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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

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Samsung’s 2024 Family Hub Gets Enhanced Food Recognition Features With Latest Update

This past week, Samsung announced they were updating software for those with a Family Hub fridge.

The update has a bunch of new features, many of which were announced at CES in January, but the most interesting one is what looks to be its much-improved food recognition capability. The new computer vision-powered features were are specific to the latest edition to the Family Hub line, the official name of which is the incredibly long Samsung Bespoke 4-Door Flex Refrigerators with AI Family Hub+ and AI Vision Inside.

According to the Samsung release, the latest update will allow the 2024 Family Hub to recognize more than 33 food items, including fruits and vegetables. Samsung notes in the release’s small print that they will continue to expand the number of items the system can recognize and that if the item is blocked by your hand, it will be listed as “unrecognizable.” The new update will also recommend recipes based on what you have on hand, including “thousands of recipes from the Samsung Food community.”

The update also includes enabling ‘Samsung Tap View, ‘ which mirrors content from Samsung Galaxy phones, such as photos or videos, as well as recipes you find on your phone.

On one hand, we have to hand it to Samsung. They’ve been at the smart fridge thing for a decade, and they’ve evolved the fridge from being primarily a fridge with a big monitor to stream music and video to one that looks like it’s finally getting smart inside with the camera and update.

As is always the case with Samsung, the company has so many platforms it can get confusing. One example is that the company made a big to-do almost a year ago when they announced Samsung Food, which is the evolution and Samsung-ification of the Whisk app. Samsung Food essentially looks to be the consumer electronics giant’s central recipe and food planning app, yet there’s just one passing mention of it in this latest update.

My guess is that in 2025, the integration between Samsung Food and Family Hub will be much farther along, and we may ultimately see the Samsung Food and Family Hub food and recipe management merged under one monolithic Samsung food and fridge app.

Samsung to Debut Bespoke AI Oven at CES as Family Hub Fades Into Supporting Role

Every year, Samsung takes up more square footage on the exhibition floor than perhaps any other company at CES. Among all that booth space, the Korean consumer electronics giant usually allocates some footage to their kitchen products and, for much of the past decade, a good chunk of its kitchen product focus was on the company’s Family Hub smart fridge line.

But over the past year, Samsung has been pushing its Bespoke family into the limelight while quietly pulling back the Family Hub into more of a supporting rule. And this week at CES 2023 in Las Vegas, Bespoke is not only getting top billing again, but it will also include some product categories beyond the fridge such as its new AI-enabled smart oven.

Starting Thursday, Samsung will showcase the Bespoke AI Oven, a built-in wall oven features a ‘Sense Inside’ feature that uses AI-powered image recognition to recognize up 80 different dishes and ingredients and help avoid overcooking. Samsung claims the new feature is the first food recognition and burn detection AI algorithm to receive an AI cooking appliance verification by UL Solutions. The AI Oven also works with SmartThings Cooking and Samsung Health, which allows it to recommend meal ideas based on the user’s workout stats, diet goals, and the ingredients they have on hand.

As for why Samsung is starting to emphasize the Bespoke brand over Family Hub, my guess is they’ve had more success selling the design-forward Bespoke lineup over the tech-heavy marketing lift required for when Family Hub got top billing. While certainly open to new technology in the kitchen, a consumer’s primary focus with kitchen design and significant appliance purchases is to build an attractive and functional space. Bepoke’s mix and match design concept serves those needs well.

As for Family Hub’s future, signs are pointing to the platform following the same path as the Samsung SmartThings platform, which transitioned over time from a discrete product line to an enabling feature integrated into other products.

Did you know The Spoon is producing CES’s Food Tech Conference? Find out more here.

Forget Smart. Samsung’s Latest Fridge Focus is Creating Giant Custom Photo Walls

Who needs fridge magnets when you can create a giant photo wall with a picture of your kids, furbaby, or dream vacation getaway instead?

