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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

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Food Tech News: Shelf Engine Raises $12M, Willie Nelson Does AgTech

There was much ado about food tech funding this week. Seriously. Between Cooks Ventures’ Series A, Zuul’s $9 million round, and all the figures in between, we barely had time to write about anything else. With that in mind, here are a few more bites of food tech news before another weekend of staying at home starts.

Shelf Engine raises $12 million.

Seattle-based Shelf Engine, whose AI tech manages grocery store inventory to cut down on food waste, announced this week it had raised $12 million. The round was led by GGV Capital and included participation from Initialized Capital, Foundation Capital, Correlation Ventures, 1984, Founders’ Co-op, and Liquid 2 Ventures.

Ikea sets launch date for plant-based meatballs.

This one’s for fans of DIY furniture who also happen to love plant-based meat. Ikea finally unveiled a plant-based version of its famous meatball made from yellow pea protein. Meatballs will be available on August 3 in the U.K. and September 28 in the U.S. in the frozen food section of its stores as well as in the cafeteria. That’s assuming, of course, that the pandemic hasn’t shut us all down again.

Image via Shock Ink/Pamela Springsteen.

Willie Nelson backs regenerative agriculture.

Last year it was CBD-infused coffee. This year, Willie Nelson is making his contribution to the food industry by backing regenerative agriculture. AFN reported this week that regenerative ag business TerraPuerzza has partnered with the country icon to bring regenerative land, water, and resource management techniques to Willie’s 500-acre Luck Ranch in Texas.

Domino’s launches a website for recycling pizza boxes. 

Domino’s and its main box supplier, WestRock, launched recycling.dominos.com this week to better educate consumers on how to recycle their pizza boxes. That includes clearing up some recycling myths (yes, you can recycle a box with grease on it) as well as helping folks understand what to do if their area does not accept recycling.

 

Report: IKEA Is Testing Food Delivery in Paris

Occasionally, I’ll head to the edge of Brooklyn and wander through the DIY furniture maze at IKEA just eat lunch at their cafeteria. It’s inconvenient to get to (there are no subways, so you have to pony up for an Uber) and always crowded, but the good food makes the trip worth all the extra hassle.

But at some point in the (probably not) near future, myself and others could have the ability to get IKEA’s version of comfort food delivered straight to our doors. Today IKEA confirmed to Fast Company that it is testing out a food delivery business, not, sadly, in Brooklyn, but in Paris, France.

Spanish publication El Confidencial first got ahold of news that the company was considering an expansion of its food business into homes. According to the Fast Company article, the Paris delivery trial includes IKEA’s so-called Swedish foods, including beets, salmon, cabbage, and salads. Food will be delivered from IKEA’s city center location in Paris.

What’s unclear is if the food will be delivered hot and ready to eat or if it will be a part of IKEA’s frozen food product line, much of which can be delivered just like any other IKEA product. In fact, details about the delivery service are scant all-around. An IKEA spokesperson told Fast Company, “We do not have any further details to share at this point, as we are very early in the process.”

So no, scooters won’t be trolling about the streets of Paris delivering hot plates of Swedish meatball to your doorstep. Not yet, anyway.

This isn’t IKEA’s first foray into same-day food delivery. There’s the aforementioned frozen product line, which you can order like you would a piece of furniture from the company’s website. And at the end of 2018, the company partnered with Uber in the U.K. to deliver for a limited time Swedish meatballs in celebration of an end-of-the-workweek Swedish tradition called Fredagsmys (“cozy Friday”).

IKEA’s food-focused initiatives in general make it clear that the company wants to become more than just a giant blue box of a store that sells DIY furniture. IKEA announced a vegan version of its iconic meatball last month, which it will be trialing in early 2020. The company also has a number of goals in place around reducing food waste, including its Food is Precious initiative, which aims to cut waste in the company’s food operations by 50 percent by the end of the fiscal year 2020.

Supporting all that is IKEA’s ongoing accelerator program, which has had a number of food-related companies participate, in addition to startups doing retail innovation and those trying to create more sustainable containers like coffee cups.

