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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Hestan Cue

Hestan Cue Adds New Multi-Cooker Chef’s Pot to its Lineup

Hestan Cue, which makes connected pans and cooktops for guided cooking, announced this week the addition of a 5.5 quart Smart Chef’s Pot to its lineup. According to a press announcement sent to The Spoon, the new Chef’s Pot can act as a multi-cooker, performing a number of different function in the kitchen.

The new Chef’s Pot is similar to Hestan’s other smart pans in that it features embedded temperature sensors and Bluetooth connectivity. Hestan Cue’s pots and pans, induction burner and recipe app work in conjunction with one another to precisely control the temperature while cooking. The system automatically adjusts the temperature to avoid over and under cooking items.

With its deeper basin, Hestan Cue is positioning the new Chef’s Pot as a multi-function device in the kitchen. According to the press announcement, the new Chef’s Pot can perform more than eight different cooking functions, including deep frying, slow cooking, and candy making.

Dubbing its smart Chef’s Pot a “multi-cooker” seems to be more of a marketing gambit on the part of Hestan to ride the coattails of wildly popular devices like the Instant Pot. It’s not wrong, per se. Smart, precise temperature controls does give the Hestan Cue system flexibility to tackle a number of different cooking functions. So if you buy into the Hestan Cue ecosystem, there is greater flexibility to be had. Plus, the connected recipe apps will walk you through what you are cooking.

This type of functionality isn’t cheap, however. The 5.5 quart Chef’s Pot and Induction Cooktop will set you back $499. If you already have the Hestan Cue Induction Cooktop, the 5.5 quart Chef’s Pot on its own costs $299.

Thermomix and Hestan Cue Connect Up With ‘Smart Cooking Bundle’ and Jointly Developed Recipes

Sometimes the smart kitchen doesn’t feel all that connected, especially when it comes to pairing tech-forward cooking systems from different brands. It doesn’t make much sense if you think about it since the beauty of a connected home is, well, connecting things.

Thermomix and Hestan Cue are trying to change that – at least for Father’s Day – by creating what they’re calling the “Smart Cooking Bundle” and “Smart Cooking” recipe collection.

The bundle part includes a pairing of the two systems at a discount – the TM6 multicooker and the Hestan Cue system (pan and induction burner) for $150 off ($1,749) – but the more interesting part to me is the recipe collection the two companies jointly developed.

The Smart Cooking recipe collection features recipes specifically designed to use both with the Thermomix and Hestan Cue systems. Examples include eggplant with seared tomato sauce or pan seared scallops, where the TM6 is used for prep steps like chopping and steaming, and the Cue is used to finish off the meal by frying, searing or braising.

The recipes will be accessible on both the Thermomix Cookidoo recipe platform on the Thermomix TM6 touchscreen and through the Hestan Cue app.

This isn’t the first outside integration for Thermomix, which announced a partnership with Drop last year. With the Hestan pairing, one can see how Thermomix is positioning the TM6 as a sort of central command cooking hub where they orchestrate cooking with other appliances. While Drop isn’t powering the Hestan integration, I can see the Drop’s “kitchen OS” approach helping the TM6 unify multisystem cooking experiences down the road.

If you’d like to try out the new recipe collection, you can get the Smart Cooking bundle through Father’s day.

With Consumers in Quarantine, Connected Cooking Companies Spring Into Action With Tailored Content

With a good chunk of the world’s population currently in quarantine, most of us are cooking at home a lot more nowadays.

Along with all this home cooking has come a massive spike in demand for information for culinary how-to, ranging from recipe suggestions to tutorials on how to do everything from making rice to baking bread. While many are simply searching Google for recipes, others are settling in to learn cooking skills to help them learn to get food on the table.

This sudden hunger for cooking-related guidance has led some tech-forward cooking startups to ramp up the content as they look to both satiate newfound interest in cooking skills while also giving quarantine bound consumers something to do with their time.

Here are a few ways in which kitchen tech startups have ramped up their efforts to serve homebound consumers:

Hestan Cue

While the Hestan Cue already walks users through recipes with step by step instructions, the guided cooking startup has launched Hestan Cue Cooking School, a series of virtual classes to help users of the connected cooking platform build up on their cooking skills during quarantine.

