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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Ember

With Ember’s New Raise, The Company Eyes Expansion Into Smart Baby Bottles & Cold Storage

Up until this point in its history, Ember’s been known for one thing: smart mugs.

That’s not necessarily a bad thing. After all, the company’s flagship precision heated mug is a pretty cool device that not only keeps your coffee at the perfect temperature, but can reveal insights like that 10:51 AM is peak coffee drinking time across America.

But for anyone who’s talked to the company CEO Clay Alexander, an inventor with over a hundred patents to his name, you get the sense that he and Ember have lots of cool new ideas up their sleeves they’d like to bring to market if they only had the time and money. While I’m not sure about how much time Alexander has on his busy hands nowadays, he and Ember look to have taken care of the money part with their just-announced $23.5 million funding round.

In the press release announcing the new funding, Ember mentions both its cold chain technology and precision heated baby bottles as areas they plan to invest in. From the release: This expansion includes Ember’s Cold Chain Technology, which seeks to disrupt the current pharmaceutical cold chain with the world’s first self-refrigerated, cloud-based shipping box.  The company also has plans to grow its consumer vertical with revolutionary technology to improve infant feeding and further releases in innovative drinkware solutions.

The company’s cold shipping box technology will keep vaccines and other temperature-sensitive medical supplies at a constant temperature as they make their way to their destination. Alexander first teased the idea back in 2018 in a podcast with The Spoon, when he told me the company had already built a prototype that uses the company’s semiconductor-powered refrigeration technology to keep up to forty vials refrigerated at a constant temperature.

“You could strap that thing on the back of a moped and send it into a village in Haiti and save lives,” said Alexander.

During that same conversation, Alexander also talked about how heating water for his infant daughter made him realize baby bottles could be an excellent potential application for precision heating technology. “You pull it out of the fridge, and there’s a little base you couple to the bottle,” Alexander said. “When you couple it, it heats the milk and formula to 98.5 degrees, which is body temperature.”

While the announcement indicated the company would expand into new consumer drinkware products, I was a bit bummed there was no mention of one of Alexander’s neater ideas: precision-heated dinnerware. It’s a product the company already had working prototypes for in 2018: “It just looks like a dinner plate, but it’s magically keeping your hot food hot and your cold food cold,” said Alexander at the time. The plate would have heating zones, that would allow cold potato salad to stay cold and heat food like steak and, if you move your steak, the heat will track under the plate.

Whatever they have in store, I’m intrigued to see the company add new products beyond their original smart coffee mug.

Food Tech News: Google AI Cake, Chipotle’s Bitcoin Giveaway and Robot Food Delivery

Welcome to the first Food Tech News round-up of April! This week we have news on a cake created by Google artificial intelligence, Kiwibot hitting the streets of Santa Monica, Ember’s new travel charger, and Chipotle’s bitcoin giveaway.

Google artificial intelligence created a cake recipe in partnership with Mars Wrigley

Google Cloud engineers created a machine learning model that uses hundreds of existing baked good recipes to develop a completely new recipe. The result was a “Cakie” (a cake and cookie hybrid) and the components of what makes a cake and cookie were generated with artificial intelligence. For the partnership with Mars Wrigley UK, Maltesers (chocolate-covered malt balls) were incorporated into the recipe to create the first-ever “Maltesers AI Cake.” Google trends revealed that “sweet and salty” was a top search trend, and the cake recipe used a buttercream frosting infused with Marmite. Earlier this year, the same machine learning model was used to create two totally new baked good recipes, the “Cakie” and “Breakie”.