That’s exactly what you can do if you own a Bespoke fridge from Samsung. According to a release sent to The Spoon, owners of Bespoke fridges can now create custom fridge panels featuring a photo or artwork. The new feature can be added to a new Bespoke fridge or swapped out with a panel on an existing unit.

To create a Bespoke custom printed panel, users go to the Mybespoke website, upload a picture or artwork, edit the layout, and submit the panel for print. Each custom printed panel will set you back $250. The new custom-designed panels feature will be available later this year.

Okay, so pictures printed on your fridge isn’t exactly high-tech, but it is definitely a sign of where Samsung’s head is nowadays when it comes to their fridge lineup. It’s not like Samsung has forgotten about its Family Hub fridge line exactly, at least not yet. After all, they did announce some fairly modest improvements at CES, and you can get a Family Hub version of the Bespoke line. But it’s clear, at this point, that their primary focus seems to be their design-forward lineup with Bespoke.

All of which speaks to the state of the smart fridge market. No one has really cracked the code on figuring out how to leverage smarts to make food management truly easy. Sure, big screens are nice, as it using Alexa and auto-replenishment of grocery staples. But none of them, in our view, is doing a great job of helping us take inventory or reduce food waste without a whole lot of work on the part of the user.

We’re still waiting for that and hope someone will come up with that game-changing innovation soon. If you’ve got a big idea about that, why don’t you let us know and show it off at SKS Invent in October.

Samsung Debuts the 6th Generation of its Family Hub Smart Fridge

Looking for a new smart fridge? Samsung’s got you covered and this time they’re bring Alexa with them.

Today the company announced the sixth generation of their flagship smart fridge, the Family Hub. The first of the big changes with the latest version of Family Hub is the addition of Amazon’s voice assistant Alexa. Samsung, which has long pushed its own voice assistant in Bixby, looks like it’s finally recognizing that the dust has settled in the voice assistant battle and Alexa is the dominant platform. That said, it looks like the company hasn’t given up on Bixby just yet, as it is giving users the choice of using Alexa or Bixby.

The other addition of what they are calling the SmartThings Cooking service. Many of the meal-planning features in the cooking service had been made available in the previous versions of the Family Hub, but in January at virtual CES the company had announced an expanded set of capabilities such as guided cooking and the ability to send cooking instructions to synced cooking appliances like the company’s Slide-In range. With the new upgrade, users of the Family Hub will be able to access all of these features from the Family Hub screen. The SmartThings Cooking service is powered by the Whisk platform.

If you’re a chicken lover, we’ve also got some good news in the Family Hub’s newest food shopping partner: Perdue Farms. In the announcement Samsung said they have added the chicken and premium meats-by-mail provider to their integration partner list.

You got to give Samsung credit: Despite early reviews mocking what some called a Frankenfridge, the company has stuck to its vision of building a smart fridge platform and updating it every year. Six generations in, one would assume that the Family Hub line of fridges is selling well, but the reality is we don’t know since the company doesn’t make sales numbers available. We can make some assumptions, though, based on looking at the number of reviews for SKUs like the 27″ French door edition, which is garnering enough reviews at Home Depot (1664 reviews) and Best Buy (433 reviews) that make it look as if it’s selling as well as other Samsung top models.

Owners of previous generation Family Hubs may be wondering if they will be able to get in on the Alexa and upgraded Smart Things cooking capabilities. According to a Samsung spokesperson, any Samsung Family Hub with generation 2 software or higher can be upgraded to generation 6 software.

The announcement didn’t say when the models will be in stores, but if the past rollouts of the Smart Hub are any indication, I’d expect them in stores this fall.

The Battle For The Kitchen Screen Got A Lot More Interesting At CES 2018

When I wrote about the battle for the kitchen TV last June, the launch of the Echo Show was one of the signals that told me companies were beginning to pay attention to the space. Half a year later, my own usage of the Show has helped me better understand why.