Built with the virtual class platform Teachable, the initial classes cover techniques for cooking beef, eggs and vegetables. The cool thing is that while the classes suggest you use your Cue for certain steps, you can use the classes even if you don’t have the Hestan device.

According to Hestan Smart Cooking managing director John Van Den Nieuwenhuizen, about one third of the Hestan Cue users have signed up for courses.

Anova

Sous vide specialist Anova has always been active in creating cooking content for their user community, and over the past month they’ve gone quarantine cooking focused by creating content to help consumers with everything from making pantry staples to batch cooking. And for the parents with bored kids, Anova suggests enlisting them to help with the brisket.

Thermomix

Thermomix is known for its in-person sales model for the high-end multicooker, but in the age of COVID-19 they’ve gone virtual with a “quarantine kitchen” series of cooking demos and are also allowing potential customers to book online cooking demos with the TM6 sales team.

You can see one of their latest episodes of their quarantine kitchen series below:

SideChef

SideChef is also ramping up its quarantine specific content. In early March they created a quarantine cooking recipe collection. A month later, and with virtual happy hours firmly planted in the stay-at-home zeitgeist, they’ve created a guide for virtual dinner parties.

Instant Pot

The massively popular pressure cooker is famous for leaning on its Facebook community to create content for them. Still, the company seems to have recognized our new shared reality and is letting people know that Instant Pots can help you cook bread while you’re cooped up during quarantine.

Food Network Kitchen

While the Food Network Kitchen app doesn’t seem to have created any tailored content for quarantine bound consumers, they have seen a big jump in usage and consumers look for more ways to cook. Company spokesperson Irika Slavin told me via email that Foodnetwork.com has seen “double digit increases” in page views and the Food Network App, the guided cooking premium offering launched in October, has seen what Slavin describes as a “triple digit increase” in visitors.

ckbk

ckbk is a ‘Spotify for cookbooks’ app that puts pretty much any cookbook or recipe just a click away.

Since ckbk only offers access to existing cookbooks, the company isn’t creating any quarantine specific content, but they do have a good idea of what people are cooking. Company founder Matthew Cockerill told me he’s noticed most of his subscribers, and the world in general, seem to be moving in sync over the past month through what he calls the ‘seven stages of cooking grief.’

“So first of all it was about the prepping – stockpiling durable good – beans and pasta,” said Cockerill. “Then came the “staff of life” basics bread and baking. And after that, I think, there’s a need for some comfort, yes, but also some relief from the monotony. Which is where I think chocolate and dessert cravings are kicking in. It’s either that or alcohol. And in many cases both!”

“Lastly,” he continued, “we’ve also seen a trend of interest in ways to use the new found time which people see stretching out ahead of them, with longer-term projects” like baking bread.

Cockerill told me that new subscriptions are up 250% over pre-COVID times. If you want to cook your way through grief, the company is giving away 30 days free access to their app to help you cook through your pantry items.

Ztove Starts Shipping Smart Cooking System In Europe

Back in 2016, I received a short message from an inventor in Denmark asking if he could make me pancakes.

While it’s not every day someone reaches out and asks to make pancakes, it wasn’t all that surprising given the inventor, Peter Favrholdt, had created a prototype for a smart cooking system and I was one of the few people writing about the technology at the time.

Ztove founder and me in 2016

As it turned out, Favrholdt had learned we were holding a meetup in San Francisco and decided to travel from Denmark to attend the event.  While I didn’t get to taste Favrholdt’s pancakes on that trip, I got a chance to hear his story and encouraged him to apply for the Smart Kitchen Summit’s startup showcase.

Long story short: he did, and he won. His system, which features a Bluetooth connected pan, an induction cooktop, and an app to orchestrate the cooking process was picked by a panel of experts and Favrholdt and Ztove were crowned the winner of the 2016 Startup Showcase alongside 3D food printer nufood (in 2016 we had a tie).

Longer story short? A week ago I saw on Linkedin that Ztove had started shipping its smart cooking system to customers.

When I asked Favrholdt for more details, he told me the Ztove was now available in Denmark through the company’s website and would soon be available in physical retail.  He also told me they’d managed to create a product line that included two intelligent pans and a large saucepan, as well as three different cooktops.

