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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Housewares Show

Ralph Newhouse Tells The Story of Chefman and Chef iQ (and Drops Some News About Upcoming Products)

Around 2009, Ralph Newhouse’s company hunted down excess inventory of small electrics and would re-sell them into the secondary market. However, it wasn’t long before Newhouse realized he wanted to make his own appliances, and that’s when the Chefman we know today was born.

That was just the beginning of Newhouse’s journey into creating his own products. As he and Chefman started to see how new connected products made their way into the market over the past decade, he knew he could take his learnings from Chefman and create a new brand delivering more tech-forward connected products. That thinking led to the creation of Chef iQ, a startup within a startup focused on the smart kitchen.

According to Newhouse, he saw an opportunity to take the company’s know-how for making affordable cooking appliances and create products for consumers with tech-forward features that didn’t break the bank.

“We looked at the smart hardware and the ecosystem that was developing, we felt a lot of brands were kind of missing the mark,” Newhouse told The Spoon. “There were brands out there that were creating very expensive hardware, and it was difficult to make the value case to the consumer on why they needed something with the smarts at these elevated price points. We knew that if we took our expertise at the supply chain and married it with our infrastructure and the team we had over here, perhaps we could build something that had technology underpinning the experience but that the consumer wouldn’t have to pay for.”

Newhouse also tells the story about visiting China years ago and running into some employees from smart oven maker June. After they told him excitedly about the forthcoming launch of a new June Oven, he started to think about how expensive to build these complex connected products. Soon, he started to think maybe he and his company could bring some of these same features at a more affordable price point.

Those early thoughts led to the development of a new product the company will introduce at the Housewares Show (aka the Inspired Home Show) in March: the company’s first smart oven. According to Newhouse, the new Chef iQ smart countertop oven will feature air fry capability, soft door close, a newly developed DC brushless motor, and a touch display. The new oven, which will be connected through the Chef iQ app, will sell for an MSRP of $299.

Looking forward, Newhouse sees many other new products on the horizon, including the rollout of a built-in oven from Chef iQ in 2026.

“It’s something, by the way, I’m super stoked about,” said Newhouse. “It completes the ultimate vision. We look at that industry as ripe for disruption. We think a lot of brands are kind of scared to compete in that space because it’s just really never really been done before.”

You can hear the entire conversation from Newhouse by clicking play below, over on Libsyn, or through Apple Podcasts or the usual podcast spaces.

Inspired Home Show Canceled Due to Coronavirus

Another trade show has gone down due to the coronavirus.

Last month we learned the Inspired Home Show (previously known as the Housewares Show) had cancelled the portion of its annual trade show that featured OEM parts from manufacturers in China. Today we learned they’ve called the whole thing off.

From the announcement issued today by the International Housewares Association:

“After careful consideration regarding the ongoing spread of Covid-19 (Coronavirus) overseas and recent cases in the United States, the International Housewares Association’s Board of Directors has decided not to hold The Inspired Home Show 2020, scheduled to take place March 14-17, 2020 at McCormick Place in Chicago.”

It’s an extraordinary move to cancel a trade show less than two weeks before it opens, but it’s an illustration of how fluid and fast-moving the situation is around the coronavirus.

Just a few weeks ago we learned that Mobile World Congress was cancelled in its entirety, and while another big show, the Natural Products Expo West in Los Angeles, is expected to open this week, there’s been a huge number of exhibitor cancellations in recent weeks and some forecast the show’s attendance could be down by as much as 60%.

If it wasn’t already obvious that COVID-19 was drastically changing the 2020 outlook for nearly every industry (including housewares and kitchen appliances), the cancellation of the North America’s biggest small home electronics trade show should drive the point home.

We’ll have more on the implications of this cancellation in coming weeks.

Coronavirus Causes Inspired Home Show to Cancel International Sourcing Expo

UPDATE: On March 2nd, the International Housewares Association decided to cancel the 2020 Inspired Home Show in its entirety. You can read about the cancellation here.

The Inspired Home Show, a big convention put on by the International Housewares Association next month in Chicago, is canceling the International Sourcing Expo portion of the convention due to concerns over the coronavirus epidemic.

The announcement came last Friday, with the following explanation provided on the Inspired Home Show’s FAQ:

The Inspired Home Show is made up of five Expos. The International Sourcing expo, which traditionally houses seven Chinese pavilions offering OEM products, will not open in 2020. This decision was made in collaboration with the Chinese pavilion organizers due to health concerns and challenges related to travel between China and the United States.