That’s because ever since Amazon’s video-enabled Alexa assistant entered our home, it’s the first thing my eyes are drawn to as I enter the kitchen. The continuous scroll of news and weather, integration with popular apps like Pandora and Allrecipes, and access to videos all have quietly made the small screen indispensable for my entire family.

And now, with a slew of standalone smart displays and kitchen-centric video screens at CES last week, I’m more convinced than ever as we enter 2018 the kitchen TV market will be a fascinating one to watch.

Here are some of the kitchen screen entrants from this year’s big consumer show:

Echo Show And The Competitors

In some ways, the Echo Show and its small screen competitors are the early favorites. Whether or not to purchase a $200 or below (today the Show is on sale for $179) countertop video-enabled voice assistant is a much easier decision to make than that of a $3 thousand fridge. And now, with Google pouring money into the space, you can expect many more choices and over time.

CES 2018 featured some new smart displays on, um, display, many of them designed to be used with Google Assistant. I suspect at some point Google will likely come out with a first-party device (like the Echo Show), but for now we have displays from the likes of Lenovo, Philips and JBL and the initial reviews are pretty positive.

Fridge TV

Hard to believe, but Samsung’s already on version three of its Family Hub fridge, a product that is fast becoming the central focus of the CE giant’s broader smart home strategy. I stopped by the Samsung CES showroom at the Aria to check out the Family Hub 3, and I have to say the new screen looks good.

And as is often the case, LG has followed Samsung’s lead with the ThinQ Instaview Fridge but took things one step further by making their smart screen translucent so you can also see what’s in your fridge. You can see a demo of the LG ThinQ Instaview Fridge here:

While the idea of fridge TVs continue to gain steam, some argue that there’s a mismatch between the life cycle of cutting-edge tech and that of installed appliances. An appliance is an investment, something most consumers expect to last up to a decade. Technology, on the other hand, can be outdated after a few years. This argument resonated after talking to someone at the Samsung booth, who told me the Family Hub gen-1 likely wouldn’t be updated to the third generation software that is coming out with the Family Hub 3, (though the Family Hub Ones in the field were recently updated to Family Hub 2 software).

Despite this, I think the centrality of the fridge in most kitchens and the early relative success of the Family Hub will fuel interest in making the fridge the star of the kitchen TV market.

The GE Kitchen Hub 

One of the more interesting concepts in kitchen TV I saw at CES was the GE Kitchen Hub, a screen/smart home controller designed to sit above your oven.  The Kitchen Hub, which was originally conceived in GE Appliances innovation hub FirstBuild, not only has voice and gesture control capability built in but works with Zigbee and Z-Wave to connect to your smart devices.

You can see Digital Trends video walkthrough with the Kitchen Hub below:

GE Kitchen Hub - Hands On at CES 2018

The concept of the Kitchen Hub sits somewhere between the Amazon and Samsung approach, a device that’s separate from a large appliance (and their long life cycles), but one that is also a built-in. The product is priced in that middle territory as well, coming in at $600.

I like the idea of the Kitchen Hub. A separate built-in screen, one that is more affordably priced than a hybrid appliance/TV product and that can also act as a smart home control center is a potential winner. Of course, a lot will rely on execution, but overall this is an intriguing product to watch.

One thing’s that clear: the battle for the kitchen TV became a lot more interesting at CES 2018. Check back at the Spoon and subscribe to our newsletter to monitor our coverage of this market over the next 12 months.

The Battle For The ‘Kitchen Screen’ Has Just Begun. Here’s The Leading Contenders

Back in the year 2000, the world’s first Internet-connected refrigerator was introduced. Made by LG, the Digital DIOS came with a webcam, an Ethernet port and perhaps most importantly, an LCD touchscreen.

The fridge was one of the first examples of an appliance with a digital screen created specifically for the consumer kitchen, but with a $20 thousand price tag, consumers stayed away.  Today, nearly two decades after the introduction of the world’s first smart fridge, some of the world’s biggest consumer electronics companies are rushing to put screens back into the kitchen again.