“On the smart cooktop side we offer a table top dual burner called “DUO,” which sells as a bundle including a frying pan and a saucepan (USD 1599),” said Favrholdt in an email.

More intriguing is that two of the cooktops are built-ins.

“For home use, most people want built-in smart induction cooktops,” he wrote. “Ztove currently has two models – a “normal” 24 inches (USD 1049) and a “wide” 31 inches model (USD 1599) both with four cooking zones but having different width and arrangement of the burners.”

When I asked Favrholdt about how he was able to fund development of the product, he pointed to winning the Startup Showcase at SKS.

“Bringing home the SKS trophy also had a significance,” he said. “Ztove won a couple of grants in Denmark, and in 2017 we were enrolled in the Odense Robotics Startup Hub – an accelerator program for early startups in the field of robotics. In 2018 we got a small investment allowing us to increase the pace and building the company bringing the Ztove products to market.”

With their funding, they were able to find manufacturers for the components of the Ztove systems and start a small factory in Denmark where the final units are assembled by hand.

Favrholdt and the Hestan Cue team at SKS 2016

By finally shipping, Ztove joins Hestan as one of the few companies delivering smart cooking systems that focus on surface cooking, including intelligent cookware, cooktops, and an app. But that’s not the only connection between these two companies; As it turns out, Favrholdt connected with the Hestan team back on that 2016 trip to San Francisco.

“I brought Ztove’s first prototype and was thrilled to get to meet the Hestan Cue team,” said Favrholdt. “It was terrific talking to someone as passionate about smart cooking as myself.”

Hestan Cue Adds Instructional Content from Culinary Institute of America

Ever wonder what it was like to take a class at the Culinary Institute of America (CIA)? If you own a Hestan Cue, you can now get a, err, taste of what students at CIA learn. On Friday, Hestan Smart Cooking announced that it had partnered with the CIA to integrate new instructional content from the school into the Hestan Cue guided cooking system.

For the uninitiated, Hestan Cue uses connected cookware and a burner that communicates with its app. Recipes in the app guide you through meal prep, and the software communicates with the burner and pan to make sure you are cooking at the precise, proper temperature at each step along the way.

Hestan Cue users will notice a new section in the Hestan app devoted to CIA content. There are roughly a dozen CIA recipes available covering areas like Italian, German and Peruvian cuisines. Philip Tessier, Director of Culinary and Media (and CIA grad) told me in a phone interview that Hestan Smart Cooking and CIA have been working together on this for just about a year. CIA instructors brought recipes from the CIA “bootcamps” classes, and Hestan Smart produced the media and integrated the cooking guidance into the Hestan app.

“These are different from normal Cue videos because they are instructional,” Tessier said. “Most of our content is normally very focused. For this we added more of the ‘Why.’ Why smash garlic like that?”

This first batch of CIA recipes only use the Hestan Smart Pan or Pot, but Tessier said that more videos are in the works, and will most likely go beyond the one pan/pot recipes and incorporate using an oven. Hestan Smart recently announced integrations with appliance manufacturers like GE Appliances for a smart cooktop, with plans to expand into ovens this year as well.

The promise of guided cooking is that it can help anyone cook at home for themselves. Adding an instructional layer from a place like CIA carries with it an imprimatur that could help users not just feel guided, but actually learn new cooking skills. The question for Hestan then becomes, will people learn so much that they no longer need their Hestans?

Hestan to Announce its Smart Cooktop Solution at Smart Kitchen Summit Next Week

Hestan Smart Cooking will publicly announce the availability of its guided cooking system for appliance manufacturers at the Smart Kitchen Summit (SKS) in Seattle next week.

Until this year, using the Hestan Cue guided cooking system required a standalone induction burner with accompanying sensor-embedded smart pans. With this move, Hestan Cue’s smart cooking technology to be built directly into cooktops from other companies.

Christoph Milz, Managing Director of Hestan Smart Cooking said during an interview with The Spoon that the Hestan Cue smart cooking system requires appliance makers to integrate a smart board into their cooktop, and will require the consumer to use Hestan Cue smart cookware as well as the accompanying app. At first, Hestan Cue’s technology will work with induction cooktops, with other modalities (gas, etc.) available later on.