Whether any of these food-related initiatives will tie into a food-delivery business remains to be seen. How the Paris pilot fares should tell us more, and Fast Company reported that if it’s successful IKEA may expand the program to Spain as well as other parts of Europe. That’s a long way off from Brooklyn, but occasionally I can be optimistic, so here’s hoping.

Food Tech News: GE’s Latest Kitchen Hub, New Vegan IKEA Meatballs, and Meal Delivery Galore

Happy Saturday! This week was a big one for us at The Spoon — we kicked off our shiny new Future Food newsletter covering all things alternative protein, from plant-based meat to insects to cellular agriculture. Make sure to subscribe here.

But for now, let’s turn to this week’s food tech news. We have stories about IKEA’s new plant-based meatballs, GE’s latest smart kitchen hub, and a new frozen meal delivery service. Enjoy!

Mosaic, a new frozen meal delivery company, launches on East Coast
There’s a new D2C meal delivery service on the scene. This week Mosaic, a company which ships frozen, pre-cooked vegetarian bowls to consumers’ doorsteps within one day, began operations on the East Coast. The bowls range in price from $8.99 to $12.49 which is pretty pricey compared to what you’d find in the freezer section of the grocery store, but on par with traditional meal kits. Mosaic raised a seed round of funding in 2018 and is planning to launch in new cities soon.

Photo: GE

GE’s starts selling new kitchen hub, amps up SideChef partnership
The latest version of GE’s kitchen hub, which made its first appearance at CES this January, is now hitting store shelves (h/t CNET). Priced around $1,199, the hub has a built-in smart touchscreen which includes guided cooking capabilities from SideChef.

In fact, SideChef and GE have been ramping up their partnership lately. Sidechef’s app is now connected to a sizeable 74 GE ovens and ranges, allowing home cooks to set cook times, monitor temperature, and change up the cooking mode on their connected appliances.

Photo: IKEA

IKEA’s making a meatier version of their plant-based meatballs
Vegetarians who love Swedish meatballs, rejoice. The Daily Mail reports that IKEA is developing a new plant-based version of their famous meatballs which will look and taste more like the “real thing.” The Swedish furniture giant launched a vegan meatball made of chickpeas and vegetables back in 2015, but this new version will apparently be more in line with the more realistic offerings from Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods. IKEA plans to trial their new meatballs in early 2020.

Photo: Wegmans

Wegmans teams up with DoorDash
This week East Coast supermarket chain Wegmans announced that it will partner DoorDash to launch its Wegmans Meals 2GO food delivery service. Hungry people can use the Wegmans Meals 2GO app to order from the Wegmans’ prepared food section, which includes pizza, salads, and sushi. Customers can opt for carry-out or curbside pickup, or can get delivery for orders of $20 or more if they live within a 5 mile radius. So far the service is available in two locations in Rochester, New York and one spot in Virginia, and Wegmans plans to roll out the service to 40 stores by the end of this year.

Did we miss anything? Tweet us @TheSpoonTech!

Winnow Launches Computer Vision + AI Tool to Help Commercial Kitchens Fight Food Waste

Winnow this week announced the launch of its new Winnow Vision product, which combines computer vision, a weight scale and AI to help commercial kitchens reduce food waste.

From the press announcement:

Using a camera, a set of smart scales and the same type of machine learning technology found in autonomous vehicles, Winnow Vision ‘learns’ to recognise different foods being thrown in the bin and calculates the financial and environment cost of this discarded food to commercial kitchens.

A demo video on Winnow’s site shows its product in use at an IKEA cafeteria. As unsold food is thrown straight into the garbage can, Winnow’s computer vision sees and identify the food that is being thrown out. The garbage can sits on top of a scale, allowing the system to know just how much food is being tossed.

With this type of information, chefs and kitchen managers can then see what foods they are over-ordering or making too much of and adjust both their inventory management and production accordingly. The hope is that they’ll buy only the ingredients they need and create less food waste in the process.

Winnow isn’t the only company using scales and cameras to fight food waste in high-volume kitchens. LeanPath offers a similar solution, though it requires users to manually enter in the food being thrown out.

