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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

GE

Drop’s Recipe App Platform Now Will Control GE Wi-Fi Ovens

Drop isn’t wasting time transforming itself into a recipe platform for connected appliances.

In the space of three months, the company has announced its second major appliance manufacturer win with GE, who the company announced would adopt its recipe platform with GE’s Wi-Fi enabled ovens. This news follows their September announcement of a partnership with Bosch to power a similar control of settings like temperature from within their recipe app.

For GE, who is taking a fairly open approach with their Wi-Fi product lineup, it’s another of a growing list of partners. They’ve also integrated with IFTTT as well ad added an Alexa skill by the name of Geneva that connects with 70 GE Wi-Fi connected appliances. Since the company’s acquisition (in June Chinese company Haier acquired the appliance division from General Electric), they have been extremely aggressive in adding new capabilities.

Drop continues to make a smooth transition from a company that makes consumer hardware (their first product was the Drop smart scale) to a platform company. The “kitchen guidance” platform space is looking to heat up in 2017, with Innit, Drop, SideChef and others continuing to partner and grow capabilities.

What Happened To Smart Fridges In 2016?

As we continue our end of year wrap-up series, we wanted to drive into some smart kitchen appliance categories to see what happened (or didn’t happen) to the category as a whole and make some predictions for what’s on the horizon for 2017.

Hey Alexa, what’s in my fridge?

If there was a darling of connected tech in 2016, the Amazon Echo was it. Voice control was barely a whisper at CES last year and by September, if you didn’t have voice control baked into your smart home or entertainment device (or at least have it on your product roadmap), you were irrelevant. And Alexa fit right into the kitchen, with hands-free control in the one room if the house you don’t want to be touching your smartphone.

Voice control makes more sense for devices that do stuff – telling Alexa to pre-heat the oven is a pretty useful skill. So, the Amazon Echo compatibility for fridges is a shorter list, but worth a look:

  • GE – GE launched their Geneva skill to control a range of GE Wi-Fi appliances, including fridges but also ovens and washing machines. For fridges, Alexa can control the temperature, turn the icemaker on or off, prep hot water for coffee or tea, or just give you a status on how the fridge is doing.
  • The Samsung Family Hub connects to Amazon Echo and you can use Alexa to control all the things on the Hub’s OS like Pandora but you can also order groceries through the Groceries by Mastercard app, mirroring Amazon’s own ordering services available through voice.

Speaking of Samsung…

The fridge as the home hub

The concept of the connected fridge isn’t a new one, with appliance makers adding Wi-Fi connectivity to their products for the last several years. One of the companies on the early smart fridge bandwagon was Samsung, who began talking about an internet refrigerator back in 2001. Later during that decade, Samsung was demoing smart fridges at CES; the fridge displayed a small-ish touch screen with basic connected functionality.

Then came the Samsung Family Hub. A beast of a machine (in both size and price), this fridge first debuted last year at CES 2016 with its official launch in May. With its giant 1080p touchscreen on the front, it looked at first glance, like a version of their other Wi-Fi connected fridges on steroids. But the Family Hub actually packs some interesting features that while might seem frivolous at the outset, actually hint at some larger tech trends for fridges and other appliances in the future.

The giant touchscreen features interesting apps like the Groceries by Mastercard app which allows you to order food from FreshDirect and ShopRite, right from your fridge. The fridge also gives users the ability to photo tag their items to keep track of what’s there.

The other future-facing features are the cameras placed in the fridge’s doors to let you see what’s inside when the doors are closed. Why would we want to do that? Well to check when you’re at the grocery store to see what you’re out of, for one. You can also look inside the fridge from the touchscreen on the front, negating the need to open the doors. LG debuted similar functionality at CES 2016, with theirs using a “knocking” feature and a clear window on the front of the fridge to let someone knock, illuminate the interior lights and see what’s in the fridge without opening the door.

But ordering groceries from your fridge’s touchscreen and being able to see what’s inside from your phone in a supermarket isn’t really the compelling story here. The story is what Samsung (and others) haven’t yet put inside this device – and what will make refrigerators way smarter in the future.

The fridge as a part of the kitchen’s OS ecosystem

Moving from connectivity and entertainment to a true smart appliance, the fridge of the future might actually have a database of knowledge and machine learning behind it that will allow it to know things about your food. Startups like Innit are pioneering a new category using food data along with image recognition software to allow an appliance like a refrigerator to recognize food without any user inputs and generate useful information from that. Information like a recipe that could be made with the contents left in the fridge on the day before shopping day would help prevent food waste and also give users helpful ideas for dinner.