Kiwibot and MealMe partner for food delivery in Santa Monica

MealMe, an app that compares prices and times of food delivery services, and Kiwibot, a teleoperated robot service that delivers food, have partnered to deliver food in Santa Monica. On April 1st, the companies began delivery for Blue Plate Taco and Red O Restaurant on Ocean Ave. Kiwibot’s robots provide contactless food delivery, and so far 100k deliveries have been completed in Berkeley, Los Angeles, San Jose, Denver, Taipei, and Medellin,

Ember launches car charger to keep beverages warm on the road

Ember, the creator of the self-heating coffee mug, has created a car charger to keep Ember Travel Mugs warm all day. The Ember Travel Mug is capable of keeping a beverage warm for three hours, but now it can be plugged directly into a car charger for an all-day charge. The car charger costs $49.95 on Ember’s website.

Photo from Chipotle

Chipotle hosted a giveaway of free burritos and bitcoin

For National Burrito Day, Chipotle partnered with the founder of Coil, Stefan Thomas, to giveaway $100,000 worth of Bitcoin and $100,000 in burritos. To win, contestants had 10 chances to guess a six-digit code. The giveaway only lasted for nine hours on April 1st on BurritosOrBitcoin.com. Update: I tried, and did not win.

Ember Shuffles CEOs, Jim Rowan Takes Over Consumer Division, Clay Alexander Becomes Group CEO

Precision heating tech company Ember announced today that it has tapped Jim Rowan to be the new CEO of Ember’s consumer division. At the same time, the company announced that Ember Founder and CEO Clay Alexander will transition to being Group CEO of Ember in addition to holding the newly created role of CEO of Ember’s healthcare division.

Prior to joining Ember, Rowan was formerly CEO of consumer electronics company Dyson.

Ember makes high-end consumer goods — the Ember Mug and Travel Mug — equipped with precision-temperature controls that keep a coffee or tea beverage at a precise, heated temperature. The mugs are certainly not cheap (the 10 oz mug is $100), but their premium pricing and high-tech nature make them similar to Dyson products, so the addition of Rowan makes a lot of sense.

Perhaps more interesting is Alexander’s new role heading up Ember’s healthcare division. During our Food Tech Live event in January of this year, Alexander talked about a cold-chain shipping product Ember is working on. As we wrote at the time:

Alexander didn’t provide many details around the forthcoming product. He said only that the cloud-connected boxes could be used to ship items at a cold temperature in a way that could be monitored and audited. He said Ember is also working on technology that makes the containers reusable.

The first application for this chilly packaging is, obviously, COVID-19 vaccines, some of which must be constantly kept at ultracold temperatures. But as Alexander explained, this technology could be used to ship anything, including fresh food, meal kits, and more. As a bonus, if the containers are reusable, that could help alleviate big waste issues (packaging, dry ice, gelpacks, etc.) in the direct to consumer market.

With Rowan taking over the consumer division and Alexander’s new focus on this healthcare division, that could indicate that the company’s cold packaging product is ramping up to go commercial, which means that it could be applied to the food world in the not too distant future.

Ember to Bring its Temperature Tech to Reusable Cold Chain Packaging

Ember, which is best known for making precision-controlled heated mugs, will be expanding into reusable packaging that can be employed for a variety of purposes, including food in the cold chain. Ember Founder and CEO, Clay Alexander spoke about the packaging plans during a brief talk at The Spoon’s Food Tech Live virtual event today.

Alexander didn’t provide many details around the forthcoming product. He said only that the cloud-connected boxes could be used to ship items at a cold temperature in a way that could be monitored and audited. He said Ember is also working on technology that makes the containers reusable.

Obviously, in this pandemic world, an immediate use case for this technology is shipping COVID vaccines, which must be kept cold. (Alexander didn’t say if his boxes could reach the super cold depths the vaccines require.) But there are actually a lot of uses for this packaging in the food world.

The cold chain is a big deal in the fresh and frozen food world for suppliers, distributors, and retailers. Ensuring food is kept at the proper temperature helps prevent spoilage and waste. Companies like Varcode, which uses IoT, blockchain and temperature sensors, currently provide monitoring and auditing technology for the cold chain.