With 40 percent of the food in the United States never getting eaten, fighting food waste is a big problem — and as my colleague, Catherine Lamb recently wrote, a there are a lot of startups looking to tackle it.

We’ll now have to see how much Winnow’s computer vision system helps.

Ikea to Unveil Sonos-Powered Speaker in April

Ikea is set to unveil its new line of speakers it has been developing with Sonos at the Milan Furniture Fair next month. Yesterday, the Swedish furniture company officially announced it will be showing off the Symfonisk speakers and released a teaser video highlighting the kitchen as a use case for them.

Ikea Sonos teaser

The video is artful in the way it gives away nothing, showing only a kitchen and a living room with blurred out spots, but Janko Roettgers over at Variety had a few observations:

The positioning and size of those masked spots suggests that the company may be getting ready to introduce at least two speakers with distinct form factors: A speaker shelf that would fit on a kitchen wall, and a standalone speaker that one might place on an end table.

Which adds up considering that Ikea and Sonos had already debuted a prototype of a connected, multi-function book-shelf speaker last year.

What isn’t spelled out specifically in this press release is whether the Ikea speaker will have Alexa built in, like the Sonos One and Beam. The Verge reported back in January that Symfonisk will integrate with Ikea’s Trådfri line of smart lights, shades and more.

If the Symfonisk winds up being smart speaker that doubles as an actual, useful shelf, that’s a good space saving idea, especially in countries where kitchen spaces are typically on the smaller side. With its massive global presence and brand recognition, Ikea could certainly move units. But I wonder if it’s too late for Ikea to breakthrough with such a product here in the U.S., at least for the kitchen.

Voice control is great in the kitchen, where hands are often covered in dough or sauce or other foodstuffs, but hardware makers have moved on to fight over becoming the smart screen in your kitchen. Smart screens do everything smart speakers do, plus show your calendar, act as a digital picture frame and provide enhanced guided cooking with video.

That doesn’t mean the speaker/shelf won’t work in other scenarios in the house. In fact, it won’t be long until smart assistants become ubiquitous in our homes, as smart speakers get cheaper and baked directly into more products. We’ll have to wait until April to see what Ikea finally unveils, and whether it will find a place in our kitchen or not.

IKEA’s Next Bootcamp Could Be Ideal for Grocery Startups Looking to Grow

IKEA is currently taking applications for the second iteration of its startup program, IKEA Bootcamp, which it holds in partnership with global entrepreneur community Rainmaking.

The Bootcamp works with companies tackling current issues around improving quality of life, whether that’s through sustainability, or making goods more affordable and accessible. While it’s not exclusively geared towards food businesses, startups in that area had a significant presence at the 2017 program. Participants included an Israeli startup Flying Spark, who’s created a protein source from fruit fly larvae, and goodbag, who makes smart shopping bags.

For the 2019 program, IKEA is looking for growth-stage companies and will run “a pilot-focused program,” according to a press announcement. Additionally, the company has increased the total number of companies who’ll participate to twenty.

This program will also add retail as a focus area, with participation from IKEA franchisee Ingka Group. (The IKEA Range & Supply business unit will also be involved for companies looking at product and supply chain development.)

With the application pool still open, there’s no word yet on what kinds of food businesses will be involved this year. But the new retail component suggests the possibility of a grocery-focused startup participating. That opens things up immensely: startups working on anything from more efficient ways of delivering food to smarter shopping to sustainable packaging could now theoretically join the Bootcamp.

IKEA isn’t specific about what kinds of food businesses should apply, so long as they’re ones that are trying to tackle significant global issues. Or as IKEA Bootcamp manager Per Krokstäde noted in the statement, “this is not a powerpoint exercise, this is about solving real problems in a way we can act on.”

The year may be winding down, but there are several other startup accelerators and incubators still taking applications for their next cohorts. Food-X, one of the biggest names in the world of food accelerators, is currently taking applications for its Spring 2019 program. FS6’s next cohort starts in February 2019, so those vying for a spot in that specific timeframe should apply soon. Techstars’ agtech-focused Farm to Fork Accelerator, meanwhile, will open its application pool on January 7, 2019.