The technology concept driving Innit is what’s missing from the Samsung Family Hub and every other Wi-Fi connected fridge. Cameras and connectivity are great, but when something requires the user to constantly input and maintain a database in order to fully deliver on its usefulness, it falls apart. Consumers don’t want another thing to have to update, they want tech that makes things easier.

Innit’s partnership with appliance giant Whirlpool is proof that manufacturers are recognizing the shortcomings of current technology. And the opportunity in the kitchen isn’t going unnoticed; Microsoft announced in a blog post in early September it too is planning to build a fridge with a connected, machine learning based platform. Microsoft will collaborate with Liebherr’s appliance division to create a platform that uses computer-based deep learning algorithms with imaging software to recognize food that’s placed inside a refrigerator.

Unique to Microsoft is the modularity they’re building into every “SmartDevice ready” appliance, theoretically making any refrigerator purchased today easily upgradable in the future. Products like the Samsung Family Hub fridge have been criticized for offering a host of features without any clear answers on how the device will keep pace with future innovation and developments. With the price tags on connected appliances still one to three times what consumers pay for their dumb counterparts, future-proofing these products seems critical to their long-term success. This coupled with the longer buying cycles of white goods mean appliance manufacturers might start thinking about their revenue streams and what kind of role that plays, whether that’s through a grocery replenishment partnership or technology upgrades that offer new functionality.

Appliance-As-A-Service (AAAS….?) 

Mike Wolf wrote a post here at The Spoon and an even larger analysis at the NextMarket blog on the concept of paying monthly fees to obtain a consumer good, or what’s known as the “X as a service” model. Much of the consumer market is trending towards a service or subscription model, from streaming videos to clothing and furniture. Could kitchen appliances follow suit?

Bad acronym aside, it’s not completely crazy. We’re finally seeing appliances evolve to provide significant value beyond the existing reactive position they’ve held in the kitchen for the last fifty or sixty years. There’s machine learning and artificial intelligence set to change how we cook and how tasty and well-prepared the food we sit down to eat will be along with connectivity giving us capabilities and efficiencies that might make us want to cook more with more convenience. But the current trajectory requires consumers to piece together a smart kitchen and then also keep tabs on upgrades and seek out tech support for issues they encounter. What if appliances like smart fridges could be purchased as a service, with upgrades and support and maybe other services baked in?

Though we haven’t seen any company make a serious move towards AAAS just yet, we think it’s an area to watch in 2017 and beyond. If for no other reason than it’s actually a pretty awesome acronym.

With CES 2017 just a week away, we’re sure to see more developments in the smart fridge and more broadly, smart kitchen appliance category.

Kitchen Tech Must Balance Longevity With Extensibility According To Appliance Execs (VIDEO)

One of the biggest challenges in bringing new kitchen technology to market is ensuring that appliances like smart ovens last a really long time.

How long?  Up to 20 years, according to Paul Bristow, Sr. Product Manager at GE Appliances, who along with other appliance execs spoke recently at the Smart Kitchen Summit on a panel entitled ‘The Self Driving Oven’.

The reason for such longevity is simple: Because that’s the expected lifespan of an appliance like a wall oven in a traditional home. That’s a tall order for appliance makers, particularly as they start to transition product development cycles to more closely resemble those dictated by the technology industry, where it’s not unheard of for a product like a smartphone to become obsolete in just a couple of years.

But according to Steve Brown, head of Whirlpool’s Jenn-Air business unit, adding new technology features such as Wi-Fi may allow appliance makers to future-proof their products through remote software upgrades.

“The exciting thing about having the oven connected is it will stay more relevant over time,” said Brown. “When we launched our connected oven last December, it didn’t have any integration with Nest and now it does. We will be adding voice recognition very shortly.”

But ensuring longevity goes beyond simply adding connectivity like Wi-Fi. According to June CTO Nikhil Bhogal, it also means making sure the hardware can grow over time as new features come to market, which means taking a more forward-looking approach than many of today’s consumer electronics.

“If you look at today’s consumer electronics, they’re built to today’s OS (operating system) stack,” said Bhogal. “Within 2 years when the OS starts adding additional functionality, the OS starts adding new functionality, it slows down and it becomes obsolete in 3 years.”

According to Bhogal, this often means over-building the hardware capability to ensure that it can take on new features over time.

