expanding outside of Sweden into the U.K. Electrolux already cranks out refrigerators, so if this new solution catches on with consumers, it’s not hard to see these fridges popping up in more stores and chains across Sweden and Europe.

And while it’s weird to put something as noble as fighting food waste in competitive terms, this appliance partnership with a big brand like Electrolux could give Karma an edge over rival food waste company Too Good To Go, which currently has a much bigger reach across Europe.

As noted, this is the first partnership between Electrolux and Karma. Now we’ll see if they expand the relationship into other appliances and perhaps even shoppable recipes.

Touchscreens, Guided Cooking and Electromagnetic Waves Take Center Stage at IFA Berlin

Connected kitchens. This was the top trend in kitchen appliance technology at IFA 2018 last month. All the big brands in the kitchen space were either announcing partnerships, or discussing them. Electrolux and AEG were on hand to show off their smart cooktops and connected ovens and their partnership with Google Assistant. Miele expanded on their Dialog oven range with the MChef meal delivery service. LG was also there to launch their kitchen range, including their Signature Kitchen Suite (SKS), as well as coin a new phrase — Technicureans!

Technicureans is what LG is calling their potential SKS customers. Technicureans, according to them, are ‘a new generation of forward-thinking cooks, combining their passion for food with their appreciation of innovation’. I thought they were called ‘early adopters’, the beloved description of the technology startup world, but I like the premise. Whether the name, which is trademarked, will catch on I can’t say, but I like the idea.

LG launched this product to Europe in grand fashion. They had a stand alone pod outside in the Sommergarten at IFA, filled with their own brand of smart appliances, accompanied by beautiful kitchen furniture by Valcucine, who partnered with them. What I found inside was incredibly impressive. Three kitchens, packed full of connected appliances. Touch controls on ovens with built-in recipes and beautiful interfaces.

LG demonstrated their new touch screen kitchen interface, which works with all their appliances, and is powered by Google Assistant and the Innit platform. Users can select a recipe on Innit using the smart display, which uses wi-fi to talk to the oven. The display will also walk the user through each step, allowing the user to bring up an instructional video if necessary.

This isn’t exclusive to LG and Smart Kitchen Suite, however. Google has already announced three other smart displays with Sony, Lenovo, and JBL, so we can expect these to appear on the market very soon.

AEG, who took centre stage at IFA instead of their parent company Electrolux, launched their new smart SenseCook cooktops with videos and demonstrations on how it all works. The first two cooktops in the range have specific jobs. SenseFry, which provides an automatically adaptable temperature for pan frying, and SenseBoil, which constantly monitors water temperature, adjusting where necessary to prevent a pan boiling over. If consumers opt for the SensePro cooktop, which is the top model, they get both the fry and boil features, as well as a battery-less, wireless temperature probe which constantly reads the internal temperature of the food, regulating temperatures to keep cooking on the right track. It also featured a touchscreen control panel, which is home to recipes and temperature controls. I really like this product. They are covering off a few of the main pitfalls of cooking. Anything that makes it simpler to get great results has my approval.

As for Electrolux, their main kitchen focus was on their connected ovens, with a demonstration room dedicated to their partnership with Google. The closed room allowed them to demonstrate how you can use their ovens with voice control to navigate through the whole cooking cycle. They also showed off the oven’s built-in camera, and it’s ability to share to social media. Innit’s partnerships also extend beyond Electrolux and AEG, with GE, Bosch, Beko and LG currently tied up, and more in the pipeline. Consumers will be able to connect with a whole host of connected ovens and appliances through this app, and even order their groceries through it.

Miele also had its Dialog oven, which now adds electromagnetic waves (like a microwave) to the existing cooking functions. Essentially, the waves read the texture and surface of the food, adjusting the cooking mode and temperature accordingly. It works alongside the fan and the heat in the oven cavity for the best results possible. Although the technology is similar to that of a microwave, the Dialog oven uses the technology in a less aggressive way, and doesn’t blast food like a microwave.

