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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

food tech

Thailand’s SPACE-F Opens Applications for Its 2020 Accelerator and Incubator Programs

Asia-based food tech startups, take note. SPACE-F, an accelerator and incubator program in Thailand, is now taking applications for Batch-II of its program (h/t Green Queen). The program works with Southeast Asian startups working to improve a number of areas across the the food and be industries.

Batch-II, which officially kicks off in October 2020, will consist of both an accelerator and incubator program.

SPACE-F was founded in 2019, making it a relatively new entrant to the food tech accelerator/incubator space. Program founders NIA, Thai Union PLC, and Mahidol University have partnered with ThaiBev for Batch-II.

The biggest differences between accelerator and incubator programs has to do with the stage of growth participating companies are at. Accelerators tend to work with early-stage companies looking to grow, while incubators tend to host companies that might not yet be ready to commercialize. (Read our full breakdown of the differences here.)

Reflecting those differences, SPACE-F’s program invites companies with compelling prototypes and ideas to apply for its incubator, while startups wanting to join the accelerator should already have a product/technology and customer traction. The accelerator runs four months, and the incubator runs 9–15 months, depending on the specific company. 

All participants will be working to solve challenges in the food industry, though SPACE-F’s range of areas is quite wide. Alt-protein, restaurant tech, manufacturing, novel ingredients, and food safety are just a few of the areas listed on the SPACE-F website. 

Participants will receive equity-free investment (a specific sum isn’t named), mentorship, networking opportunities, and access to SPACE-F’s facilities. That said, SPACE-F notes on its site that because of COVID-19, at least part of the program will take place virtually. As is the case with other startup accelerators and incubators, when and how any in-person sessions will take place will depend on the changing nature of the coronavirus crisis. 

Applications for SPACE-F are open until July 12, 2020.

Tovala’s David Rabie on How He Built a Loyal User Base For His Smart Kitchen & Food Delivery Startup

Despite the complexity of building two businesses at once and presenting them as one integrated whole, Tovala’s managed to build a highly loyal user base with what is arguably the highest lifetime user value in the connected kitchen space.

I decided to catch up with Tovala’s CEO David Rabie and ask him how he’s managed to find success while other companies have struggled. 

The interview is an exclusive offering for Spoon Plus members. You can learn more about Spoon Plus here. 

Food Tech Intelligence Brief: Will COVID-19 Mean A Lost Generation of Kitchen Tech?

Welcome to the Spoon Plus Weekly Intelligence Brief. Each week I’ll dissect trends that are unfolding in the world of food tech.

We’ve read a lot over the past two months about the loss of restaurants. Some prognosticators suggest that up to 75% of independent restaurants could permanently disappear.

While the pandemic’s impact on restaurants will continue to be massive and will undoubtedly reshape that industry’s landscape for years to come, another food-related market – appliances and housewares – could also see a dramatic impact in a much different form.

First, the good news. Since quarantines have started in the US, the home appliance market has seen a surge in demand as consumers have shifted to staying and home and eating a much larger number of their meals at home.

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This graphic from NPD’s Joe Derochowski shows how overall kitchen electrics have seen a bump in absolute dollars spent as consumers buy countertop appliances to help them cook at home. Total dollar percentage change for kitchen electrics was up 22% during lockdown.

Figure 1: Percentage Growth of Home Products March 15th-April 18th (NPD Data)

But while a near-term jump in consumer purchases of countertop cooking appliances is no doubt good for the bottom line for some of these companies, the untold story is COVID-19 no doubt set back the same industry from a product roadmap perspective.

At least that’s my belief after looking at data from our COVID-19 impact survey of food and kitchen industry professionals (see the full report here) conducted in late April. I cut a slice of the data from the survey, which had 377 respondents across the food and related industries, to look at how those within the home appliance and housewares market responded.

As you’ll see from this chart, the appliance/houseware business wasn’t immune to the pandemic’s impact, with 43% indicating their company had to lay off or furlough employees (compared to 52% of the broader food industry).

Figure 2: Have you had to lay off or furlough employees due to COVID-19?

Perhaps the most significant impact in the appliance and housewares businesses is not the near-term impact on employee headcount, but a longer-term impact on company product roadmaps.