“Part of the approach should be building with headroom to grow,” said Bhogal, who went on to detail how June has utilized powerful components such as the Nvidia K1, a processor that powers some of today’s high-end mobile gaming devices, when building the June Oven.

David Kender, the VP of Editorial for USA Today’s Reviewed.com, asked the panel if appliance makers are starting to shift their product planning approach to factor in newer, more cutting edge technologies.

The answer is yes, according to Jenn-Air’s Brown. “There’s been a change in the sense of urgency in the last 15 months.”

When Kender asked why things have shifted in the last 15 months, Brown pointed to the reduction in cost of components and the realization among appliance makers that the kitchen has fell behind other parts of the home.

“The kitchen is one of the least connected parts of the home today, oddly enough, because its one of the most important parts,” said Brown. “When people ask ‘why would you connect them’, I would flip around and ask them ‘do you really think these expensive electronics will be the only things in our whole house that are not connected?'”

Why Whirlpool and GE Make “Sabbath Mode” Appliances

“Let there be light” might be an important part of the Old Testament, but for Orthodox Jews, it can be a burden on the Sabbath.

The traditional day of rest, which starts at sundown on Friday and ends at sundown on Saturday, forbids any work, including turning on lights, ovens, blenders, whathaveyou. That’s why dozens of major appliance brands like KitchenAid, GE, LG, and Whirlpool consult with Jonah Ottensoser at kosher-certification company Star-K to offer appliances with something called “Sabbath Mode.”

The Sabbath Mode

The short version? The Sabbath mode keeps lights off in your refrigerator, automatically ends timers, and so on, so Orthodox Jews don’t have to interact with their appliances.

The long version? Well, in 1997 Whirlpool reached out to Star-K to help the company make Sabbath-compliant ovens. Whirlpool actually patented its Sabbath Mode in 1988, and over time other companies have followed suit, developing software and even special models specifically for this small subset of people (Ottensoser estimates about 100,000 families in the United States).

Here are a few of the specifications:

Ovens

Regular ovens shut off automatically after 12 hours; Sabbath-compliant ones keep on heating, so people can cook throughout the day. According to Star-K, “no lights, digits, solenoids, fans, icons, tones or displays will be activated/modified in the normal operation of the oven.” There’s even a built-in delay “between the request for temperature change and its actual implementation,” so you can’t ever be accused of working to change the temperature. Many also have a “timed bake” option, where the timer shuts off after a certain time rather than requiring you to turn it off.

Refrigerators

Lights, digits, icons, tones, alarms, and fans won’t be activated or deactivated when you open or close a refrigerator door in Sabbath mode. Ice and coldwater systems are also turned off, “since they invariably use electrical solenoids and motors to operate.”

A former engineer, Ottensoser works closely with major companies on these alterations, and he has thousands of Orthodox testers double-checking his work.

Why Companies Play Along

These models aren’t only sold to the Orthodox Jewish community; you can find them at Jewish-focused stores in Brooklyn as well as Sears in Iowa. “That’s the beauty,” said Ottensoser. “They program it into their model universally.”

Yet clearly these companies are spending a significant amount of time and energy pleasing a small group of consumers. Foodtech expert Brian Frank says there’s a reason for that: Appliance companies “want to build products that don’t exclude people, because that means they exclude a market opportunity or some innovation.”

He sees Sabbath Mode as a perfect example of the power of the connected kitchen. One piece of hardware can be programmed a variety of different ways to appeal to different groups of people. In the future, you’ll be able to upgrade your software or even download certain programs in order to expand and change the capabilities on your oven or refrigerator (like we all do with our smartphones, tablets, and computers). So instead of buying oven model GBS309P from Whirlpool as your only Sabbath-Mode option, you’d simply be able to download an app for timed bake, for example.

Frank believes we’ll even have commercial and consumer software options, where the same oven or microwave or refrigerator hardware is used in both environments, simply with different software, thus closing up a longstanding divide in the kitchen world.

In other words, this kind of technology gives “let there be light” a whole different meaning.

Bringing Connected Kitchen Products to Market With GE’s FirstBuild

It used to take years for GE to bring a new product to market. With FirstBuild, their innovation community/incubator/maker space, they’re compressing the development cycle to months. FirstBuild is helping GE conceptualize and productize for new ideas in the kitchen and beyond, and it’s also helping them enter test market viability through new mechanisms such as crowdfunding.

In this podcast, Mike talks with Taylor Dawson, the lead evangelist for FirstBuild.

You can find out more about FirstBuild at www.firstbuild.com