But if they work as promised, another important aspect of Ember’s containers is that they would be reusable. Current cold and frozen shipping methods use a lot of dry ice or frozen gel packs and generate a lot of waste. The ability to keep contents cold in a package that is sent back for more use could be a game changer in the direct-to-consumer retail business.

Newsletter: Will E-Bikes Take Charge? Plus, Precise Heating Comes Home

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Delivery robots like those from Starship and self-driving vehicles like Nuro‘s grab a lot of headlines when it comes to the future of food and meal delivery. And it’s easy to understand why–robots are cool, man! But I have one bit of advice when it comes to the business of food delivery as we head into 2020:

Don’t sleep on electric bikes. They could be a huge platform in cities.

This is a prediction I’ve made before, when Uber bought e-bike rental company Jump last year. But yesterday’s announcement that Australian company Bolt Bikes launched its e-bikes for delivery service in the U.S. and U.K. got me thinking about a potential bicycle boom in food delivery.

TechCrunch reports that Bolt rents out bikes for commercial use on a two-week contract for $39. As TechCrunch writes, “The Bolt Bikes platform includes the electric bike, fleet management software, financing and servicing. Subscribers get 24-hour access to the bike. A battery charger, phone holder, phone USB port, secure U-Lock and safety induction is included.” Postmates has reportedly been piloting Bolt Bikes in SF since June.

E-bikes are actually great for city environments. They are fast, nimble on traffic-choked streets and take (most of) the work out of going uphill. Plus they have human drivers, so you don’t have to worry about the potential human/robot issues that come with even small autonomous delivery vehicles.

Though they aren’t as well suited for longer distances, e-bikes could also work in some suburban areas with tightly packed homes (think: housing developments), especially as part of a hub-and-spoke model. Next summer, Uber Eats is testing drone delivery of food to centralized drop off points where delivery people pick orders up and drive them the last mile. Instead of cars rolling around the suburbs, an e-bike could make that last mile more economical, faster (no need to park) and more welcome for neighborhoods that don’t want a lot more delivery cars driving around.

Bicycles already have already enjoyed a place in food delivery, especially in more dense urban areas, but the advent of affordable e-bikes could really charge up their use for getting you fed.

Precision Temperatures

I’m going to steal from WIRED here for a moment, but:

TIRED: Heat
WIRED: Precise heat control to the exact temperature you want

We covered two different technologies this week deliver granular control to the way you heat either a beverage or your BBQ.

First up we took Ember’s new Travel Mug<sup>2</sup> out for a spin. The Tesla of travel coffee mugs runs a whopping $180 and keeps your coffee at a constant hot temperature of your choosing. This second-generation Ember mug features great design and clever controls, but sadly the promised three-hour battery life diminished pretty quickly in real world circumstances. Check out our full review.

On a much larger scale, the just-announced Weber SmokeFire grill features the connected cooking smarts of a June Oven. The two companies announced that the JuneOS will power the Weber Connect app that controls the SmokeFire. You can also get step-by-step instructions to become a master griller and dial in a constant temperature for those long brisket smoking sessions.

The Ember Travel Mug <sup>2</sup> is available now if you’re looking for a pricey stocking stuffer, and while the SmokeFire ($999) won’t be out until 2020, you can pre-order it on Cyber Monday.

The New Spoon Logo

A New Spoon

If you’ve been to our website this week, then you’ll notice an entirely new look and a new logo.

As Spoon founder Mike Wolf noted when introducing the new site yesterday:

We launched the Spoon in October 2016. At the time, we didn’t know what it would become, all we knew is that we wanted to tell the stories of the people and companies shaping the future of food and cooking.

He went on, saying:

With thousands of stories published and hundreds of thousands of readers per month, The Spoon is a big part of what we do and we figured it was time the site got a fresh coat of paint and maybe even a new beam or two.

The Spoon will remain the best place for all the food tech news and analysis you need to know, it’s just going to be easier to read and navigate. G’head and click through it and tell us what you think!

