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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Joule

Breville Acquires ChefSteps, Maker of the Joule Sous Vide

Kitchen appliance giant Breville announced today that it has acquired ChefSteps, maker of the Joule connected sous vide wand. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

From the press release:

Breville’s acquisition of ChefSteps will enhance the long-term R&D capacity that brought the Joule product to market, allowing for continued and sustained focus on innovation, while increasing global commercial scale to further maximize the value of the ChefSteps content platform and portfolio of fast-growing connected Joule products. It also forms a natural consumer-focused extension to Breville’s existing commercial sous vide range of products following its acquisition of the PolyScience Culinary division in 2014.

The privately funded ChefSteps started out as an online culinary community and recipe site and went on to become an early pioneer in the sous vide space through the company’s well regarded (and well designed) Joule.

In April, ChefSteps laid off a significant number of its staff. At that time Spoon Founder Mike Wolf wrote:

There are still not many details beyond what’s been reported, so it’s hard to tell exactly what happened and why ChefSteps was forced to downsize. I can only speculate that sales of the Joule (or their related Joule Ready sauce business) wasn’t substantial enough to fund the ongoing business and that they had exhausted funding provided by early backer Gabe Newell.

Newell, a billionaire who made his money in the video game business as the founder of Valve, had given the company a low-interest loan early on. While Young had described Newell’s support as giving the company the financial flexibility to push in new directions (such as with the Joule), it looks like Newell’s generosity has its limits. It’s unclear if ChefSteps had sought funding from other outside sources (or is still seeking funding).

Less than a week after that ChefSteps shut down its premium content offerings and shuttered its relatively nascent sauce-selling business. At that time, ChefSteps CEO, Chris Young posted to Facebook:

As you’ve heard, there have been some changes at ChefSteps in the past week. Our funding situation unexpectedly changed (emphasis mine) and we’ve had to make the incredibly difficult decision to let a significant fraction of our amazing team go. This truly sucks.

Following these closings, Mike Wolf followed up with another story, writing:

While it was always assumed ChefSteps was in a good financial place because of the backing of billionaire Gabe Newell, it’s apparent now that wasn’t necessarily the case. Most interestingly, it looks like the sudden change in the health of the company’s balance sheet was not anticipated, making me wonder if either Newell called in the loan or had changed his position somehow and didn’t want to extend more credit to the company. There’s also the possibility ChefSteps had been seeking other financing and had something fall through at the last minute.

ChefSteps will be integrated into the Breville Group business and will continue to operate out of its Seattle office.

The acquisition by Breville is good news for Joule fans everywhere, but given the tight times the company was in and the fact that terms were not disclosed, it probably wasn’t the exit the company was hoping for when they started.

We will continue to follow this story as it develops.

Newly Downsized ChefSteps Dropping Sauce and Paid Content Businesses

Last week, news broke that ChefSteps had laid off a significant percentage of its staff. At the time,  it was unclear what the future held for the company other than an assurance from company CEO Chris Young that the Seattle startup and its flagship hardware product, the Joule sous vide appliance, would live on.

Now, thanks to a Facebook post from Young, we have a clearer picture of what a downsized ChefSteps will look like. Young’s note, which he wrote to the Cooking With Joule Facebook group, reiterated that ChefSteps and the Joule would live to see another day.

However, as I speculated last week, it looks like the company is getting out of the sauce business.

From the post:

I appreciate your understanding that in the coming days our focus will be on supporting our affected friends and that we may be a bit slower to respond than usual.

This also means that we will be discontinuing certain lines of business, including Joule Ready and any additional content being added to ChefSteps Premium.

I liked the Joule Ready sauce concept, even if the pricing for sauces ($4-$7 depending on the sauce) was a little high. Still, the idea of creating an easy sous vide meal without having to worry about getting the necessary ingredients to make a sauce like Thai curry or or tikka masala made life a little easier, even if it meant supplying your own protein.

From the looks of it, not enough people agreed with me. I have a feeling if the company was turning a profit or saw strong growth ahead for Joule Ready, they wouldn’t have killed the business after only half a year.

The company is also axing its paid content business. ChefSteps Premium, which offered video-centric cooking classes, in-depth how-to’s and exclusive recipes, cost subscribers a one-time fee of $39.  While it’s not clear how successful Premium was, the business clearly either didn’t have enough subscribers to justify the investment of putting new content behind the paywall or the company simply couldn’t afford to keep the team on. I do think the company made a strategic error early on by choosing to not ask its ChefSteps Premium customers to renew access annually (it was a pay-once, permanent subscription product), which negated any revenue growth opportunities as the company grew its subscriber base.