The Hestan Cue system’s three parts work in harmony to help guide cooks through the cooking process. For example, if you want to cook salmon with a nice sear on the outside, but medium rare on the inside, the pan “talks” to the cooktop to say when it reaches the right temperature, and as the person goes through each step of the recipe, the app “tells” the smart board to adjust the heat accordingly, and so on.

Earlier this year, Hestan’s sister company (Hestan Residential), debuted a Cue-powered smart cooktop at the Kitchen and Bath Show in Miami. Hestan Smart Cooking has also signed on GE Appliances in the U.S. and Oranier in Germany as Cue cooktop partners. Hestan’s smart cooking technology will be available in GE’s Cafe line of appliances and will ship before the end of the year. Oranier’s Cue-enabled cooktops will ship in Germany in 2019.

Strategically, this is a smart move for parent company, Hestan Smart Cooking and its Cue platform. If the company can make its technology easy enough to implement without coming at too much of a price premium, Hestan sets itself up as a full-stack guided cooking solution. Because it will be in both the appliance and the cookware, it can offer more precise guidance than competitors offering integration into just the appliance side.

In addition to the cooktop news, Milz said that Hestan Smart Cooking would also be API integrations for smart ovens and be releasing oven recipes this fall.

If you want to see a Hestan Cue-powered cooktop in person, grab your ticket for our Smart Kicthen Summit, which is mere days away.

SKS Japan: Excitement, Growth & a Rapidly Maturing Food Tech Ecosystem

Last week I was in Tokyo for Smart Kitchen Summit Japan. It was the second edition of our Japanese event, and while it’s only been twelve short months since that first gathering, the amount of progress I witnessed in the Japan food tech scene over the course of the two days in Tokyo was amazing.

Here are some of the trends, products and innovators that stood out to me last week:

In Japan, Much of the Innovation Comes From Big Companies

For those familiar with Japan, you’ll know it’s not surprising that much of the innovation comes from within established companies. These “intreprenuers” often work in R&D or as part of new business units specifically to innovate new product concepts.

One of these innovation units is Panasonic’s GameChanger Catapult. We’ve written about Catapult as they’ve been showing off innovative product concepts like a food softener for the elderly or home fermentation system.  As it turns out, the innovation unit from Panasonic is still working on those ideas as well as a few new ones.

One of Catapult’s product concepts is Tottemeal, which first showed up at SXSW in Austin in March 2017 as a product concept called Bento@YourOffice. It was comprised of an IoT-powered smart fridge and app system, which is similar in concept to Byte Fridge in that both offer fresh food for sale. Since SXSW last year the company has approached partners and refined the concept to work with any fridge.  The company is now testing out the service in Panasonic’s event/innovation hub, Kura-Think, in Tokyo.

Another large company that’s been busy working on future-forward food tech concepts since last year’s SKS Japan is CookPad. The digital cooking site, which boasts 100 million users worldwide, introduced a smart kitchen platform a couple months ago called OiCy that connects their recipes with appliances to create a guided cooking platform. At SKS Japan, the company outlined the future vision for OiCy in the form of a six-level roadmap for the smart kitchen platform. They also announced an updated partner list which includes hardware manufacturers such as Sharp and Hitachi.

Japan’s Startup Ecosystem Is Gaining Momentum

While much of Japan’s innovation comes from within large organizations, there are also signs of a rapidly maturing food tech startup ecosystem.  Part of the growth is being driven by Japan’s bigger companies like Kirin (who launched their own accelerator). However, there were also a number of young and innovative entrepreneurs that spoke at SKS Japan such as Integriculture’s Yuki Hanyu and Open Meals’ Ryosuke Sakaki.

We’ve written about both companies before in the Spoon. Chris Albrecht was the first to write about Integriculture’s impending $2.7 million funding round when he covered Shojinmeat, the open source project from Hanyu. As Northeast Asia’s only lab-grown meat startup, CEO Hanyu has big plans to jumpstart alternative meat production in the Asia market, and discussed his plans for doing just that.

Open Meals made a big splash this March at SXSW with their sushi teleportation demo. While true food teleportation may be a ways off, the Open Meals vision of creating a food digitization and printing framework is pretty fascinating. Company CEO Sasaki presented an ambitious 100-year look into the future for the idea around food digitization that spanned from digitized food restaurants in Tokyo in just two years and eventually sees space colonies where we’re sharing food experiences in real time with people on earth.