Speaking of our new logo, you’ll be able to see it on display in Vegas during CES at our second annual FoodTech Live. Last year we had over forty companies showing their stuff, so if you have new kitchen or food tech product and want to show off your wares, make sure to check out our event page!

The Ember Travel Mug2: High Design, High Price, YMMV Battery

One of the biggest sins to me as a journalist is taking credit for other people’s work. So I should be upfront and say that I actually asked my wife to review Ember’s new second-generation Travel Mug. Her TL;DR take on the $180 precise temperature control drinking vessel? It looks great and is easy to set up and use, but the battery was a real bummer, at least in her real-world scenario.

Let me take a step back. I asked my wife to do the heavy lifting on this one because she drinks a lot of hot coffee, travels more than I do and her non-techie background provides a more approachable, everyperson view of the device.

But first, the basics. Released this fall, the Ember Travel Mug2 is a connected thermos that talks to your phone and lets you set the exact temperature of your coffee. Obviously $180 is a lot of cheddar for a coffee mug, especially for something that a lot of people might scoff at (a Bluetooth cup!). But as my wife learned with the first-gen Ember Mug a couple years back, precisely heated coffee from first sip to last actually makes your morning java more enjoyable.

Ember made a number of design changes to its new Travel Mug. The temperature control wheel at the base of the mug is replaced by LED + and – touch controls. In a neat bit of design, these controls stay hidden until you tap the Ember logo on the device. Ember Travel Mug2 also promises more battery life, saying it could hold a drink at 135 degrees for three hours (more on that in a minute) and comes with a redesigned charging coaster.

The first thing you notice with the mug is that it looks and feels great. It holds 12 fluid ounces and is easy to grip. The matte finish feels good and the LED controls give it a nice high-tech flair. The lid features a push-button, 360 degree (circular, not temp) accessible “spout” so you can drink from any angle, which is helpful when you’ve got one hand on the steering wheel.

Setting up the mug and pairing with the phone was easy and straightforward for my wife. She had no issues charging the device or getting it connected. The controls were intuitive and easy to adjust as she found her temperature sweet spot.

I should interject a note here to say that we actually tried out two different Travel Mugs. During her first go ’round, my wife found that the battery on the device drained pretty quickly. Even though she was pouring hot coffee into the mug and kept the temperature at 140, the battery was completely drained after around 45 minutes.

Thinking that perhaps we got a bum unit, I reached out to Ember and replaced it with a new one. This one held up better. Keeping her coffee at 140 degrees, the battery lasted two hours. I’m no battery expert, but this could fall in line with the expectations Ember set. On its website, Ember says that the Travel Mug will last three hours at 135 degrees, less if the temperature is hotter. So it doesn’t seem ridiculous that a five degree difference could result in an hour loss of battery.

Other things can drain the battery faster, like having to bring coffee up to temperature (i.e. adding cold coffee to the mug). Coffee added from the carafe made in the morning was only at 120 degrees, so sometimes the Ember had to a lot of extra work to get it up to 135 or 140.

Still, my wife’s biggest complaint is that when she is, you know, traveling, she’s out for the entire day on the road, and it’s not uncommon for her to enjoy coffee across a span of five or so hours. Having to bring the charging coaster along seems silly for a portable device (and not something she’s going to pull out and plug in during a meeting). However, my wife commented that if the coaster could fit inside the cup holder of her car, that would actually be quite useful as she traveled around to her appointments.

If your travel schedule is different, allowing for regular recharges throughout the day then this might be an (extremely expensive) way to you to caffeinate up throughout the day. It’s hard to say whether I recommend it or don’t. It’s a pretty device and if you have $180 to spend on a coffee mug, then you might be fine with any battery shortcomings. Just know that depending on your type of travel, your mileage may vary with the Ember Travel Mug2.