The graph below shows the results from where we asked our survey respondents whether they had to delay or cancel a product. 

Figure 3: Has your company had to delay or cancel a new product due to COVID-19?

58% of those that worked for an appliance or housewares company indicated that their company had delayed or outright canceled a new product. This compares with 45% of those who worked in other food-related industries.

Why cancel or delay? The biggest reason for respondents was lower revenue/shrinking business, with over four in ten (43%) staying this was a reason. Another big reason (respondents were allowed to pick more than one contributing factor) was the impact of COVID on potential customers (40%), while another factor was COVID-related business disruption (38%).

Other reasons stated by at least two startups in the appliance space was lost funding rounds as investors grew skittish due to the impact of COVID-19.

The aggregate data tells a story of an appliance industry that has been hit hard, but differently than restaurants and other food-related businesses. How so? Perhaps more so than non-hardware businesses, appliances, and housewares companies often plan for revenue in the coming year or years with new products that, if canceled, will undoubtedly impact their outlook. New products often take years to bring to market, and the reality is the cancellation of a future product very likely changes the outlook of the company for years.

But it’s even bigger than that. New products often represent a company’s future vision for itself. Not to be too grandiose, but in some ways canceling a product is equivalent to a company canceling or delaying a vision of their future selves.

Not that these companies shouldn’t have shifted strategies. The reality is the landscape is going to be different. Consumers will have less money. The way they buy food and how they consume food is (and already has) changed. To not change how your company navigates a landscape where the map is suddenly much different would be a breach of your fiduciary duties as a company executive.

But it’s still worth trying to understand the long-term impacts of these many altered product roadmaps. To do that, it’s worth looking at what types of products were canceled or delayed.

The table below shows some of the products listed by the respondents:

Table 1: What type of product or service did you delay or cancel due to COVID-19?

As you can see, many responses were fairly generic (“kitchen appliances” or “home appliances”). Others were more granular (“braising pan”, “beverage dispenser” or “smart garden appliance”).  Others spoke to more services-related products related to the appliance or houseware industry (“SaaS service” or “Residential kitchen designs”).

But what is most telling, to me at least, is how the language speaks to how these companies are canceling what is next. One respondent said their company is canceling a “new generation of large home appliances”. Another “postponed next version of automation product .” A third cut “new technology and product-related R&D.”

Again, we’re traversing a new world. Product roadmap adjustments are required. But I can’t help but wonder how much innovative work and progress was lost due to COVID-19. In the coming weeks, I’ll continue to evaluate how the reshaped appliance industry landscape will look and what I expect kitchen tech and food-related innovation efforts will look like as we emerge on the other side.  

Quick Thoughts

Chickens Are Hot

I wrote a couple weeks ago about how smart garden equipment was seeing a massive surge as consumers. In that post, I also mentioned that interest in backyard chicken farming was also on the rise, no doubt due to the same inclinations that led people to start buying seeds and developing plants for backyard gardens at a record rate over the past month or two. 

But the sheer jump in interest in chicken-farming related products on Amazon is worth looking at. As show in the graphic below, Amazon-related searches for backyard chicken farming related products has most definitely shot through the roof. Chick supplies? Up eight-fold. Chick starter kit? Six-fold. Interest in chick coops has tripled. 

I don’t think we’ll necessarily see tens of millions of chicken farmers, but I would definitely say the pandemic has meant chicken-farming has jumped the chasm from hipster hobby to a broader swath of the population concerned about their own food supply in what has been revealed to be, perhaps more so than they thought, a somewhat fragile food supply chain. 

As I wrote last month, consumers are thinking about food sovereignty, many for the first time in their lives, and so I expect at-home food production to continue to be a big trend going forward. 

Meal Kits 2.0?

It’s pretty easy to diagnose the reason for the demise of first-generation meal kits at this point: They were expensive and oftentimes required a lot of work for people who, at the end of the day, wanted to get food on the table at, yes, the end of the day.

But in some ways, I think the meal kit may be making a come back in products like that from Omsom, a meal-starter-by-mail service that allows you to essentially cook authentic Asian cuisine with little to no previous experience. In a way, it’s similar to the vision that ChefSteps had with their Joule-ready sauces, which I thought (and still do) think is a good idea before it became a victim of ChefSteps company-specific financial problems.