Dinner time in space

Japan’s Smart Kitchen Community Embraces Ideas From US & Europe

The Japan smart kitchen/food tech community is also really interested in innovation happening from the West. One of the speakers at SKS Japan this year was Jon Jenkins, the head of product for the guided cooking group within Meyer, Hestan Cue. Jenkins, who goes by JJ, gave a talk about the role of technology and software in the kitchen and later gave a hands-on demo of the product to a capacity crowd:

It wasn’t just cooking demos. A highly engaged audience packed the room to hear conversations with innovators from the US and Europe such as Jason Cohen of Analytical Flavor Systems talk about the impact on AI on food personalization and flavor. They also heard from Suvie’s Robin Liss as she discuss her company’s four-chamber cooking robot and how today’s appliance companies need to start innovating around food services. The Future Food Institute’s Sara Roversi talked about taking her food innovation platform, which she started in Europe, across the globe. They also listened to Amar Krishna of Chefling and Kevin Yu of SideChef discuss the differences between the smart kitchen platform market in the US with CookPad’s Tad Yoshioka.

Collaboration, Innovation & Community

The biggest takeaway for me from this year’s SKS Japan was there a growing sense of collaboration, innovation, and community in Japan’s food tech market.  Part of it was the hard work of our partners for SKS Japan, SigmaXYZ, who have done a great job over the past year fostering the SKS community. But, just as with the US and Europe, it’s clear now that the Japanese market was ready for an event to catalyze innovation and to bring it together, and I couldn’t be more thrilled that event is SKS.

I’m excited to see how our event in Japan has just done that and has become the go-to food tech event in the Japan market and for much of Asia and I can’t wait to go back next year. I hope I’ll see you there.

If you’re interested in being a part of our global community, don’t miss SKS in Seattle in less than two months!  Robin Liss, Jon Jenkins, Jason Cohen and many more will be there, so you will not want to miss out. You can check it out here and don’t forget to use discount code SPOON for 25% off tickets!

Podcast: What Caught Our Eye at the Housewares Show

The International Housewares Show is big. Very big. More than 60,000 professionals from all corners of the world convened in Chicago last week to check out the latest and greatest products coming soon to a home near you (or to your home).

Whether you attended in person, or missed it this year, we’ve got you covered. Mike Wolf and I walked the show floor to find the best bits of connected kitchen tech.

In this podcast, we talk about how the whole smart home industry is maturing, the prevalence of connected devices, and the very cool things we came across (precision heated plates and baby bottles!).

Hestan Introduces Cue Enabled Cooktop & Previews Precision Gas Cooking

Hestan Smart Cooking, the company behind the Hestan Cue guided cooking system, is introducing the first Hestan Cue powered cooktop this week at the Kitchen and Bath Show (KBIS) in Orlando, Florida. The new cooktop will be part of a new residential lineup from Hestan Smart Cooking’s parent company under the Hestan Indoor brand. The company also announced it would preview Cue-powered gas cooking in Orlando.

As you would expect, the new induction cooktop will work with the company’s Bluetooth enabled cookware and eliminate the need for a countertop induction burner. Long term, this move is a logical evolution from the company’s first generation product, which required the consumer to buy both a countertop burner and bluetooth-pan in a box, to one where the company’s bluetooth cookware will eventually work with a home’s built-in appliances.

In fact, when you step back and read this announcement with the broader Hestan and Meyer portfolio in mind, a bigger platform vision comes into focus:

  • Hestan, which has traditionally been the professional appliance brand within the Meyer stable of products, is now moving into high-end residential appliances.
  • The Hestan Cue moves from being a stand-alone product to a platform that powers built-in appliances. In talking to Christoph Milz, the managing director for Hestan Smart Cooking, this is only the first “Cue-powered” appliance. They expect to have more announcements this year, including with third-party appliance makers.
  • The Hestan brands are all part of Meyer, one of the world’s largest cookware companies.  If, as I assume, Stanley Cheng and company see a future where cookware and appliances connect and are powered by software to help consumers cook and make better food, it’s clear they are assembling the pieces to make this future a reality.
  • Working with gas broadens the appeal of the Cue platform and makes it potentially much more relevant in the US market, where gas still reigns. If the company’s technology can be built into gas stoves, that’s a nearly 4 million unit annual market in the US alone into which they can tap.