The IKEA program will take place over three months, from March through June. It will be semi-remote, with startups spending some time in IKEA’s homebase: Älmhult, Sweden.

Applications are open until December 31, 2018.

Weekly Spoon: Kitchen Projection Interfaces, Amazon Drone Patent & Innit Nabs Arçelik

This is the post version of our weekly newsletter. If you’d like to get the weekly Spoon in your inbox, you can subscribe here.

If you go to lots of trade shows like me, you know it takes time for innovation to make its way from the show floor into our living rooms.

We’ve all seen this with technologies like virtual reality and 3D food printing; only after years of development and iteration cycles do we get to the point where a product is ready for prime time.

And then there are technologies like projection interfaces that – up until now at least – seem like they’re stuck in development stasis. The idea of a projectable, anywhere surface interface has been discussed for close to a decade in the research and academic community and started showing up on trade show floors about five years ago. Despite this, the concept never seemed to go beyond an occasional product demo.

So last year I started to wonder why exactly the technology hadn’t reached consumers yet. After all, with the likes of Whirlpool, IKEA, and Bosch showing off jaw-dropping demos, it only made sense this technology would find its way to market at some point.

While there’s no clear answer, I narrowed it down to a couple of factors. First, the reality is the technology still needed some refinement to make it both consumer-ready and affordable. Second, appliance vendors often wait for big-tech to take the first leap, and from what I could tell none of the big-tech 5 (Google, Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, and Amazon) seemed particularly active with projection interfaces.

But now, it looks like one big company is committing to bringing a projection interface to market. BSH Appliances showed off a new product concept called PAI at IFA in Berlin this past week. PAI is a movable projector interface that is designed to go on a countertop in a kitchen.

I’m excited that BSH looks to be serious about bringing PAI to market. While some see voice as the dominant user interface of the future, abysmal usage rates of Alexa skills for commerce have shown us that voice in itself isn’t enough.  Consumers are visual, and most things we do in the kitchen are multimodal. Because of this, I believe the dynamic projection interface could a vibrant area in UI development over the next decade.

BSH Appliances wasn’t the only one to make news at IFA last week. Sharp showed up in Berlin with a fridge that featured a built-in vacuum sealer, prompting Chris Albrecht to wonder what exactly types of features he would want in his next fridge.

Smart kitchen platform startup Innit had a strong showing at IFA, popping up in a number appliance OEM booths, including that of a new partner in Arçelik.  The Turkish appliance conglomerate behind the Beko and Grundig brands showed off an Innit integration to power guided cooking as part of its HomeWhiz smart home platform.

It wasn’t all IFA this week. This week the Spoon scooped yet another Amazon patent in which the Seattle tech giant shows an innovative new method for delivery drones to generate power while in transit by harnessing both wind and kinetic energy.
After the news of a $30 million funding round for Farmer’s Fridge, I’m looking forward to a panel at Smart Kitchen Summit on the future of lunch. We’ll be discussing how new technologies, business models and delivery formats are all colliding to change what we eat every day, including at work.  You can read Chris’s piece on Farmer’s Fridge, a startup we’ve been covering for the past year.

Speaking of Smart Kitchen Summit, we’re less than five weeks away from our flagship show exploring the future of food and cooking. We have an amazing program planned, and not only will we have executives from big appliance brands like Whirlpool, GE and more, but we’ll also have startups from the smart kitchen, food robotics, restaurant tech, retail and more to discuss and showcase how each of these industries are changing to disrupt the consumer meal journey.  Make sure to get your tickets now and use the discount code NEWSLETTER (You can also use this link which has the code already applied).

That’s it for now. Have a great rest of the week.

Mike

P.S. Make sure to tune into this weekend’s episode of the Smart Kitchen Show podcast, where I have a great conversation with the CEO of the startup behind what is arguably the most successful consumer food robot ever made. You won’t want to miss it!