I also like Yo-Kai’s meal kit concept, even though it’s slightly different from Omsom in that the product provides the entire meal (including proteins). As you can guess by now, I love Asian food, and while I think Asian food meal kits probably are just better because Asian food is better (sorry not sorry), I think it’s more about not only being convenient and making life easier, but it’s also tapping into food passions. I’m going to be more passionate about an Asian food-by-mail offering than a more generic offering from the likes of Blue Apron or Plated.  I also like the flexibility that greater and longer shelf-stability provides me (like with Omsom), which was always a problem with Blue Apron, which always felt like a race-against-the-clock for me. 

Fee Caps Can’t Save Restaurants

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I was going to use this newsletter to write about pandemic profiteering and the report that Uber wants to buy Grubhub. Then this gem of a dire headline hit: one in every four restaurants will go out of business because of coronavirus quarantines.

So says a new forecast by OpenTable, which Bloomberg reported on this week. According to OpenTable, total reservations and walk-in customers from its network (which has over 54,000 restaurants) were down 95 percent on May 13 from the same day one year ago.

That number shouldn’t surprise too much, seeing as most states have been on lockdown for the last six weeks. But according to the company’s data, even in states where restaurants are slowly reopening (at reduced capacity, of course), numbers are “still far below where they were last year.” Consider Scottsdale, AZ, which had no reservations from March 21 but saw that number change to -72 percent for May 13. Houston, TX was next, recording a -82 percent change. Other cities in Texas and Arizona, as well as those in Florida and a few other southern states saw some uptick in reservations, too. 

As much as I’d like to put an optimistic spin on this, I can’t. There are too many elements out there that make the idea of one quarter of American restaurants going under totally plausible.

For one thing, restaurants are not doing nearly as much business right now, and some none at all. Even those that have transitioned to off-premises formats struggle with the operational aspects of the model, and more and more restauranteurs say that delivery doesn’t make them any money. Full-service restaurants specializing in haute cuisine are even worse off because their food isn’t meant to be eaten out of a to-go box.

As OpenTable data shows, restaurants are slowly reopening. But those same numbers also clearly tell us restaurant traffic isn’t bouncing back to pre-pandemic rates. They can’t. States have mandated businesses operate at reduced capacity, as low as 25 percent in some cases. Diners are wary of going out to eat right now, which further reduces foot traffic. And while some states say their restaurants will be operating at full capacity by July, we’re simultaneously getting warnings of a second wave of coronavirus that could lock us all down again.

The bitter pill from all this is that we’re going to lose a lot of local restaurants. There is no way to sugar-coat that. Now we have to figure out what we can do to save at least some of them. That’s going to take a combination of government assistance, charitable donations, technological innovation, and a rethinking of what the restaurant experience means. It’s a tall order — and one we have to accept as we continue the fight to save restaurants.

More Regulation Comes for Third-Party Delivery Caps

Fee caps — another hot-button topic in the restaurant biz — got their fair share of news this week as well. New York City, which has considered placing limits on the commission fees Grubhub et. al charge restaurants for a while, finally voted to cap those fees at 20 percent while NYC is in a state of emergency.

The original bill, which was debated at a recent public hearing, had fees capped at 10 percent. The bill was modified over fears that delivery services would offset the revenue lost from fee caps by lowering workers wages. 

At the same time, Chicago’s 5 percent cap got an upgrade this week when Mayor Lori Lightfoot imposed additional rules over transparency around commission fees. Third-party delivery companies like Grubhub will now have to provide itemized recipes of all the charges involved in each transaction, including the cost of the meal, service fees, delivery fees, and, yep, commission fees.

Right now, the average consumer doesn’t necessarily understand where their money goes when they purchase food via a third-party delivery app. They may not know, for example, that there’s a difference between a tax and a service fee. Many certainly don’t know that third-party services charge up to 30 percent per transaction in commission fees for the restaurant.

Chicago’s new rules seem aimed at making consumers more aware of this. Of course the question is, will knowing that Grubhub is gutting your favorite restaurant keep you from conveniently using the Grubhub app to order?