Miele also announced their partnership with MChef, a meal delivery startup out of their native Germany. The premise is that you order your food by 12:30pm, and it’s all delivered the next day, ready to work with the recipe app and the oven. The ingredients actually come prepared on porcelain plates. Consumers merely remove the wrapping, and tell the app what they’re cooking. That’s it! This is the way to get the most out of your Dialog oven, although it will no doubt come at a price. Miele are launching this in select regions in Germany, before rolling out nationwide. Although Miele haven’t released pricing for their MChef service, already the oven is priced way above these countertop options, and also has the need to be built-in.

The thing I had hoped to see was more US startups making a play for Europe. There’s some great technology coming out of the US, as always, and the European market is ready for it all. The likes of Anova and ChefSteps have their products available on Amazon, but I want more from them. I want to see these products taking root in the department stores, electrical and specialist cooking stores that are so popular in Europe. Meal service is gaining popularity in the UK too, so the likes of Nomiku, Suvie and Tovala could really be making it work. I hope to see more products like this at IFA in the future. Connected kitchens are growing with real force in Europe, and their presence across the board at IFA 2018 highlights that. There was so much attention on them, and far less on the traditional kitchen appliances. It spells it out perfectly. Now is the time to get connected in the kitchen.

GE Appliances and Electrolux Expand Google Assistant Capabilities

The big IFA show is set start over in Berlin, and like CES earlier this year, Google is making a big push there for its Google Assistant, working overtime to get its voice assistant embedded into, well, everything. News about Google integrations are rolling in as both GE Appliances and Electrolux today both announced expanded capabilities with Google Assistant.

First up, GE Appliances, a Haier company, said today that its suite of appliances will work directly with Google Assistant. Previously, GE Appliances required the use of Geneva Home Action in order to talk to Google, so you’d have to say “Google, ask Geneva Home to preheat the oven.” With the new, deeper integration, users can skip the Geneva step and just say “Google, preheat the oven.”

Elsewhere, Swedish appliance giant, Electrolux announced it is expanding its Google Assistant integration. Elextrolux will be adding Google Assistant voice control to its kitchen products in Europe, starting with a smart oven in 2019. Previously, Electrolux had added Google Assitant integration in the U.S. under its Fridgedaire and Anova lines.

Google is currently locked in a battle with Amazon and its Alexa assistant for dominance in the emerging voice control market. While Alexa had a head start and lined up numerous appliance integrations early on, Google has been making headway over the past year. Earlier this year LG announced that its SmartThinq line of connected appliances would work with both smart assistant platforms.

Google’s expanded presence is good because it gives consumers more flexibility when shopping for a new appliance. People shouldn’t have their choice of smart assistant determine what refrigerator they buy.

AEG Rolling Out Smart Induction Cooktop and Wireless Sensor Probe At IFA

Electrolux’s AEG brand is rolling out a new smart cooking system in the form of a new induction cooktop (hob) with a wireless sensor probe at IFA next week.

The new AEG SenseCook system, which was first uncovered by design site Yanko, features what the company claims to be the first wireless and battery-less sensor probe for an induction cooktop. The SenseCook induction cooktop gets realtime temperature reading from the sensor probe and automatically adjusts temperature of the heating surface.

It’s an interesting move by Electrolux in that it’s the first time the European appliance giant is getting into smart surface cooking. The company’s early smart kitchen efforts (such as its partnership with Innit) have centered around cavity/oven cooking, but this marks the first effort to integrate smart cooking technology into the company’s induction cooktops.

The Electrolux/AEG news follows an announcement by Hestan Cue’s parent company, Meyer, in January at the Kitchen and Bath show of a new appliance range with built-in smart surface cooking. The Hestan smart appliance line and the AEG SenseCook system are a natural evolution from first generation smart cooking systems like that of the Hestan Cue, FirstBuild’s Paragon and the Cucianale that feature portable countertop induction burners. Longer term, I expect most appliance brands will build smart cooking intelligence into their larger cooktop appliances and AEG and Hestan are early indicators of that trend.

With IFA next week, I expect we’ll see a flurry of smart cooking news over the next few days, so stay tuned to the Spoon as we’ll be tracking all of it.