In the 09/06/2018 edition:

Ordermark Raises $9.5 Million for its Online Order Management Tools

By Chris Albrecht on Sep 06, 2018 10:23 am
Ordermark, a startup that helps restaurants unify and organize online orders, today announced that it has closed a $9.5 million Series A led by Nosara Capital. This brings the total amount raised by the company to $12.6 million.

Nima Peanut Sensor Now Available, Gluten Sensor Selling at Select CVS Stores

By Chris Albrecht on Sep 06, 2018 06:00 am
It’s back-to-school time, which means my son is once again eating lunches in a cafeteria. I doubt his school is unique, but it actually has separate tables for kids who bring in peanut butter sandwiches.

With its own Grocery Delivery Service, Walmart Grabs More Data

By Chris Albrecht on Sep 05, 2018 04:00 pm
Walmart is leaving no stone unturned when it comes to getting you your groceries. As of today, that includes testing out its own delivery service (h/t Food Dive). The retailing giant announced a pilot program for its new last-mile delivery service, dubbed Spark Delivery, which will deliver groceries directly to customers’ front door.

For Goodr’s Jasmine Crowe, Blockchain Is a Key Piece to the Food Waste Puzzle

By Catherine Lamb on Sep 05, 2018 02:00 pm
Food waste is generating quite a lot of interest as of late; but one buzzword that might give “food waste” a run for its money is blockchain.

Innit Adds Arçelik To Growing List of Appliance Partners

By Michael Wolf on Sep 05, 2018 12:00 pm
The smart kitchen was everywhere this year at IFA, Europe’s big appliance and tech expo, and one company that seemed to be on everyone’s dance card was Innit.

Farmer’s Fridge Stocks up with $30M

By Chris Albrecht on Sep 05, 2018 10:54 am
Farmer’s Fridge, the company which makes vending machines that dispense healthy meals such as salads and protein bowls, today announced that it has raised a new $30 million round of funding led by Innovation Endeavors. This brings the total amount raised by the company to $40 million.

Seltzer? Sous Vide? Smart Apps? What Cool Things do you Want in a Fridge?

By Chris Albrecht on Sep 05, 2018 07:33 am
For those old enough to remember, there is an episode from season two of The Simpsons where Homer designs a car for the average American. The result, as you can imagine was a hodge-podge monstrosity that featured bubble domes, three horns, shag carpeting and cost $82,000.

Bear Flag Robotics Raises $3.5 Million for Autonomous Tractor Tech

By Chris Albrecht on Sep 04, 2018 10:00 am
The common refrain from robotics companies is that they help with manual, repetitive tasks. And when you run a farm, there are plenty of manual, repetitive tasks, and Bear Flag Robotics raised $3.5 million seed funding right before the holiday weekend to help agricultural workers out with them.

Amazon Patent Points to In-Flight Recharging For Delivery Drones

By Michael Wolf on Sep 04, 2018 06:54 am
Ever since Jeff Bezos teased the idea of drone deliveries on 60 Minutes in 2013, the tech world has been abuzz with the idea. At the time Bezos said that the reality of drone deliveries wasn’t there yet, but he thought it just might be in 4-5 years.

FoodPlus Sells Surplus Food (in Slovenia) so it Doesn’t go to Waste

By Catherine Lamb on Sep 04, 2018 06:00 am
Based in Slovenia, FoodPlus began in 2015 when co-founder Dalibor Matijevic began searching for a way to cut down on food waste by redistributing surplus food. He developed a B2B platform for companies to buy and sell extra food at a super low cost — creating a new revenue stream and keeping food out of landfills.

IKEA’s Startup Bootcamp Gives Us a Glimpse Into Some Hot Future-of-Food Trends

Swedish furniture-maker IKEA is right in the middle of its very first “IKEA bootcamp” startup accelerator, a three-month program the company is running with global cooperative Rainmaking. The three-month program, announced back in May, has been underway since September.

Ten startups were picked from a pool of several hundred applicants. The chosen few arrived in Älmhult, Sweden in September to work closely with IKEA and Rainmaking within the accelerator codeveloped by the two companies. The program runs until December, when the startups will show off their progress with a demo day.