I doubt it — for now. what needs to happen simultaneous to these rules and regulations is this: restaurants need simpler, faster ways to offer convenient off-premises options through their own digital properties. Due to time and cost, independent restaurants are unlikely to have the resources to go DIY when it comes to food delivery. Restaurant-tech companies are responding, and a number of different solutions exist that claim to reduce or eliminate fee caps. As of now, though, it’s hard to tell which tools actually deliver on that promise. 

One thing that may come out of the pandemic will be a more standardized set of tools for native food delivery. A restaurant could work with a single third-party tech company that would provide them with the infrastructure to create and manage a mobile app, from updating menus to processing orders. Restaurants would still need to pay someone to actually deliver the food, which is a huge cost in and of itself. In that case, third-party delivery services would still be relevant, and restaurants would still owe some commission fees, though not nearly as much.

Only with a solid platform for native delivery will restaurants be able to convince consumers to drop the third-party apps and order direct. If this happens, maybe someday we won’t need to rely on government regulation to give restaurants a fair playing field.

Dive Bar, Meet Your New Reservations System

In a lot of states, bars didn’t make the cut when it comes to foodservice businesses allowed to reopen. It’s not hard to see why, since they tend to be dark, crowded rooms in which strangers mingle, often in a shoulder-to-shoulder capacity. On a busy night, there might also be scores of used glasses lying around. None of that exactly instills confidence in would-be customers emerging from a pandemic.

To combat that, bars, when they do open again, will have to stick to the same reduced capacity guidelines restaurants do, and in some cases may even have to start accepting reservations.   

OpenTable clearly anticipated that development, as the company just announced it has added bars and wineries to its platform. Once “drink-focused destinations” open again, customers will be able to book a table at their favorite watering hole, join a virtual waitlist, and, at participating wineries, prepay for tasting menus. A couple famous spots — the Flatiron Room in NYC and The Roosevelt Room in Austin, TX, have already signed up with the platform in preparation for reopening. 

To be honest, it’s not hard to picture spots like those two taking reservations. They’re upscale — dare I say chic — spots you would hit for a classy night on the town. In other words, they are not your average dive bar. It’s the latter category that’s going to struggle more when bars are finally allowed to reopen. Your average bar sells $6 beer-and-shot specials, not $80 bottles of wine that could help make up for reduced capacity. Reservations will certainly help with social distancing efforts, but for bars that specialize in selling huge quantities of small-ticket items, they may not make a difference in terms of keeping a lot of places in business. 

The larger question is, How will the pandemic change bar culture in general? Once bars are allowed to turn the lights back on, your average Friday night out could look a whole lot different.

Meet Spoon Plus, Our New Deep Dive Insights & Virtual Events Membership Program

When we launched the Smart Kitchen Summit in 2015, an event all about the rethinking of cooking and our kitchens, we soon realized innovation was happening everywhere across the food system: at the farm, in our favorite restaurants, at the corner grocery store and, yes, in our kitchens.

It felt necessary, almost urgent, to tell these stories. After all, I’d spent a good chunk of the decade prior working for one of Silicon Valley’s biggest tech blogs, where I discovered how crucial it is to nascent markets to find those betting big on turning their world-changing ideas into a changed world. Back then it was technologies like cloud computing and IoT upending established industries like digital media and communication, but it didn’t take me long to realize the reinvention of the food system would be an even bigger deal.

After all, everyone eats, right?

So we started The Spoon in 2016 because we had this idea that we would tell the stories of a new generation of innovators working to reinvent the food system. Now, almost four thousand stories later, we are more convinced than ever about the impact of innovation on food.

Which is why we created Spoon Plus.

What’s Spoon Plus? In short, it’s our paid membership community where we’ll be bringing you deep dive insights in the form of research reports, long-form conversations with innovators, and exclusive online events to help you better understand the world of food tech and food innovation.

We’ll have new content every week, and to start we’ve got a great report from our own Catherine Lamb analyzing the emerging market for air protein. We also have a new report by me analyzing the survey results of food-industry executives about the impact of COVID-19 and their go-forward plans for the rest of 2020.