Finally, while Young didn’t go into too many details about how they ran into a cash crunch, he did drop one interesting clue:

As you’ve heard, there have been some changes at ChefSteps in the past week. Our funding situation unexpectedly changed (emphasis mine) and we’ve had to make the incredibly difficult decision to let a significant fraction of our amazing team go. This truly sucks.

While it was always assumed ChefSteps was in a good financial place because of the backing of billionaire Gabe Newell, it’s apparent now that wasn’t necessarily the case. Most interestingly, it looks like the sudden change in the health of the company’s balance sheet was not anticipated, making me wonder if either Newell called in the loan or had changed his position somehow and didn’t want to extend more credit to the company. There’s also the possibility ChefSteps had been seeking other financing and had something fall through at the last minute.

Either way, it looks like the company’s runway was suddenly shortened, which meant the startup no longer had the luxury of experimenting in new lines of business such as food delivery and premium content.

I also wonder if this means ChefSteps will permanently shelve its ongoing development of other hardware products. While the company never disclosed publicly what their next product would be, they’d been signaling for some time that new products were on the horizon.

With last week’s news, chances are any new products (one of which was speculated to be a steam oven) likely won’t see the light of day anytime soon.

ChefSteps Lays Off Staff as CEO Young Vows Company Will Live On

ChefSteps, the Seattle startup which began life as an online culinary community and recipe site before expanding into hardware with the Joule sous vide appliance, has laid off a significant percentage of the staff according to reports.

The news of the layoffs was first leaked via food delivery review site Food Oasis, which was told by an anonymous source that the company would be shutting down.  Not true says ChefSteps CEO Chris Young, who told Geekwire the company would live on and continue to sell and support the Joule.

There are still not many details beyond what’s been reported, so it’s hard to tell exactly what happened and why ChefSteps was forced to downsize. I can only speculate that sales of the Joule (or their related Joule Ready sauce business) wasn’t substantial enough to fund the ongoing business and that they had exhausted funding provided by early backer Gabe Newell.

Newell, a billionaire who made his money in the video game business as the founder of Valve, had given the company a low-interest loan early on. While Young had described Newell’s support as giving the company the financial flexibility to push in new directions (such as with the Joule), it looks like Newell’s generosity has its limits. It’s unclear if ChefSteps had sought funding from other outside sources (or is still seeking funding).

It’s also unclear how many of ChefSteps roughly 50 employees will stay on, but a quick look at Linkedin shows some of them have already hung “looking for my next gig” signs on their profiles.

I also have to wonder if the company’s early sales of the Joule had tailed off as pricing pressure on the commoditizing sous vide circulator market has become more pronounced. The Joule, which is priced at a premium ($199) compared to other circulators, has sold well on Amazon and through ChefSteps own website, but lower-priced circulators (Anova launched the sub-$100 Nano last year) may have started to eat into their sales.

The Joule Ready sauces are all ‘Out of Stock’ on ChefSteps website

It also looks like the company had not been able to ramp their Joule Ready sauce business to capitalize on a Joule circulator installed base that I suspect numbers in the hundreds of thousands.  At this point, it’s unclear if the company is even still in the sauce business:  a quick perusal of the company’s site today shows every sauce as being out of stock.

We’ve reached out to Young for a comment and will update this story as we get more details.

The Spoon’s 2018 Food Tech Holiday Gift Guide: Crickets, Coffee, Connected Ovens and More!

We at The Spoon write about food tech and food gadgets all year long. So when it comes time for the holidays, we want you to spend your money wisely, which is why we’ve put together our 2018 Food Tech Holiday Gift Guide. These are our staff recommendations for food tech products worth buying that people will love.

This year, we tried to break the list out in a realistic, real world manner. We’ve categorized our picks based on what you’d get for a co-worker (think: Secret Santa), a friend, a family member and finally, what you’d splurge on for a significant other/spouse/partner or even yourself.

If you wind up getting one of these items, drop us a line and let us know what you think!

Happy holidays (and holiday shopping) from all of us at The Spoon!