The rest of The Inspired Home Show including the Dine + Décor, Clean + Contain, Wired + Well, and Discover Design expos will open as planned. These expos are home to more than 1,600 exhibitors and over 5,000 brands.

Additionally, travel restrictions put into place amidst the outbreak will also impact the ability of people to attend the show. Foreign nationals that have visited China within 14 days of traveling to the U.S. are being denied entry. And US nationals who have visited China in the past 14 days are being redirected to a specified airport for health screening, and could have their movement limited for 14 days after they left China.

This isn’t the first time the coronavirus has impacted the business of conventions. Earlier this year, Mobile World Congress was canceled due to concerns over the virus.

The virus’ spread around the world sparked a downturn in global stock exchanges this morning. All three major US stock indices were dropped with the Dow Jones Industrial Average eliminating all of its gains for the year, according to Bloomberg.

As we’ve reported, the deadly epidemic has impacted food tech’s small corner of the world. Kickstarter projects manufactured in China are delayed, robots are being used to hand out food to quarantined travelers, and new contactless methods are being deployed for food delivery.

As the coronavirus spreads to more countries, we are bound to see more fallout, especially for anything related to travel and in-person business. It should be noted, however, that the Inspired Home Show isn’t completely canceled, the remaining expos will be carry on. Though I imagine hand sanitizer will be in full effect in most booths this year.

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!).

iCuisine Wants To Bring Smart Features To Everday Kitchen Utensils

While it seems like there is a new connected countertop appliance announced every other week, the smart kitchen revolution has largely left everyday kitchen tools like spatulas, whisks and other cooking utensils behind.

That’s where iCuisine‘s founder Luic Mucha hopes to change things. Mucha was at the Housewares show this week in Chicago showing off his company’s modular smart kitchen system that connects utensils to a smart sensor system that syncs with a smartphone app to assist the user in cooking a meal. The system utilizes a smart transmitter called the Wi-Key that plugs into the company’s cooking utensils to gather temperature or weight data and send it to the app. The system, which has twenty or so different smart kitchen products including a cutting board, measuring cup and frying pan, can also help the user walk through recipes step by step.

Mucha, who was awarded a patent for the technology in 2015, said: “when we started development, we didn’t want to create a product that would be too expensive.” According to Mucha, by putting all the electronics in a single sensor, they can keep the cost down. The company is planning on releasing a branded line of products in the US called iCuisine, but is also discussing licensing the technology with consumer electronics and appliance manufacturers.

I have to admit, I like the idea of a modular system that is focused on keeping costs down. I am also intrigued by the possibilities of extending intelligence beyond bigger countertop and built-in appliances to any number of utensils a typical cook uses when cooking something up in the kitchen. However, the one thing I am not sure about is whether a busy cook will want to go through the busywork of pulling out the Wi-Key sensor out of each utensil as they go from step to step within the cooking process.

You can see my interview with Mucha from the show floor at Housewares below:

The Cubit Is A Modern Tape Measure That Makes Home Design A Drag & Drop Experience

Hanging pictures or measuring for simple home decorating tasks can be arduous. Not only is it time consuming to get things exactly right using that pencil and old school tape measure, it’s also hard to visualize how things will look until you have that picture hanging on the wall, which often means there’s a hole or two to patch up when the job is done.

But what if you could pull your room into an app and see how things look in digital format before you actually starting pounding nails?

That’s the idea behind Cubit. The product, which won the best of innovations award in the smart home category for CES 2017, comes from product design entrepreneur David Xing and his company Plott. Xing and his team normally design products for companies such as Black and Decker through his other company NWi, but they knew with the technology in Cubit they had a winner that they could bring to market under their own brand.

Xing describes the Plott Cubit as a mixed reality platform. “We can take the real, put it into the virtual, so you can design with context and scale. Once you’re done with your design, you can take it and put it out into the real world.”

In other words, Cubit makes home design a drag and drop, app-centric experience.

I think the ability to convert simple home remodeling from a painful exercise in trial and error to one in which my measurement tools are integrated with a digital design application is appealing. I can see significant advantages and time savings by being able to visualize how things look in digital, especially if there’s an easy conversion of the design back into physical measurements for when I’m ready to pound nails.