That’s not all. Early next week, I’ll publish my first weekly intelligence brief looking at COVID-19 disruption on new product launches in the kitchen and housewares space. After that, our editor-in-chief Chris Albrecht will soon have a report on the emerging market for next-generation food vending machines, and our restaurant tech expert, Jenn Marston, will have a strategy guide for cloud kitchens in the post-COVID world.

As part of Spoon Plus, we’ll also have deep dive conversations and interviews with industry executives like this one with Chris Young, the coauthor of Modernist Cuisine and founder of ChefSteps, who opened up to me recently about what happened with the company he founded and where he thinks the next big opportunities are in the world of food.

As part of our launch of Spoon Plus, we’re also announcing that Smart Kitchen Summit 2020 is going virtual, and that every Spoon Plus annual membership will include a ticket to SKS 2020. Our belief is that our events and online content have a symbiotic relationship, where our community engages with the same innovators we are writing about and where we often find the next big story at The Spoon. As we go deeper with Spoon Plus, we want our SKS community to be a part of that.

Of course, part of the reason for going virtual with our flagship event is we now live in a world where in-person events that thrive on a global mix of interesting people are going to be difficult, if not impossible, for the next 1-2 years. That said, we’re really excited about the SKS reaching even more people. We’ve been working hard at building our virtual event capabilities (we had a virtual COVID-19 food summit last month with over 1500 attendees), and are becoming more excited by the day about the possibilities of SKS 2020 and other exclusive virtual events through Spoon Plus.

So if you want to go deeper with us through research and reports, if you want to attend SKS 2020, if you want to support The Spoon as we grow, subscribe to Spoon Plus. As a way to help you get started, we’re offering Spoon Plus annual memberships for 40% off for the next ten days only. This one-time discount includes our company plans (that’s right – you can get Spoon Plus for your entire team). Just use the discount code LAUNCH when you are checking out and Memberful (the technology powering our membership offering) will deduct the amount from the total.

And of course, if you want to try out Spoon Plus for a month, you can subscribe to our monthly plan (monthly plans do not include a ticket to SKS). We also offer substantial discounts for students and for anyone who is in the midst of job transition.

If you’d like to learn more about those, just drop us an line.

For those of you wondering about The Spoon’s free coverage, don’t worry. We’re more committed than ever to bringing you the same daily news and analysis of those changing the food system for free on our main site. Spoon Plus is for those who, like us, also want to go deeper and access content that connects the dots from our daily reporting.

Thanks for your support. We look forward to building Spoon Plus together as we look to better understand and engage in the future of food.

Eat Beyond Global’s CEO on Why Now is Prime Time to Invest in Food Tech

With so much instability in the world right now, it may seem like a tricky time to be raising money for an investment fund. Especially in a burgeoning space like food tech.

But according to Patrick Morris, CEO of Eat Beyond Global, COVID-19 actually presents a ripe opportunity for investment in food innovation. Eat Beyond Global is a Canadian fund focused on food tech, particularly in the alternative protein realm. Morris told me that they plan to make 10-20 plant-based investments ranging in amount from $1 million to $10 million CAD over the next four years with a minimum ownership goal of 5 percent.

Right now Eat Beyond is raising the second half of its initial fund, which will be between $5 million and $7 million CAD. By the end of the year, Morris hopes to raise as much as $30 million CAD.

The fund has whittled down their initial potential investment companies to 5 options and will deploy capital over the next several months. They’re targeting early-stage companies, ones that are “just starting to make an impact,” according to Morris. He hopes the fund will be public on the Canadian stock exchange by Q2 of this year.

Morris wouldn’t divulge the names of the five companies they’re considering, but said that four were focused on plant-based foods (eggs, milk, bread, and ice cream), with one concentrating on cellular agriculture. True to its name, Eat Beyond Global isn’t limiting its investments to Canada; Morris named the U.S., Japan, and England as other areas it’s exploring.

Despite the looming economic uncertainty brought on by COVID-19, alternative protein is one area that has actually seen a lot of investment recently. Over the past month alone, plant-based chicken startup Rebellyous raised $6 million, Singaporean alt-meat company Growthwell Group nabbed $8 million, and Israeli chickpea protein producer Innovopro raised $25 million.