Why now? There are a few reasons, but most come back to one simple truth: today’s kitchen is becoming the home’s central gathering place, where people not only come to make meals but also to hang out with friends, pay bills or do homework. In other words, the kitchen has become the modern home’s ‘everything room’, and unlike the family room where a TV or family computer often resides, there’s no defined product today in the kitchen that’s accepted as the go-to screen for family members to share information, manage home systems, keep tabs on things and communicate with one another.

Not that some companies aren’t trying. Here’s a look at the leading contenders:

Refrigerators

With ample flat surface space and usually centered in the middle of the kitchen, you can see why appliance makers see the fridge as the logical place to put a big digital screen. And unlike past efforts where companies would sometimes slap a screen on a fridge with limited functionality, today’s smart fridges have big, high-definition LED touch screens. The Samsung Family Hub’s screen is 21.5″, while LG’s Smart Instaview refrigerator has a huge 29″ screen.

Pros: The main advantage of having the refrigerator act as a family’s community screen is the simple fact the fridge has long served as the home’s de facto analog bulletin board, where families stick shopping lists, family pictures, and calendars. Given what seems a natural progression for the fridge to become the home’s digital command center, it’s no surprise companies have been pursuing the idea of the smart fridge for two decades.

Cons: The biggest challenge fridges face in becoming the main ‘family screen’ is simple: these are devices that are meant to stay in a house for ten years or more. This long lifespan is much different from traditional computing devices, such as mobile phones or tablets, which typically have much faster replacement cycles.  Consumers plopping down $2,500 for the latest fridge are going to want their new device to last for at least a decade, no matter how smart they are when they purchase them.

Smart Assistants

Though the Amazon Echo is only a couple years old, its success has create a whole new category of devices alternatively called ‘smart speakers’ or ‘virtual assistants’ (for our purposes I’ll call them ‘smart assistants’, since not all are speakers and the hardware part beyond the voice assistant is hardly virtual).

And now, the company’s new Echo Show represents an entirely new and exciting direction, with a 7″ touch screen and a new visual skill API that allows third party developers to create skills that leverage visual information such as live stream video from a networked camera or cooking videos from Twitch.

And let’s not forget HelloEgg, a smart assistant with an embedded visual display designed specifically for the kitchen created by a company called RND64 that is expected to ship this year.

Pros: Unlike a heavy appliance like a fridge, smart assistant products can be purchased and installed anywhere on a countertop.  In a way, they’re like a highly optimized tablet, but instead of being a personal computing device they’re created to act as a shared screen. In many ways, the Echo Show is Amazon’s concept of a kitchen computer.

Cons: The touchscreen enabled smart assistant category is just simply too new to know how well it will do with consumers. While the Amazon Echo and other smart assistant products are no doubt becoming popular, it’s just a little soon to see how popular smart assistants with touchscreen will be.

Kitchen Counters And Flat Surfaces

The concept of using the kitchen counter as a Minority Report like interactive touch screen has been bouncing around in future-forward design studios for much of the past decade and, in the past couple years, big kitchen electronics makers like Whirlpool have even toyed with the idea of the countertop touch screen.

IKEA Concept Kitchen 2025

Pros: First and foremost, the idea of your surface as interactive computing screen is just cool. It also offers an extremely flexible and dynamic format to display information and adjust to specific design needs of a kitchen.

Cons: While the idea has been floating around and touted by such big brands like Whirlpool and IKEA, a projected surface touchscreen has yet to roll out in any significant way in a mass market consumer product.

Kitchen-Centric PCs

For a hot moment back in 2008-9, some in the computer industry decided that since people spend lots of time in the kitchen, they should create a line of Kitchen PCs. The idea wasn’t altogether bad since, in some ways, was a predecessor concept to the Echo Show since these products centered around the early touchscreen Windows PCs. But not surprisingly, the late aughts “kitchen PC” movement fizzled out as quickly as it started.