Of course, there are plenty of laser-powered tape measures on the market, but this is the first I’ve seen that integrates seamlessly with a digital design application. I’m interested to try Cubit to see how accurately it translates measurements back to physical dimensions once I do the in-app design. The good news is I won’t have to wait very long. Xing told me they are talking to numerous retailers and they expect the Cubit to ship this September.

You can watch my interview with Xing above.

Want to meet the leaders defining the future of food, cooking and the kitchen? Get your tickets for the Smart Kitchen Summit today.

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Live From Housewares Show : How Will Smart Home Change Housewares Industry?

Mike showed up at the Housewares Show in Chicago this past week to discuss how the smart home will change the world of blenders, vacuum cleaners, cookware and home furnishings. Joining him was the Nathan Smith, CTO of Wink, Carley Knobloch, HGTV’s smart home expert, and Chris Young, CEO of ChefSteps.

Smart Home Tech Will Disrupt The Housewares Industry. Discuss.

After walking the show floor at last year’s Housewares Show in Chicago, I became pretty excited. As with most consumer industries, I’m convinced the housewares industry will witness significant change over the next decade as disruptive new technology ushers in new business models, services and creative new products that will reshape the entire space.  Based on what I saw on the show floor and heard in my conversations, it felt like we were only in the first or second inning of this shift.

All of which meant most of the change to this important industry is still to come, so when I was asked by the Home and Housewares Association to develop and moderate the keynote panel for this year’s show, I knew there would be a whole bunch to talk about. To do that, I knew I would need panelists who could provide smart, provocative and diverse but complimentary viewpoints to help the audience understand the issues and walk away with actionable insights.

That’s exactly what I got. Here are the panelists for the keynote panel entitled ‘How The Smart Home Is Disrupting Housewares’:

Nathan Smith – CTO, Wink. Wink is one of the most high-profile startups of the modern smart home wave, and Nathan has been there since the beginning.

Carley Knobloch – As HGTV’s resident smart home expert, Carley’s focus is always on the end-consumer and whether a given product is solving real problems or just technology for technology’s sake.

Chris Young – as CEO of ChefSteps and co-author of Modernist Cuisine, Chris has his feet firmly planted in both the world of culinary innovation and hardware creation for consumers. Finding that middle ground that brings professional-like skills in the form of connected hardware is something Young’s been focuses on

We discussed a bunch of things, including the shifting retail landscape, the arrival of artificial intelligence and connected commerce, consumer experiences and use-cases, the importance of product utility, virtual assistants such as Amazon Alexa and Google Home, Millennials and cooking and so much more.

Based on what I learned this year, I’m convinced the housewares space is waking up to the opportunity of the connected home. I can’t wait to see how much will change by next year’s show.

You can watch the entire panel by clicking play above.

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The Story of RJ Batts, Fourteen Year Old Inventor Of The Tip Tough

Not all kitchen innovation has to be high-tech to have a great story.

In fact, the tale of fourteen-year-old inventor RJ Batts is one of the cooler stories I heard this week at the Housewares show in Chicago. Standing at his booth among rows of other makers and creators more than twice or thrice his age, RJ told me how his concept, the Tip Tough – a finger protector for slicing and dicing on a cutting board – went from idea on paper to buzzed-about product at this year’s big home products trade show.

It all got started when RJ’s dad cut his fingers slicing food. Determined to figure out a way to protect his dad’s fingers in the future, RJ picked up a sketchbook and drew the first conceptualization of the Tip Tough. After a quick online search told them there wasn’t anything like this available, RJ and his family began to investigate how to bring the product to market.

The Tip Tough

Without any knowledge of the mechanics of product creation, RJ soon enrolled in a local program for young inventors called the Young Entrepreneurs Academy at the Salisbury (MD) Area Chamber of Commerce. The program gave RJ and his family what they needed to know to craft his pitch, understand fundraising and get a sense of how to bring the product to market.

“They guided me through learning how to go to business,” said RJ. “Without that, the product would have been sitting in a sketchbook, and I wouldn’t have to know what to do with that.”

He soon competed in a local startup competition at Salisbury University, where he received $15,000 for second place in a competition where he beat out many adults. And this week at the Housewares Show, RJ was featured in the Inventor’s Corner as the younger inventor at the show.