The move into gas also brings the story of the Hestan Cue full circle. The original team and technology behind the Hestan Cue began as a Seattle based startup named Meld, which had launched a smart retrofit stove knob that allowed users to control gas or electric stove with an app. When Meld was acquired, the company announced it would not ship the knob (they quickly refunded their Kickstarter backers). It was disappointing news at the time since the idea of precision-controlled gas cooking was pretty exciting. But now, it looks like precision gas cooking is coming, only as part of a broader platform-centric approach rather than the original retrofit knob concept.

When I asked Milz about what his company is doing is different from others in an increasingly competitive market for smart cooking platforms, one thing he pointed to the cookware. While a combination of content, software, and hardware is critical, Milz said that mastering the smart cookware piece is something no one else has done.

But, said Milz, the biggest differentiator, is their focus on the end result.

“We’ve always focused and communicated that we’ve built Cue from the ground up to guarantee a high-quality result on the plate. This is the biggest differentiator.”

A Smart Kitchen Gift Guide for Last-Minute Shoppers

Well, you’ve done it. You’ve waited until the last minute to do your Christmas shopping and now it’s here. But don’t worry! Your friends at The Spoon have you covered. Here’s a Smart Kitchen Gift Guide for your favorite cooking companions packed with items you can still get before the big day.

Sous Vide Wand: The Joule was on our 2016 gift guide, but really either it or the Anova is a wonderful addition to your kitchen cabinets. Sous vide elevates cooking proteins like steak to another level, yet is versatile enough to make a range of foods including pies and cookies.

Hestan Cue System: If you’re like me, you enjoy deliciousness, but aren’t that great a cook. Enter the Hestan Cue system. It’s a combination of induction burner, pan and smartphone app that work together to provide you with guided cooking, so you can turn from average Joe Cook into Julia Child.

Nutribullet Balance: Smoothies are a delectable treat, but they aren’t always as *nutritious* as we’d like to believe. Give the gift of a healthy 2018 with the Nutribullet Balance, a Bluetooth smart blender with companion app that calculates the nutritional value of your smoothie as you add ingredients.

Ember Mug: Disclaimer, we have not tried this $80 coffee mug, but we loved it’s $150 traveling counterpart. The idea of keeping our hot coffee or tea at the perfect temperature is way too tempting. It’s too late to order online, but you can check your local Starbucks to see if it’s in stock.

PicoBrew PICO Model C: Is there a hop head homebrewer in your family? It’s not cheap, but PicoBrew makes it easy to brew beer from the comfort of your own kitchen. The Pico C is available via Amazon and in brick and mortar retailers.

Amazon Key Kit: For the adventurous early adopter, give them the gift of Amazon delivery people entering their unattended home! Snark aside, Amazon Key’s kit includes a cloud connected security camera and lock (hopefully they’ve patched the security hole) and gives users (in select areas) the ability to accept grocery and other Amazon deliveries when they’re away from home.

Dash Egg Cooker: Okay, so this device isn’t “connected,” but it is a smart idea for anyone who likes hard boiled eggs. Forget waiting for a pot of water to boil and timing when the eggs are done. The Dash Egg Cooker has been a game changer in my house, cooking up six hard boiled eggs in around 20 minutes.

Whatever you decide to get friends and family this year, everyone at The Spoon wishes all of you the happiest of holiday seasons.

Enjoy the podcast and make sure to subscribe in Apple podcasts if you haven’t already.

BSH Acquires Controlling Interest in Kitchen Stories As Part Of ‘Connected Cooking’ Strategy

Late last month, BSH Home Appliances, the largest appliance manufacturer in Europe, announced it had acquired a controlling interest in Kitchen Stories, maker of video-rich cooking apps with step-by-step instructions and recipes.

The deal is yet another sign of how large appliance makers are moving quickly to transform themselves into content companies and connect their appliances to digital content platforms.

In the announcement, the two companies said they had plans to integrate Kitchen Stories content into BSH’s smart home connectivity app and platform, Home Connect. While initial integration will start with basic tasks like temperature setting for Bosch and Siemens appliances, more capabilities like guided cooking will be built into the app over time.