My Food Tech Plans for Thanksgiving: Delivery, Caffeine, Meater and More

Before I begin this post, let me be completely honest. Thanksgiving is the domain of my wife and woe be to those that try to interfere in her preparations. Unlike previous years, however, I’m no longer completely useless in the kitchen because now I’m packed full of food tech know-how. Here are some of the gadgets, devices and gizmos we’ll be using in the Albrecht house to make Thanksgiving 2018 that much easier.

Skip the Store (for Bulk Items)
Grocery stores are madhouses this time of year. Who needs to deal with that? Not you, thanks to the billions of dollars poured into delivery startups this year. While you’ll still want to pick out your turkey and veggies in-person (probably) there are plenty of items you can order online sight unseen. Get your potatoes, rolls, paper towels, sodas and more delivered to your door in advance to save yourself (and your arms) at least one trip to the store.

Get Ready (by Getting Caffienated)
Thanksgiving is a long day, and before you can entertain a house full of people, you need to prepare. And by prepare, I mean, wake up. And by wake up, I mean, get that coffee flowing. To maximize your caffeine intake, I recommend the Ember coffee mug. Embers ain’t cheap ($80 for the mug), but they keep your cup o’ joe at the same hot temperature until the bitter (but so delicious) end.

Keeps Tabs on that Turkey with Meater
The appropriately named Meater connected meat thermometer lets you wirelessly keep tabs on your turkey’s cooking temperature without the need to open up the oven door (which makes you lose all that heat). I like Meater’s mobile app, which charts your turkey’s temperature in real time, as well as its cooking guidance tips (like telling you when to rest the meat). And the one drawback — it’s as big as a nail and leaves a pretty sizeable hole in your meat — won’t be as noticeable with a whole turkey. Meater even has instructions to help you cook a classic turkey on its blog.

Use that June
My love for the second-gen June is well documented here, but I think it will actually come in extra handy this Thanksgiving. We now essentially have three ovens in the kitchen (two traditional + the June). The big one will be for the turkey, and now we don’t need to rotate stuffing or sides through the other oven. We can cook two more things at the same time and have everything served piping hot. Plus, with the June’s presets, roasting carrots or broccoli or beans will be a one-button snap.

Alterna-Meat Stuffing
Speaking of sides, this isn’t a gadget, but I saw that Beyond Meat posted a recipe for meatless stuffing. I’m not a vegetarian, but Beyond Meat ground/crumbles have evolved to the point where they can effectively act as a tasty “meat” component in stuffing. Bonus: Now there’s one more thing your vegetarian guests can enjoy.

All of this tech should help make this year’s Thanksgiving the best. One. Ever! The only gadget still on my wish list for the holidays is the Apple iWatch Series 4. I could use a device to help me keep track of all the exercise I need to do after all that pumpkin pie.

Ember Integrates with Apple Health to Track Caffeine Intake, Sell Mugs at Stores

In news that will either excite or terrify coffee drinkers everywhere, Ember, makers of the precision temperature control mugs, today announced a new update to its app that integrates with Apple Health to help users track their caffeine intake. Ember also announced today that it will sell its mugs in Apple stores and the Apple store online.

The new Ember app allows users to track their caffeine consumption and set maximum caffeine intake measurements for the day. The app will notify you when you hit your limit, so you can make a different beverage choice. With Apple Health app data, users will be able to understand how their caffeine consumption impacts their heart rate and sleep patterns as well.

I got my wife an Ember mug for Christmas. With the coffee staying hot all the time, she unwittingly guzzled 8 cups worth before lunch and was practically vibrating. That’s obviously not a daily problem, but understanding your caffeine consumption (especially if you can tie it in with any sleep patterns) will probably be useful for a lot of people.

Ember’s move into Apple stores actually makes a lot of sense given the startup’s previous sales relationship with another premium brand, Starbucks. Apple is a high-tech, high-end brand where Ember’s stylish and expensive products won’t be out of place. As part of the deal, Ember is making a white version of its travel mug exclusively for Apple.