Pros: The idea of a kitchen computer with a touchscreen is not a bad idea, and lots of people actually have their PCs in the kitchen.

Cons: These devices were just Windows PCs with touchscreens that were very much a product of 2009.

The Microwave Oven

The fridge isn’t the only device where a screen could reside. In fact, a decade ago appliance giant Whirlpool toyed around with the concept of putting a TV screen on a microwave oven. While they never rolled the product out to market, others have since toyed around with the idea.

Games Console Microwave

Pros: Some appliances, like the microwave, are nearly as prevalent as refrigerators. Chances are a touchscreen enabled microwave would likely be much less expensive than a smart fridge.

Cons: At this point, I know of no product company that is considering a smart microwave, perhaps because of the complications of sticking a flat screen computing device on the front of a microwave. Not to say someone couldn’t surprise me, but this one seems to be the domain of tinkerers and video-bloggers at this point.

Bottom line, we’re likely to see many more screens in the kitchen in coming years. Unlike the personal computing devices most of us carry in our pockets or backpacks, these “kitchen screen” will be tailored for shared use and act as a modern equivalent of family bulletin board/digital command center for the modern home.

The only open question is exactly which device will it be.

The Smart Kitchen Summit is around the corner. Get your ticket today before early bird ticket pricing before it expires to make sure you are the the one and only event focused on the future of food, cooking and the kitchen. 

Samsung’s Latest Smart Fridge Is Here

Samsung’s been working on connected appliances for years and the company’s flagship smart fridge feels like a personification of the vision they have for the connected kitchen. Today Samsung is unveiling their next generation Family Hub with stronger app integration and a series of new partners to enhance features like family communication and grocery to fridge food shopping.

“The Family Hub is a huge step forward in the modern kitchen. It empowers you to do things you never thought possible – like take the fridge with you to the grocery store, digitally display a photo of your kids’ winning goal, and enjoy your favorite entertainment right from your digital screen,” commented John Herrington, Samsung’s SVP and General Manager of the Home Appliance Division.

The appliance giant is revealing the smart fridge’s advancements tonight at an event in partnership with the Smart Kitchen Summit; the event will bring together experts in kitchen trends, product innovation and cultural anthropology for a panel discussion today at Samsung’s experiential retail center in NYC.

The event, “More Than Just a Fridge: The Future of Food, Family & Fun in the Kitchen,” features Samsung execs including Herrington and Yoon Lee, Michael Wolf, curator of the Smart Kitchen Summit and publisher of The Spoon, Lisa Fetterman, CEO and founder of sous vide startup Nomiku, Christian Madsbjerg, Cultural Anthropologist and Amy Bentley, Food + Culture Professor at NYU. Programming at the event will tackle why the kitchen has become the hub of the home, how the kitchen is evolving to serve the changing needs of multi-generational families and how technology is created convenience and connection in the kitchen.

The Family Hub fridges will add new features including personal memos and photos on the digital touchscreen, partnerships with TuneIn and Spotify for music streaming and integration with Samsung TVs to push programming to the fridge’s front door screen.

This latest edition of Samsung’s smart fridge will also feature the Connect app, the company’s smart home control app introduced earlier this year on the Galaxy S8. By putting the Connect app on the Family Hub fridge, the appliance can now act as a smart home command center if they have a SmartThings hub or the Samsung new Connect Home Smart Wi-Fi system with an integrated SmartThings hub.

The new Family Hub also has integration with a number of cooking applications and services such as Allrecipes and GrubHub. The device will also work with Nomiku’s immersion circulator, which is an integration by-product of Samsung’s investment in Nomiku.

(Disclosure: The Smart Kitchen Summit and Samsung partnered to produce the event mentioned in this post.)

Smart Kitchen | Food Tech Wrap-Up From CES 2017

Is it fair to say we’re all collectively exhausted from CES news? The first few weeks of the year are just a deluge of tech press releases about all the things manufacturers plan to do, make, ship, partner with and promulgate during the rest of the year. And even though CES has yet to carve out a specific floor area for food and kitchen related tech items, we definitely saw an uptick in announcements in this emerging space.