Venture funds are also taking notice. In the U.S. Big Idea Ventures (BIV), which raised $50 million for its New Protein Fund last year, is in the midst of raising a whopping $250 million fund for investment in new technologies throughout the food system.

Clearly, the global pandemic isn’t putting a damper on Tom Mastrobuoni, a Venture Partner at BIV, who told me last week that the coronavirus could actually shed some light on the shortcomings in our food system — and the need for sustainable, tech-driven solutions.

Morris agrees. “The fact that we could close the first half of our financing during COVID-19 — when all hell is breaking loose — shows the strength of the category.”

Save the Date: Smart Kitchen Summit 2020, the Leading Food Tech Event In North America, Returns on October 15-16

Mark your calendars: the Smart Kitchen Summit, North America’s leading event for food tech executives, is back for a sixth year on October 15th and 16th in Seattle.

As the first event to bring together executives across the food, appliance, technology and retail industries to explore how digital technologies and innovation in science will reinvent the world of food, SKS has grown to become a must-attend global summit where leaders connect and map the future of their businesses.

And SKS 2020 will be no different as we continue to dive deep into the future of the kitchen as well as explore how advances in food science, AI, IoT and other innovation spaces will bring about a fundamental reinvention of every part of the food value chain over the next decade.

A sample of some of the topics we plan to explore at SKS 2020 include:

  • Personalization across food retail, restaurants, nutrition and the home kitchen
  • AI, robotics and automation’s impact on food in the home, restaurant and food retail
  • Future food innovation (Plant-based, lab-grown, from the air, molecular, etc)
  • Smart kitchen evolution towards a reinvention of core cooking, interfaces and kitchen business models
  • How innovation could help reduce food waste and build more sustainable food systems
  • Ghost kitchens and the changing restaurant and food delivery market

In addition to dozens of sessions exploring the areas critical to today’s food tech exec, SKS 2020 will also add new opportunities for attendees to discover innovations and connect with one another. This year’s event will feature expanded workshops and how-tos from makers to help you better understand and catalyze creation in your business. We will also include a bigger and better SKS Connect meeting platform where we will no doubt top the 1000 plus one-on-one meetings that took place last year.

Personally, I am more excited than ever for SKS. When we started the event back in 2015, I’d just spent much of the previous decade watching large-scale forces completely change the world of entertainment through digital technologies. We suspected disruptive tech was about to have a much bigger impact on the world of food and – as we can plainly see now – we were right. Everywhere along today’s food value chain — on the farm, in the factory, at food retail, in the restaurant and the consumer kitchen — we’re witnessing a radical reinvention of how business is done and how we prepare, sell and consume food.

And yet so much opportunity lies ahead of us. While we’ve seen food tech join other areas as a key focus area for many forward thinkers, the reinvention of the world of food is still in the very early stages. We have yet to find our Spotify or Netflix for food, and I really believe that it’s just a fairly short matter of time before companies emerge that will become huge platforms upon which the future of food is built.

Chances are these companies will be at SKS, so I’d love to invite you to join us in Seattle on October 15-16th as we figure out the future. Please check out our website to get access to early winter sale tickets, let us know if you want to speak or sponsor, or just sign up for more information.

See you in Seattle!

The Food Tech Show: What Do PicoBrew’s Struggles Mean for High Tech Beer Making?

The Spoon’s editor podcast is back and this week Jenn, Chris, Catherine and myself discuss the following stories:

As always, you can subscribe to the Food Tech Show in Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. You can also download this week’s episode direct to your device or just click play below.

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The Food Tech Show: Are We Ready to Eat Bugs?

The Spoon team got together talk about the most interesting food and kitchen tech stories of the week, including:

As always, you can listen to the Food Tech Show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, download direct to your device or just click play below.

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The Food Tech Show: The CES 2020 Food Tech Wrap-Up Episode

We’re back from Vegas after a week scouting out everything food and kitchen tech at the Consumer Electronics Show!

In this episode, Mike, Catherine, Chris and Jenn talk about everything we saw, tasted and who we talked to in the world of food tech for the big show.

In this episode we discuss:

If you enjoy this episode, make sure to subscribe in Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcast. While you’re at it, give us a review because every single one helps!