It’s significant that two of the 10 companies chosen are specifically about food tech, and that a third product touches the food sector. IKEA has always been about improving the everyday, whether that’s affordable routes to smarter lighting, energy efficient home appliances, or a range of smart-kitchen devices.

IKEA’s food business is almost as famous as the brand itself. The infamous horsemeat scare in 2013 led the company to change parts of its food business. It axed Pepsi and Coca-Cola products, replacing them with Swedish fruit waters, and, in 2015, introduced a veggie version of its much-loved meatball dish.

And thanks to these startups currently hard at work, new food developments are probably not far away—starting with bugs.

One of the startups, Israel’s Flying SpArk, produces protein ingredients from fruit flies. The ingredient, which comes in powder and oil form, is rich in minerals and proteins, and fruit flies require minimal water and almost no land to farm.

“I don’t know if the future is a crispy bug ball, but I know we are going to work with lots of different partners to bring changes to our food business,” Food Services Managing Director Michael la Cour said at the recent Sustainability Summit.

Insects, of course, are getting a lot of attention of late. Michelin Star restaurant Saison now offers crickets on the menu. Meanwhile, Tesco’s outgoing executive chairman, John Chambers, got a lot of attention after his talk at last week’s Techonomy conference. He believes consumers around the globe will transition to a more orthopteran diet “definitely within 20 years and maybe within 15.”

But it’s not all creepy crawlies over at the IKEA bootcamp. Another startup is Niwa, who makes a connected hydroponic system that completely automates gardening. The technology is compact enough to fit inside a small apartment and can be controlled with a smartphone. The company is currently accepting pre-orders for the product.

Niwa, however, isn’t just another smart-home gadget for consumers. Ambitious growers can opt to build their own system. And Niwa Pro, which is considerably more complex, is aimed at those growing on a larger scale.

The other Bootcamp company deserving a mention is Germany-based Goodbag, whose product aims to eliminate plastic shopping bags. Buy a cute, tote-like bag from the company’s online store, and scan it at the checkout. For every scan you make, a new tree is planted. Bag owners also get access to discounts at participating stores. The bags work in any shopping scenario of course, but grocery stores tend to be monstrous consumers of plastic shopping bags, especially in the U.S.

Getting backing from a mega-company like IKEA shows that these concepts are, if nothing else, growing increasingly important to the conversation around food and technology. If we’re all soon bringing bug powder home in our connected totes and cooking it up with smart veggies, we’ll know IKEA chose its startups well for this inaugural event.

IKEA Gets In The Startup Game With Bootcamp Accelerator

In the last several years, we’ve seen major home, tech and food brands reach out to the startup community in the form of VC funds and accelerators to try and harness the massive innovation taking place in their markets. From General Mills, Kellogg and Google, companies are looking at hot areas like food, agriculture and housewares to find the disrupters to bring into their ecosystems.

IKEA, the maker of popular furniture and home goods – and most recently, smart lighting products – is getting into the mix, announcing the IKEA Bootcamp for startups looking to solve the world’s “Big Problems.” It’s clear IKEA is looking to cultivate and support entrepreneurs in hot innovative areas right now – including IoT, virtual reality, chatbots, food tech, drones and Big Data.

The Swedish home design conglomerate is no stranger to pursuing partnerships in search of the next big thing; last year they worked with IDEO and design students School of Industrial Design at the Ingvar Kamprad Design Centre at Lund University to come up with the Concept Kitchen 2025, a prototype of what kitchens of the future might look like.

“We are looking for startups to help us solve the IKEA ‘Big Problems’ around being truly affordable for the many people, reaching and interacting with the many, and enabling a positive impact on the planet, people and society.” -IKEA

The perks IKEA is offering startups are pretty enticing – fifteen companies will be selected to work and live in Almhult, Sweden with a stipend of 20,000 EU and free housing from September through December. Selected innovators will work in IKEA’s prototype shop and test labs and be able to tap into expertise within the IKEA Range & Supply group.