Adding another massive sales channel like Apple’s will also give Ember loads of more data to better understand its customers. For instance, the company has said before that 10:51 a.m. is peak coffee drinking time across the U.S. With the new caffeine tracker, Ember users will now know when it’s time to quit drinking coffee.

Podcast: A Conversation With Clay Alexander, Creator of the Ember Coffee Mug

Ever wonder what time of day most people drink coffee? According to Ember CEO Clay Alexander, peak coffee-drinking time across the country is 10:51 AM.

This insight was shared by Alexander, the inventor of the Ember mug, during a live on-stage interview at the Housewares show in Chicago last March. In the same interview, which you can hear as part of this week’s Smart Kitchen Show podcast, Alexander shared ideas about other ways his patented precision heating technology could be used:

Precision Plates: Ember has a working prototype and plans to release their smart plates in high-end restaurants.

“It just looks like a dinner plate, but it’s magically keeping your hot food hot and your cold food cold,” said Alexander. The plate would have heating zones, that would allow cold potato salad to stay cold and heat food like steak.  According to Alexander, if you move your steak, the heat will track under the plate.

Medical Applications: According to Alexander, the spoilage rate for vaccines is over 40% in developing countries. Because of this, the company has been looking at using Ember’s temperature control technology to help get vaccines to doctors and reduce spoilage.  The company has already built a prototype that uses the company’s semiconductor powered refrigeration technology to keep up to forty vials refrigerated at a constant temperature. The “box” would be battery powered, controllable via a smartphone, and portable.

“You could strap that thing on the back of a moped and send into a village in Haiti and save lives,” said Alexander.

Baby Bottles: The company also sees its tech working in baby bottles. Alexander realized this would be a good application when taking care of his own daughter and he had to manually put baby bottles in hot water to warm them up.

“With an Ember bottle, you pull it out of the fridge, and there’s a little base you couple to the bottle. When you couple it, it heats the milk and formula to 98.5 degrees, which is body temperature.”

You can hear the full interview by hitting play below, downloading directly to your device or by subscribing in Apple Podcasts (or your preferred podcast player).

If you’d like to see Clay Alexander talk about how he came up with the idea for the Ember, he’ll be at the Smart Kitchen Summit in three weeks. Just use the discount code podcast for 25% off tickets. 

No More Lukewarm Coffee: How Heating Tech will Disrupt the Kitchen

The ability to apply precision heat to food and drinks is a quick-evolving — and pretty darn exciting — area of the digital kitchen innovation. And no one is pushing more boundaries in this space than Clay Alexander. He’s the founder and CEO of Ember, a company which makes smart mugs which can exactly control and maintain the temperature of your tea or coffee. And that’s just the beginning; he’s applying his precision heating tech to everything from kitchen plates to baby bottles to medical supplies.

We’ve been fans of Ember for a while and can’t wait to have Alexander speak at the Smart Kitchen Summit (SKS) in Seattle this October! To pique your interest, we asked him a few questions about the future of heating technology in the kitchen — and for Ember.

This interview has been edited for clarity and grammar.

You have an impressive background in entrepreneurship and innovation, specifically in lighting. What inspired you to pivot to heating and create the Ember mug?
I had just sold my LED light bulb to GE which was a major career milestone for me. I was sitting in the kitchen with my wife having breakfast, thinking of what I wanted to do next. I still had my lighting company Radiance (which I still own today) but my wife and I were contemplating if we should take some time off and travel or stay in Los Angeles. It was then that, as usual, my scrambled eggs got cold. I’m a talker and can rarely finish a meal while it’s still warm. I had a spark and wondered why, in this day and age, my plate could not keep my food warm, and my cup could not keep my coffee hot.