You can listen to this episode by downloading direct, or on Apple or Spotify.

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Here’s Your Handy CES 2020 Food and Kitchen Tech Preview & Walking Guide

Heading to CES?

Make sure to wear comfortable shoes, bring some Tylenol, and get ready for lots of food and cooking tech!

Having gone to the world’s biggest consumer tech show for well over a decade, I’ve gotten pretty good at finding new products that are of interest to me. That said, even for someone like myself who’s spent more than his fair share of shoe leather getting around the ugly carpets of Vegas, finding the latest in food tech has always been something of a challenge at a show where entertainment, robotics and car tech news usually steal most of the headlines.

The good news is that all started to change last year with the debut of Impossible Burger 2.0, and, based on my pre-show planning over the past couple of weeks, I expect to see a whole bunch of food and kitchen tech news at this year’s CES.

I figured I’d share some of my research by putting together a guide to what’s going on in food tech and smart kitchen at CES 2020 to help you make the most of your time in Vegas. I’ve even added booth numbers for most of the products to help you get there.

During the next few days, I’d also suggest you check back in here at The Spoon for stories, videos and interviews from The Spoon editor team. And, if you plan on making foodtech news at CES with a cool product you think we should check out, drop us a note at the tip line.

So here we go! Check out these food and kitchen tech products at CES 2020:

Robot Pizza: Back in October, attendees of the Smart Kitchen Summit got to sample pizza made by the Seattle based pizza robot startup Picnic. For those of you who couldn’t make it to Seattle, now’s your chance: Picnic’s pizzabot will be serving pizza at CES. Lines for food are long at CES, and I expect the pizza-robot lines at the Las Vegas Convention Center to be even longer.

Robot Ramen: If pizza isn’t your thing, you might want to make your way over to the Taiwan Tech Area in the Sands Eureka Park (Sands 51411) to check to another Smart Kitchen Summit alumni Yo-kai Express, which will be dishing up noodles from their robot ramen vending machine.

Beerbots: You’re gonna need something to chase the pizza, so you might want to check out a beerbot like PicoBrew (Sands 41518) or stop by Treasure Island for FoodTech Live (ticket needed) to see MiniBrew or BEERMKR. Also, while I haven’t hear anything out of LG yet about their beerbot, I am waiting to see if they’ll have an update on their beer brewing appliance they debuted at last year’d CES.

Drinkbots: If you’d like something a little stiffer (I’d suggest to wait til after noon, but this is Vegas and you are an adult), try out a cocktail robot like the Drinkworks (Sands 42546 and FoodTech Live) or Bartesian (Sands 40852).

Wine Tech. Oh, so you’re a wine snob, are you? Don’t worry, you can find that too. Earlier this week Chris wrote about the Albi from Albicchiere (Sands 52722), a cool countertop appliance that stores and serves your wine. Invineo will be showing its connected wine dispenser off as well (Sands 50863).

DNA-Driven Food Choices. Food personalization is moving beyond simple suggestions, and in the future it will get downright personal by creating diet plans based on a person’s biological makeup. If you want to check out a couple of companies looking deep inside your body to make food recommendations, check out DNA Nudge (Sands Booth 44316) or Sun Genomics (FoodTech Live – ticket required for entry).

Smart Countertop Cooking. There will be an array of different countertop cooking appliances that are powered by smart software and cook in new and interesting ways. CES will be the first chance to see a working version of the long-promised Anova smart oven (see our post here), which you can see in the Sands (booth 40946) . The Julia, which is a multicooker reminiscent of the Thermomix, features guided cooking videos delivered via a touchscreen interface. You can find the Julia at in the Sands at booth 41367. Speaking of Thermomix, they’ll be showing off the TM6 at FoodTech Live (ticket required). If you’re the smoothie type, check out the cool next-gen Millo blender (Sands 40346), who will also be showing off a smart table with wireless power.

Intelligent Surface Cooking. I expect some interesting news in terms of smart cooking surfaces. One cool demo I plan to check out is the GHSP concept that is both an induction cooking surface and a touch interface (North Hall 3111). I also expect the Wireless Power Consortium to be showing off their Ki cordless kitchen platform at their usual spot in the Las Vegas Convention Center at on the walkway near the South Hall (South Hall SL-2).