Kitchen Stories cofounder Verena Hubertz outlined the vision around integration with the Home Connect platforms:

“This investment will enable us to tap the connected kitchen market, and to help design the cooking of the future. We’ll develop solutions to help users in all aspects of the cooking process – from inspirations for recipes to added-value services. And we’ll be combining our own findings with those of BSH about what consumers want. That will enable us to reflect users’ expectations better, and to make Kitchen Stories even more attractive. Kitchen Stories will also soon be integrated into the Home Connect ecosystem, and will gradually be expanded with new applications.”

This deal is the latest in a string of moves by appliance companies to more deeply integrate their cooking hardware with cooking content as the kitchen becomes increasingly digital. Earlier this year Whirlpool acquired Yummly as the kitchen entered what Whirlpool exec Brett Dibkey described as a ‘transformation.’ A new crop of startups like Hestan Cue, ChefSteps, SideChef, and Innit have been busily creating a variety of products that create immersive guided cooking offerings that connect with cookware and appliances, and this summer the media startup Buzzfeed moved into guided cooking with the launch of its Tasty One Top.

The deal caps what has been a few years of fast growth for Kitchen Stories, an early entrant into the video-guided cooking app space alongside others like SideChef. According to the company, the Kitchen Stories app now has millions of users and has been released in 150 countries worldwide.

Another interesting aspect of the deal is it marks a successful exit for a women-led company.  Like many other tech segments, women have been under-represented in the smart kitchen, so hopefully the move is a sign of increasing momentum and encouragement for women-led startups in the space.

Lastly, the deal comes just over a month before CES, where big tech companies like Bosch often show off their latest products. I would expect to see the company at least showcasing Kitchen Stories early integration in Las Vegas.

You can see an interview with the two Kitchen Stories cofounders Verena Hubertz and Mengting Gao and BSH Chairman Karsten Ottenberg below:

Ten Questions for BSH and Kitchen Stories

Smart Kitchen Curious? Here Are Some Black Friday & Cyber Monday Deals For You

Want some new smart kitchen gear? Now might be a good time to pick up a new gadget or two given, well, BLACK FRIDAY.

Below is a quick list of some Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals we’ve spotted for smart kitchen gear from around the web. (If you see any other screaming deals for smart kitchen gear, let me know via Twitter and I’ll keep this list updated):

Mellow 

The Mellow smart sous vide appliance just started shipping and is getting some decent early buzz. The good news is you can pick up this sous vide appliance with built-in refrigeration for $299, a hundred bucks off the list price. Better hurry, the deal expires after Monday.

PicoBrew

If you or one of your loved ones has made a new year’s resolution to become a home brewer, now might be a good time to pick up a PicoBrew brewing appliance. You can get the Pico C right now for $399, a hefty $150 off of the list price of $549.

Hestan Cue

Want to cook like a chef? Try a Hestan Cue guided cooking system. The device, which was just named one of the best tech gifts of 2017 by the Wall Street Journal, is available now through December 3rd for a hundred bucks off. Use the discount code “blackfriday” at checkout.

Instant Pot

If you haven’t become part of Instant Pot community, what are you waiting for? With the 5 quart Instant Pot available right now for only $50 right now over at Walmart, you really have no excuse.

Anova

The leader in home sous vide circulators has dropped the price on their flagship product ofr Cyber Monday week. If you want to pick up a circulator, you can do so now for $99 over at Anova.com.

ChefSteps

If you’re reading this on Thanksgiving, you might want to give thanks for a true Black Friday deal coming your way. ChefSteps will be selling both models of the Joule for $30 off, with the Joule Stainless on sale for $169 and the Joule White for $149. Just head over to the ChefSteps Joule page and use the code BLACKFRIDAY at checkout.

HOPii

If you’re willing to wait and want to try out the HOPii home fermentation system, the HOPii folks are offering a “secret perk” right now through Indiegogo which allows you to have a HOPii system for 50% off. Go here to get access to the deal.

Nomiku

Nomiku has a bunch of deals on its sous vide gear and meal delivery service for Black Friday and cyber Monday. The company’s 2nd generation circulator, the Wi-Fi Nomiku, is on sale for $99 and their newest appliance, the Nomiku WiFi Smart Cooker, is available with $50 worth of meals for $179.