We saw smart kitchen products and integrations from larger companies and startups alike across the connected home, appliances and wearables – here’s the rundown.

Alexa, has the smart kitchen arrived? (And have you seen Google?)

It seems no one is sick of Amazon Echo quite yet and we saw even more manufacturers outside of the traditional smart home adding Alexa integration to their product lines. The biggest announcement came from Whirlpool, who made a splash last year with Amazon Dash integration at the show and this year adds voice functionality to its Wi-Fi connected ovens, fridges and washing machines. Alexa, is my laundry done?

And now, if you own a Ford with the Sync 3 platform, you can ask Alexa to preheat the oven from your car.

LG announced a competitor to the Samsung Family Hub with its own smart fridge (more on that later) – with a gigantic touch screen that looks like you might need a step stool to reach the top of, the appliance also integrates with Amazon Echo. Alexa, can you reach that icon for me?

Speaking of Samsung – the upped the ante this year with Family Hub 2.0, adding a bunch of new service integrations (GrubHub and Spotify, to name a few) but not much else. And LG jumped in the smart fridge game with giant touchscreen game with new Smart InstaView Model, boasting much of the same features as the Family Hub, including voice integration, cameras to see what’s inside your fridge when you’re away (or too lazy to open the door) and software to help run your house. LG’s model also has grocery ordering but theirs is Amazon-powered.

Google Home, the Echo’s main competitor, was announced in a few integrations. Conversation Actions, their equivalent to Alexa’s Skills, hasn’t shown us much that is kitchen or food related (with the exception of a Dominos pizza ordering action) as of yet, so Alexa is still your main sous chef for the kitchen. For now.

For their part, Whirlpool had a host of announcements around their “Smart Kitchen Suite”, including their first step into guided cooking. Their assisted cooking will guide users through three step recipes that will send instructions to the oven and program it for the cook. They also introduced “scan-to-cook” which will allow the user to scan barcodes to “send the right directions, temperature and cooking time settings straight to the appliance.”

The smart bar gets customized….and sees more competition

PicoBrew showed off its now-shipping Pico unit at CES and announced that it will offer customized PicoPaks, the pods used to make different types of beer with the device. Previously, PicoPaks were premade by the company’s professional brewers, making it more of a do-it-for-me experience. Now, you can create your own beer selecting flavors and ingredients on the platform with some guidance from the pros.

The area of smart beverages is one we’ve kept our eye on for a while, with device makers and beverage companies all vying for a piece of the pie. But The Spoon’s Allen Weiner found an interesting story NOT at CES, writing, “while companies such as Picobrew and Whirlpool’s Vessi were showcasing their high-tech methods for brewing beer at CES, two giants of the beverage industry confirmed a partnership.” Turns out that AB InBev, the world’s largest beer brewer and the makers of Keurig are teaming up to create a home-brewing system designed to deliver homemade beer and cocktails. Will it do for cocktails what the Keurig did for coffee? We’ll see.

Food waste prevention goes mainstream

The prevention of food waste has been an area I’ve been fascinated with for a while – especially as it relates to technology’s potential to really change our bad habits and help us stop bludgeoning our environment with trash. But so far, most of the solutions are niche or designed for commercial use. But -CES saw the introduction of some smart solutions that might actually change things.

First, there’s the Zera Food Recyler from Whirlpool – which is basically a fancy name for a tech-savvy composter that can live in your kitchen and turn food scraps into fertilizer with very little involvement from you. Composting is a cool idea, and the earth-friendly concept of it appeals to this generation of more health-conscious, organic-buying consumers, but is generally not pursued by the vast majority of us. Whirlpool smartly saw this as a way to use technology and create a one-button solution to this. Zera is on Indiegogo now for a little under $1k (fully funded and still taking backers as of this posting) and expected in stores later this year.