It was my ‘ah ha’ moment if you will, and I decided to start developing a prototype to see if I could solve this problem. As an inventor, the drive to always be creating is very strong. It’s innate. So, we put the vacation on hold and I got to work. Seven years later, we launched our first product and Ember was born.

How are you leveraging technology to improve your product?
As a serial inventor, I’m always exploring how we can improve our product. A couple ways we do this is by listening to our customers and reviewing our app data. For example, we heard that many customers wanted a longer battery life on our Travel Mug, so we listened, and we are working on that for the next version, so people can enjoy their tea or coffee even longer.

What’s next for Ember? Are you applying your heating tech to anything beyond mugs?
Absolutely. With temperature control, the possibilities are endless. We’re exploring numerous categories where we can apply our technology across several verticals. Currently we’re developing the world’s first self-heated baby bottle, which we think will be a massive game-changer for new parents.

What advice do you have for food tech entrepreneurs who are just starting out?
This is advice I give all entrepreneurs: If you have an idea for a product, you should first create a prototype and start testing it. Even if you make it from used parts found in your garage and duct tape, you need to get a working model built and start using it. That’s how I started Ember. I built a prototype in my house and tested it over and over again to see how I could improve it. You can’t just read or talk about something, you need to take action. Build, test, improve, rebuild, repeat.

Food and beverage heating is an area that’s spurring a lot of innovation lately. Where do you see the future of heating, as it fits into the realm of food and drink?
This is really an exciting time for innovation in the home and kitchen space. I think we are just scratching the surface as people become more comfortable with technology in the food and beverage area. At Ember, we envision a day in the near future where all your dishware will keep your food at the perfect serving temperature: bowls, plates, serving ware, and so on. Through heating and cooling technology, we want consumers to be able to control the precise temperature for everything they eat and drink. Eventually, it will become second nature.

What’s the biggest thing (be it a trend, piece of technology, idea, consumer behavior, etc.) you see disrupting the future of food and cooking?
I think one of the biggest trends is how technology is disrupting the entire food chain in the home. Whether preparing food or enjoying it, we are going to see a lot more digital tools working to bring more joy and ease into your daily routine in the kitchen. A couple current examples of this are the June oven and the Jura coffee machine. These products take the complications and labor out of food prep: you can press a button and go. Ember does the final step, letting you enjoy your food and drinks without needing to get up and constantly re-heat them. In the kitchen, we’ll have more appliances that just do things for you and enhance your life.

—
Thanks, Clay! If you want to see him speak more about how heating and cooling tech will come to shape the way we cook, eat, and enjoy our food (and beverages), snag your tickets to the Smart Kitchen Summit on October 8-9th in Seattle.

Podcast: Designing Products For The Smart Kitchen With Matt Rolandson

What does a robot barista, smart oven and precision heated coffee cup all have in common?

They’re all technology-forward food products that product design firm Ammunition Group had a hand in creating.

I recently caught up with Matt Rolandson, a partner with Ammunition Group, to talk about designing new products for the smart kitchen and the future of food.

We’re kicking off our new season of Smart Kitchen Show, so make sure to subscribe in Apple podcasts and check out past shows here on The Spoon. You can listen to the show below, download it here or listen to it wherever you get your podcasts.

The Food Tech 25: Twenty Five Companies Changing the Way We Eat

Here at The Spoon, we spend most days writing and thinking about those who are transforming what we eat. No matter whether a startup, big company, inventor, or a cook working on new approaches in the kitchen, we love learning the stories of people changing the future of food. So much so, in fact, that we wanted to share those companies that most excite us with our readers.

And so here it is, The Spoon’s Food Tech 25: Twenty Five Companies Changing the Way We Eat

What exactly is the Food Tech 25? In short, it’s our list of the twenty five companies we think are doing the most interesting things changing the way we create, buy, store, cook and think about food.

As with any list, there are bound to be a few questions about how we got here and why we chose the companies we did. Here are some answers:

How did we create this list?