They’ll also have access to workshops, courses and mentorships from senior IKEA global business leaders. And maybe most appealing? IKEA is not looking to take any equity in accelerator startups but rather see it as an opportunity to collaborate, saying “We may end up being a customer, licensing your technology or even investing in your company, but first and foremost we want you to be working on the Big Problems and to share our vision to create a better everyday life for the many people.”

Applications are due August 6 to be part of the fall cohort, which runs from September 8 to December 18.

Are you a startup in food tech or the smart kitchen? Apply to demo at the Smart Kitchen Summit in the Startup Showcase on October 10 and 11 in Seattle, WA. Selected finalists will receive an opportunity to showcase their innovation to decision makers across tech, food, housewares and appliances, retail and commerce.

Apply by August 15 for a chance at a spot at the only event in North America dedicated to the future of food, cooking + the kitchen. 

 

 

Podcast: Here’s A Fresh, Hand-Squeezed Podcast For Your Enjoyment

This week’s guest is Home:On’s Richard Gunther. Richard and I discuss the Bloomberg story about Juicero that showed you can bypass the company’s $400 juicer and squeeze the Juicero packs with your hands. We also talk about the ongoing story of Ring’s acquihire of Zonoff, the acquisition of iDevices by Hubbell, IKEA’s smart lights, and Samsung investment in Nomiku and the August’s new Z-Wave smart lock.

Enjoy!

Projected Video Interfaces May Be The Future Of The Kitchen. Why Aren’t They Here Yet?

With all the talk about Alexa nowadays, you’d think the future has arrived and we have our interface: voice.

But before you give up all your iPads for Echo Dots, take a moment to consider how much you use touch interfaces on a daily basis. While voice will no doubt play a huge role in the future of the smart home, touch continues to proliferate. Not only are car makers adding interactive touch screens, restaurants and pretty much everywhere else we go is getting better touch interfaces, while products in our kitchen like refrigerators are getting better and better touch interfaces.

And now, touch is combining with gesture recognition in a new science-fiction spin on interfaces that is gaining favor among product designers. The ‘projected interface’ -- where an image is projected onto a flat surface to make what is essentially an interactive touch screen through the use of machine vision -- is a new product interface concept that has captured the imagination interface designers in the kitchen over the past few years.

Projected Interface Demos Are Everywhere

Below are a few high profile projected interface product demos rolled out over the past few years:

Whirlpool, the world’s largest appliance maker, started talking about their interactive cooktop three years ago at CES 2014. You can see in the video how the Whirlpool smart cook top utilizes projected video as an interface.

Whirlpool® Interactive Cooktop at CES 2014

Over a year later, people were wowed by the projected interface used by IKEA in its 2025 future kitchen concept video:

IKEA Concept Kitchen 2025

At this year’s CES, Bosch seemed to embrace the concept of the projected interface, incorporating it into not only a demo of its coffee making robot:

Spotted at #ces2017: coffee robot at the @Bosch booth.

A video posted by Michael Wolf (@michaelawolf) on

And high-end German consumer electronics manufacturer Grundig has been showing off its VUX projection interface concept for the past year and a half:

GRUNDIG Control System VUX (english)

So, why all this interest in projected video interfaces and, more importantly, why haven’t any of these “visions of the future” made it to market yet?

Why Projected Video Interfaces Are Inevitable

It’s clear why projected video is a popular concept for demos: it looks cool. The very idea of turning any flat surface into an interactive interface is one that, at least for now, wows the user. Of course, that could change over time if these interfaces become more commonplace, but isn’t that true of every new technology? For now, projected interfaces could be used in a variety of interesting ways that consumers would love.

As for appliance makers, projected interfaces present an exciting new way to create consumer experiences. Think about it: Product designers used to working with tiny screens would find a much bigger pallet in projected interfaces, allowing them to create more compelling experiences that open doors to more education, instruction, and marketing content. Projected interfaces would also allow them to refresh their product interface regularly, rather than being stuck with the same small, mono-color screen for the life of the appliance.

If It’s So Cool To Demo, Why Aren’t Projected Video Interfaces In Market Yet?