RJ and his company, Picklehead, are running a Kickstarter for the finger protector and plan to bring the stainless steel Tip Tough to market by July. They are planning on shipping a plastic version of the Tip Tough later this year.

While it may not be a smart kitchen device, the Tip Tough fulfills an obvious need, something many more modern – and connected – devices can often struggle with.  On my panel this week about the future of the smart home, my panelists talked about the need for simplicity of focus and creating obvious value in the minds of the consumer. As someone who gets annoyed I can’t cut that final piece of steak as finely as I’d like, I am a big proponent (as are my fingers) of simple, straightforward and non-connected innovation like the Tough Tip.

You can hear my interview with RJ above and support his Kickstarter here.

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The Company Behind PancakeBot Brings Us A Crazy Connected Coffee Table

First they helped take pancake making next-level with the PancakeBot, a pancake robot that helps the cook go beyond those Mickey Mouse and Death Star cakes you made for your kids into the world of pancake selfies. And now, StoreBound, a home product innovation company founded by longtime housewares executive Evan Dash (a recent guest on the Smart Kitchen Show podcast), wants to help us up our coffee table game with the SoBro, a “smart home” coffee table that comes complete with a built-in refrigerator, Bluetooth speakers, device charging ports and more.

I caught up with Dash at the Housewares Show to ask about the SoBro.  He told me the idea for the SoBro was to create the ultimate mancave coffee table, one which any guy or girl would love to put in their TV room, game room or that one-room flat and become the life of the party. In fact, the name of the product, SoBro, actually speaks to its target market: Bros.

No doubt, the specs are the most impressive I’ve ever seen for a piece of furniture I usually put my beer and popcorn on. It features a full refrigerator (“It’s not a cooler,” Dash emphasized.”It has a compressor”), ports to plug in your gadgets, Bluetooth to connect to music sources that will play music out of a set of stereo speakers and a subwoofer and an LED screen on the top of the coffee table.

The SoBro will retail for $1000, but early buyers can get it for $549 on Indiegogo.

You can hear more about the SoBro from Evan Dash in the video above.

Evan Dash, CEO of StoreBound, will be at the Smart Kitchen Summit. Get your tickets today. 

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Amidst Coffee Makers & Cookware, SproutsIO Talks Personal Produce At Housewares

Amidst the coffee makers, cookware and bartenderbots in Chicago this week at the International Home and Housewares Show, SproutsIO stood out as the one and only maker of a connected microgarden.

The SproutsIO microgarden, which allows an individual to grow vegetables in their home without soil or sunlight, is headed to market this year after a successful Kickstarter campaign last fall in which the company raised over $116 thousand. The SproutsIO will retail for $799, a price company CEO Jenny Broutin Farah believes will come down over time as they reach more efficiencies through high-volume manufacturing.

Broutin Farah told me (you can view the interview above) that one of the major benefits of SproutsIO is it grows vegetables much more quickly and efficiently than traditional soil-growing. The reason, she said, is the device can fully tailor growing conditions to each seed type, something which is difficult if outright impossible in traditional growing environments. According to Broutin Farah, SproutsIO can grow vegetables with just 2% of the water required in a traditional soil garden and 40% of the nutrients.

The company, which was one of the 15 startup showcase finalists at the Smart Kitchen Summit last October, will also monetize through selling seeds through a subscription service to user of the SproutsIO device.

You can hear the full interview above with Jenny Broutin Farah.

Housewares 2017: Somabar Pushes Robo-Bartender Into Production

This week at Housewares I caught up with Somabar, a company that makes cocktail-mixing robots.

I talked to company CEO, Dylan Purcell Lowe, who told me they’ve started production of the company’s robot bartender, which won best of show for the appliance category at CES 2016.  The device, which you can preorder for $429, is now in the hands of beta testers. The company expects to start shipping new orders by fall of this year.

According to Purcell Lowe, interest in the Somabar has come from both the consumer and professional/enterprise markets. The device, which has enough capacity to serve up to 300 drinks, would work well in hotels or restaurants according says Purcell Lowe, which is why their next generation Somabar will come in two versions: one for consumer and one for the pro market.

You can check out my interview with Purcell Lowe above and watch a quick walk-through of the Somabar below via Instagram.

We checked out the Somabar robotic bartender at #ihhs2017. #futureofdrink #foodtech #robotics

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