Also pretty cool – the GeniCan, a smart device you place on your trash can that scans items as you toss them in the bin and creates a grocery list from which you can reorder. You can also set it up to connect to Amazon Echo and have it automatically reorder items for you (from Amazon, of course). This might not prevent food waste in the traditional way, but it could stop you from ordering too much food and help you be more accurate with the stuff you need. If you scan everything you throw away first.

The robots are here, and they’re going to teach you how to cook

Robots at CES are not a new thing. For years, companies have been using them – sometimes in the form of product announcements, sometimes just as booth eye candy to lure traffic in – to make a splash. This year, the name of the robot game was giving arms and legs to Alexa – and making her dance, apparently.

But one appliance maker decided to create its own smart robotic assistant for the kitchen, bypassing the popular “put Alexa behind everything” trend. Bosch launched its Wi-Fi and Bluetooth-connected appliances last year and this year introduced Mykie (my kitchen elf, shortened) which is basically an Amazon Echo voice device with a small touchscreen that helps you out in the kitchen. Need a recipe? Want to know what’s in the fridge? Want to listen to some music? Mykie’s got you covered. It seems odd that Bosch would want to compete with Amazon in this category, but Mykie does do some cool stuff that the Echo doesn’t, including project images onto a wall via the tiny projector in its rear, allowing you to blow up a recipe video you’re following. Mykie also offers virtual social cooking classes so you can learn to cook with an actual human instructor and the AI assistant. Is it enough to compete with the Echo? Time will tell.

Cooking tech heats up

Drop adds a second appliance manufacturer to its roster – announcing its recipe platform can now control GE Wi-Fi appliances (it announced Bosch integration in September last year.)

Panasonic showed off an entire smart kitchen with technology like a smart wine fridge with different temps for each shelf and a cool display, inductive heating built into countertops and tables to discretely heat and keep food warm and a machine learning / camera combo that lets appliances react to and adjust cooking based on the recipe you’re trying to follow.

The Smart Kitchen Show hits the CES floor

The Spoon’s Mike Wolf hit the CES floor in search of interesting conversations on food tech and smart kitchen – check out The Smart Kitchen Show’s newest podcasts.

Hear from the CEO of nutrition and food delivery startup Habit about their offerings and how they’re building the next generation of personalized nutrition.

Mike caught up with AppKettle’s founder Robert Hill to talk US shipping dates and what’s behind the company’s initial delay to bring the product to market.

Mike and I catch up on all that we saw at CES in our CES smart kitchen wrap-up.

Over the next few weeks we’ll continue to analyze what we saw in smart kitchen and future of food at CES. Stay tuned! If you want to get all our analysis in your inbox, make sure to subscribe to our weekly newsletter.

Samsung Continues to Push the Smart Fridge Envelope at CES 2017

Samsung continues to push forward with its vision of the smart refrigerator as the center of the smart kitchen with the announcement of its Smart Hub 2.0 model (dubbed Family Hub 2.) at 2017 CES. Family Hub 2.0 represents an update to the company’s flagship 1.0 version announced at the 2016 CES. Family Hub 2.0 will be expanded into 10 new models as opposed to four which featured the initial version.

Improving upon such features as its voice controller, Samsung announced new application partners such as  GrubHub, Nomiku, Glympse, Ring, Spotify, and iHeartRadio. In Europe, Samsung is working with local home grocery services to add greater consumer convenience, and with music/audio services, the new Family Hub can offer the latest tunes, news headlines and weather reports from a central family gathering place.

Family Hub 2.0 has increased its usability by offering an internal camera to keep track of what food needs to be replenished and then connecting to a MasterCard grocer-ordering app. Integration with AllRecipes allows cooks to connect to recipes that can be read in large text via a 21.5-inch LED screen. As a smart hub, individual family members can set up their own profiles and use the built-in screen to create shopping lists, calendars, and memos.