If the projected video interface is such a crowd pleaser, why does it only seem to show up in concept videos and on trade show floors in “kitchen of the future” concept demos?

Here are a few possible reasons:

It’s still early, and projected interfaces are not quite ready for prime time. Most of the demos we see are all created for highly controlled demo experiences.  It may be that making projected video interfaces work in a mass-market environment in the consumer kitchen isn’t as easy as they’ve made it look in a demo video.

Implementing projected video requires a complicated setup. The IKEA 2025 kitchen concept utilizes a “smart light” concept which would require the consumer to have a specialized projector and an intelligent camera that can then read the gestures of the consumer installed above a table.  The other demos also have separate projection systems installed above the work surface. This type of set up would mean these systems are likely expensive and require a new installation method to which appliance makers and their channels are not accustomed.

Appliance Makers Move Slow. While all of these demos make clear that the projected interface is a promising concept, it’s important to remember appliance makers don’t introduce radical new concepts quickly.

Still, I’m hopeful that maybe Whirlpool, Bosch or IKEA will introduce an actual product at next year’s CES using projected video rather than just a concept demo. I do suspect that some, if not all, of the big appliance makers, are working on productizing projected interface enabled products. I also suspect disrupters may be working on something in this area.

And I wouldn’t be surprised if the world’s most disruptive company, Amazon, has something up their sleeves. After all, I keep hearing that the online giant has a bunch of crazy new products in store for us this year, so who knows, maybe the “kitchen computer” of the future is a social robot that has a projection video interface built in to go with Alexa.

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The Year in Home Grow Systems

I have a fantasy of plucking juicy, ripe tomatoes from the vine in my garden, snipping a few basil leaves off the plant, and making myself a fresh summer salad. The problem is, I’m not much of a gardener. I’ve killed so many cacti that I don’t even try anymore: My buying a plant is pretty much sentencing it to death.

That’s why I’ve been so excited to see the home grow landscape blossom this year, with tons of systems, apps, and other devices to make growing food at home easier for even the worst black thumb like me.

Here are the most notable happenings and advancements in the past 12 months.

Grow It All

The Edyn solar-powered sensor is perfect for the detailed gardener with a big backyard plot: It sends data about weather, soil conditions, light frequency, and moisture levels to your phone, where you can manage it all. Meanwhile using sensors, the Gro app can also put together that data and even give you suggestions about specific plants. If you’re more of a hands-off person, the Parrot Pot senses the water level in the pot and waters your plant accordingly. These three devices don’t have to be used solely for produce, but they would certainly make it easier to grow vegetables and fruit at home.

Then there’s the FarmBot, which launched earlier this year and is available for preorder now for delivery in early 2017. The open-source home-farming robot plants seeds, kills weeds, and waters plants individually for their precise needs. It’s controlled through an app and grows enough food to feed one person year-round. Sounds like it might be advanced enough to override even my black thumb.

Home farming robot

Home Garden Copycats

Throughout the past year, we’ve seen so many indoor garden systems that we’re not sure how to separate the wheat from the chaff. Sure, they’re cool, but they’re also copycats of one another, which at some point makes all of them indistinguishable.

Ikea launched its indoor garden for year-round fresh produce, SproutsIO kicked off its connected platform and app, Japanese company Foop brought its hydroponic pod to market, and Opcom launched its GrowBox. Still in the development stages, Everbloom conceptualized its grow fridge, Click & Grow raised funds on Kickstarter for its Smart Garden, and an entrepreneur at Purdue has created what’s essentially a Keurig for hydroponic gardening.

Then there are the 7Sensors Grow Box and Grobo, systems both designed to grow weed but that will work for any other plants too (yeah, like we’re gonna care about peppers when pot is in the picture).

All of these are designed for small spaces, perfect for big cities and tiny kitchens. They almost universally have some sort of pod (with or without soil) and an app to help make the growing process easier.

In short, we have a very crowded market with a lot of systems that essentially do the same thing. Over the next year or so we’ll see some of them weeded out, with only a few remaining: It will come down to the best interface, prettiest design, and most interactive and helpful support and community.