Smart Home Gardening/Vertical Farming Systems. I’ve been following smart gardening systems for years at CES, but this is the first year we’ve seen big appliance brands jump in. As Jenn wrote earlier this week, LG will be showing off a new indoor gardening system at CES (Central Hall 11100). Not to be outdone, GE will be coming with its own home gardening kitchen concept called “Home Grown” which it will be showcasing at the Haier/GE booth in the central hall (Central booth 16006).

Home Food Robots. We’re not sure how fully fleshed out the Autokitch cooking robot concept is, but they’ll have a booth at CES (Sands 53034). And while it’s not quite a fully robotic kitchen concept or bread making robot, the Tigoût is a pod-based baking machine from Argentina that’s is worth checking out. Drop in a pod, out spits a souffle or a raspberry muffin. You can see the Tigoût in action at Sands 52768.

Coffee and Tea, Please. If you’re looking for a nice cup of tech-powered tea, you should check out the Teplo tea maker, which will be at the Panasonic booth in the Sands (Sands 42711). If you’re more of a coffee person, then you’re in luck if you have a ticket to FoodTech Live: A production line version of the grind and brew Spinn will make its debut after a long-anticipated wait. The Terra Kaffe – which grinds, brews and steams milk – will also be in attendance at Food Tech Live.

Alexa, Give Me a Coke. Sure, this one is kinda gimmicky, but we are talking CES after all. Amazon and Coca-Cola are teaming up for a voice-powered Amazon Alexa “Coke Energy Wall” where attendees will be able to ask Alexa for a coke and a smile (delivered via what the PR describes as a “one of Alexa’s witty responses”. You can find the Amazon Alexa Coke Energy Wall at Sands booth #40934.

Smart Fridges. Smart fridges have been debuting at CES for years, and this year they are more evolved than ever. LG will be showing off its new InstaView ThinQ refrigerator, which uses computer vision and AI for real-time inventory of what’s inside (Central Hall 11100). Samsung will be back with its latest edition of the Family Hub smart fridge line, this time powered by Whisk, a smart food AI platform they acquired in spring of 2019 (Central Hall 15006). If you’re interested in products that make existing dumb fridges smart, Smarter will be showing off its smart fridge cam platform at FoodTech Live (ticket required).

Fake Meat. Impossible stole the show last year at CES with the debut of the Impossible 2.0. In retrospect, it was a brilliant move for the fake meat unicorn to unveil their next-gen meat at CES 2019, mostly because it would be the first time most journalists and attendees would have a bite of a plant based burger. It also didn’t hurt that the 2.0 is much better than the 1.0. This year Impossible will be back, kicking things off with a press conference at 5 PM on Jan 6th and then serving up twenty five thousand free samples of Impossible Burger (I’m guessing it will be the new recipe/3.0 edition) their new pork product and the Impossible Burger at the Central Plaza of the Las Vegas Convention Center.

Smart Grillin’. The Weber folks partnered up with June late last year to add some software powered cooking intelligence to their grill. You can swing by their booth at the South Hall to see what those two have cooking on the Barbie (South Hall SP-2). Also, Chris wrote up the news this weekend about Yummly’s new entry in the increasingly crowded smart thermometer space. You can check that new product if you make an appointment with Whirlpool and swing by their meeting space at the Wynn (Wynn hospitality suites). Speaking of smart thermometers, Meater is back and you can check out their latest if you have a ticket to FoodTech Live.

Tiny Adorable Dishwashers. Like many of you kitchen nerds, I’ve been excited about the Tetra. Only problem is, Heatworks, the company behind the Tetra, is a bit behind on shipping their sexy little countertop cleaning machine and so it looks like they are staying home this year and focusing on getting it out the door in 2020. But don’t worry! If you’re looking to scratch the countertop cleaning machine itch, head on over to the Daan booth to check out equally adorable Bob (Sands 50819).

Ok, that’s it. While this list isn’t exhaustive, it’s a good start. If anything really interesting pops up before tomorrow’s CES Unveiled, I’ll update the post (send me any news I’ve missed via our tip form), and for more detailed updates make sure to check back here at The Spoon all next week!