The new Family Hub 2.0 smart refrigerators start at $5,799, not exactly priced for mass consumption. Samsung continues to have faith in the smart fridge category, firmly believing that the refrigerator is a logical hub for other IoT appliances in the smart kitchen including its new line of ovens. Beyond the kitchen, if Samsung were able to tie together its various point-solution hubs from around the home (using its IoT platform ARTIK) it could become a dominant player in the world of IoT.

LG also announced a new smart refrigerator at CES 2017, the InstaView model with its standout feature being integration with Amazon’s Echo to provide voice-control. Echo’s Alexa voice assistant can be used to order groceries from the Seattle-based retailer with Amazon software built into the appliance. A 2-megapixel camera with a wide-angle lens will allow consumers to see what food needs to be reordered via the 29-inch LED screen built into the front of the appliance.

Running on the same WebOS as LG smart TVs, pricing and availability of the InstaView was not announced.

Whirlpool, who won a CES 2017 innovation award for its Zera food recycler, announced new technology for its line of refrigerators including a door within a door, but has yet to come out with a smart fridge.

Samsung Settles Into The Connected Kitchen, But Will They Stay?

If there’s one thing you can say about Samsung, they’re willing to try new things.

Whether it’s virtual reality, smart home or wearables, you can bet that if there’s a new technology trend charting on Techmeme, Samsung will soon have a new product.

But while the company is known for throwing lots of tech spaghetti against to wall, it’s not always as committed to stuff that doesn’t immediately stick. Whether it’s their lukewarm attachment to different platforms, new form factors or its long and mixed history with things like Internet fridges, they often move on to new, more promising projects fairly quickly.

Which, on the eve of the release of a broad new lineup of smart kitchen appliances, I have to wonder about how dedicated they’ll be to the category.

For the time being, I admit they seem pretty excited, enough so to add a new lineup of Wi-Fi and Bluetooth powered wall ovens, cooktops and range hoods announced to their smart kitchen portfolio. From the looks of it, the Korean manufacturer is hoping the new products will add to the momentum created by the release of the Samsung Family Hub refrigerator, which has been a critical success if not a commercial one (at least not yet).

The new lineup will also work the SmartThings smart home hub, the platform for Samsung’s smart home efforts.

Ultimately, I think the dedication of Samsung to the connected kitchen broadly defined will not waver. The reason is I see a transitional period in the appliance market where the vast majority of big brands add connectivity to their premium tiers, and fairly quickly we’ll see this technology move into all but the low-end budget lines. So in this sense, I don’t think Samsung will move away from smart kitchen.

But just how long they stick with the current configurations and platforms remains to be seen. One example of Samsung’s fickleness towards particular platforms is seen from their treatment of the Galaxy smart watch lineup. One moment it seems they’re abandoning Google’s smartwatch OS, the next moment they’re embracing it again, then they abandon it again.

With smart kitchen, one thing that could reassure potential buyers is the company seems content – for now – to use its smart home platform as the technology foundation, but long term I have to wonder how things might shake out if, say, Samsung does decide to move on from SmartThings.

At the same time, the company is struggling lately as they are put out fires (literally) across the product lineup. Not only have they had to deal with a huge mess around their flagship phone, the Note 7, going up in flames, they’ve also had to deal with consumer complaints about their washing machines catching fire.

All this said, my worry may be overblown. Samsung not only has lots of resources to weather product recalls but also enough to stay committed to new-fangled features even when consumers don’t seem at all interested.

One such example came from Brian Frank at the Smart Kitchen Summit. Frank recalled a time when, as a product manager for Twitter, he was in a meeting with Samsung to discuss their connected refrigerator. The company had put a Twitter client into one of their fridges and told Frank they wanted to license the Twitter client for many years to come to ensure that – yes, you guessed it – the fridge could continue to tweet.

Frank told them it wouldn’t probably be necessary. The reason? When he examined the usage of the Twitter client by actual owners of the Samsung tweeting fridge, he could count the number of people who had used the feature on his hand.