The editors of the Spoon — myself, Chris Albrecht, Catherine Lamb and Jenn Marston — got together in a room, poured some kombucha (ed note: except for Chris), and listed all the companies we thought were doing interesting and important work in changing food and cooking. From there, we had numerous calls, face-to-face meetings and more glasses of kombucha until we narrowed the list down to those you see here.

Is this an annual list?

No, this is a list of the companies we think are the most interesting people and companies right now, in mid-2018. Things could definitely look different six months from now.

Is this list in a particular order or are the companies ranked?

No, the list is in no particular order and we did not rank the 25 companies.

Why isn’t company X on the list?

If this was your list, company X or Y would most likely be on the list (and that’s ok with us). But this is the Spoon’s list and we’re sticking to it (for now – see above).

And of course, making this list wasn’t easy. There are lots of companies doing interesting things in this space. If we had enough room to create runners-up or honorable mentions, we would. But we don’t (and you don’t have enough time to read a list like that).

So, without further ado, here is the Spoon’s Food Tech 25. If you’re the type that likes your lists all on one page, click here.


EMBER
Ember bills itself as “the world’s first temperature control mug,” which basically means you can dictate a specific temperature for your brew via the corresponding app and keep your coffee (or tea or whatever) hot for as long as you need to. The significance here isn’t so much about coffee as it is about where else we could implement the technology and relatively simple concept powering the Ember mug. The company currently has patents out on other kinds of heated or cooled dishware, and Ember has cited baby bottles and medicine as two areas in which it might apply its technology. And yes, it allows you to finally stop microwaving all that leftover morning coffee.

 


INSTANT POT
The Instant Pot is not the highest-tech gadget around, but its affordability, versatility, and speed have made this new take on the pressure cooker a countertop cooking phenomenon. It also has a large and fanatical community, where enthusiastic users share and reshare their favorite Instant Pot recipes across Facebook groups and online forums. By becoming the first new breakout appliance category of the millennial generation, the Instant Pot has achieved that highly desirable (and rare) position of having its brand synonymous with the name of the category; people don’t go looking for pressure cookers, they go looking for an Instant Pot.

 


DELIVEROO
We chose Deliveroo out of the myriad of food delivery services because of their Editions project, which uses customer data to curate restaurant hubs in areas which have unfulfilled demands for certain chain establishments or cuisine types. This model allows food establishments to set up locations with zero start-up costs, and also gives customers in more restaurant-dry areas a wide variety of delivery food options. Essentially, it’s cloud kitchens meets a food hall, with some heavy analysis to help determine which restaurants or cuisines customers want, and where. These “Rooboxes” (hubs of shipping containers in which the food is prepared) show that Deliveroo is a pioneer in the dark kitchen space, and are doing serious work to shake up the food delivery market.

 

AMAZON GO
There are any number of ways that Amazon could have been included in this list, but its Amazon Go stores are what we think will be the real game changer. The cashierless corner store uses a high-tech combination of cameras and computing power, allowing you to walk in grab what you want — and leave. That’s it. At its first location in Seattle, we were struck by how seamless the experience was. As the locations broaden, this type of quick convenience has the potential to change the way we shop for snacks, (some) groceries and even prepared meal kits.

 


INGEST.AI
Restaurants have more pieces of software to deal with than ever. In addition to all the delivery platforms they are now plugged into, there have to deal with payments systems, HR software, and inventory management software. And right now, none of those applications talk to each other. Created by a former IBM Watson engineer, Ingest.ai promises to extract and connect the data from ALL of those disparate software pieces and tie them together to give restaurant owners a holistic, data-powered view of their business. It also helps them have more precise control over their business and automate tasks like food ordering and staff scheduling.

Want to meet the innovators from the FoodTech 25? Make sure to connect with them at North America’s leading foodtech summit, SKS 2019, on Oct 7-8th in Seattle.

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