Over the past few years, the Amazon Echo Show has become extremely popular as a smart assistant for the kitchen, allowing consumers to quickly access recipes, watch videos, and connect to smart devices.
The Facebook Portal, on the other hand, has largely languished since its release in late 2018 as consumers resisted adding a video-enabled device to their homes from a company that has proven an unreliable steward of their privacy.
However, with the arrival of COVID-19, it seems like the Portal may finally be getting a little traction from its most reliable demographic (seniors) as many of the homebound silver-haired set looks for ways to connect with family during quarantine-times. And now, they can get in on some of that cooking action, too, as Portal added the SideChef smart recipe app to its store last week.
From the SideChef announcement:
SideChef’s signature “smart recipe” format ensures a seamless cooking experience for home cooks of all skill levels with its easy-to-follow guided video recipes, which has been adapted to also fit the screen size for Portal devices.
While the cooking guidance on a kitchen screen is a nice feature to have, I suspect it may be the integration with AmazonFresh that might be a bigger selling point for seniors. My own 70-something mom started using online grocery for the first time during the pandemic, and I’m sure she’d love to add items to her shopping list and order while working in the kitchen.
While the Portal does have Alexa built-in, I’m not sure if the Portal’s Alexa integration connects to Amazon’s delivery service via SideChef (SideChef does work with Alexa on native Amazon devices). If that is the case, it might just the recipe to sell my own Alexa-loving mom on putting a Portal in the kitchen.
For SideChef, Facebook is yet another partner in a long list of integrations for the guided cooking and smart kitchen app over the past few years including Samsung’s Bixby, Amazon Fresh (as mentioned), and GE/Haier to name a few.
According to SideChef, the app is available now for the Portal Mini, Portal, and Portal+.