Co-worker


Foodie Dice
Everyone needs a little inspiration for meal planning, which makes Foodie Dice ($24) a good all-around gift most people will appreciate. The set comes with five wooden “primary” dice that have protein, grain, herb and cooking-method options, as well as a mysterious “bonus” option, engraved on their surfaces. Four more dice feature veggies. According to the product description, there are 186,000 possible combinations which, if nothing else, will give cooking dinner a little shot of excitement. -Jenn


Manatea Infuser
Do you have one co-worker who’s never without his/her steaming cup of tea? This adorable manatea (get it?) tea infuser ($8) will brighten up their day and add a little spirit to their mug. In addition to being really cute and reasonably priced (especially compared to some of the high-tech tea contraptions out there), the infuser is also reusable, which means no more throwing out tea bags on the daily. Pair with a box of high-quality loose leaf tea for a coworker gift that you’ll actually see them use around the office. -Catherine


TRUFF Hot Sauce
OK. Yes. Fine. This isn’t any “tech” in this food. But try this once and you’ll swear it was invented by alien scientists from the future who wanted to craft the perfect hot sauce. Even Oprah named it one of her favorite things (which is too bad because that will probably make it harder to get). Truff is “a curated blend of ripe chili peppers, organic agave nectar, black truffle, and savory spices” that I’ve been slathering all over my pizza, mac-n-cheese, and just about everything else I’m eating. At $15, it’s a little pricey for hot sauce, but a steal when it comes to flavor. -Chris


Chocolate Crickets
While alternameats get all the press, there’s no question that bugs are going to be a big part of our protein future. You can help your burger-loving coworker make the bugs go down a little easier by adding a little chocolate and coffee flavor. Pick up a snack bag of these crunchy insects for $17.95, or splurge on a full pound for the bug-lover for $39.95. -Mike

Friend


Sudden Coffee Subscription Pack
Think of Sudden Coffee as an instant version of pour-over craft coffee. The company uses ethically sourced, top 1 percent beans, a special freeze-drying process, and a “secret method” to place the kind of coffee you’d get in a cafe into single-serve packs with a six-month shelf life. While there are multiple product options from which to choose, an eight-pack starter kit ($20 for a one-time purchase; $16 for a subscription) is pretty much a guaranteed win for coffee-drinking friends. Even the coffee snobs can get into this one. -Jenn


Bee’s Wrap Cheese Saver
It’s no secret that cheese can cost some serious cheddar. What you might not know is that cheese breathes like a living thing, and storing it in plastic wrap not only suffocates it, it also makes it taste like, well, plastic. Ideally, cheese should be stored wrapped in breathable paper like Bee’s Wrap ($18). Made from organic cotton and beeswax, Bee’s Wrap can be used to store a lot more than just cheese, but that’s my favorite way to use it. It’s also washable, reusable and compostable, so it cuts down on both food and plastic waste. Pair a pack of Bee’s Wrap with a few local cheeses and any cheese-loving friend will be happy. -Catherine


Dash Egg Cooker
Outside of the microwave, there is no kitchen device we use in our house more than this cute li’l egg cooker ($30). It’s not smart, it’s not connected, but it is a dead simple way to make half a dozen perfect hard boiled eggs, every time. No pots of water to boil. No timing to get just right. Just fill the included cup to the right level with water and pour it into the machine. Pierce your eggs, cover and 15 minutes later, voila! -Chris


“MiCURA” Craft Sake brewing kit
You know that mildly annoying (but still much-loved) friend who shows off their knowledge of sake every time you’re out for sushi? Time to show how much you appreciate them with a home sake brew kit. The “MiCURA” Craft Sake brewing kit is shipped from Japan with all the necessary ingredients to make real sake at home, including rice, yeast, and dried koji, the mold that powers the fermentation for this magical elixir.  It’s a bit on the pricey side (remember, you love this friend) at $188, but this will make the industrious sake-lover in your life very happy. -Mike

Family


Ember Coffee Mug
Ember had us all buzzing (literally and figuratively) around this time last year for their high-tech coffee mug that lets you regulate your drink’s temperature using an app. Yes, $80 and up is a lot of money to spend on a drinking vessel. But if you know someone in the habit of microwaving their drink multiple times a day to keep it warm, Ember might just be the gift for them. Plus, the company recently moved into the Apple store with an update to its app that lets users track their caffeine intake. -Jenn


Great Jones Cookware
Cookware may seem like a gift more practical than thoughtful, but I’m here to say that it can be both. If you have a family member that’s stocking a new kitchen (maybe their first?) or wants to get better at cooking, turn to Great Jones ($395). The company has been making waves lately by disrupting the cookware industry like Warby Parker disrupted glasses. Their pots and pans use high-quality materials and typically cost less than half of the cookware “royalty,” like Le Creuset. Plus they look really cool. -Catherine


Anova Nano
If you haven’t introduced your carnivorous friends to the magic of sous vide cooking — shame on you! But, all can be forgiven with the gift of the Anova Nano sous vide wand. This small but powerful device turns just about any pot of water into an elegant way to cook steaks (or almost anything, really) to a precise temperature. It talks to your phone so you can go about your business and get an alert when your food’s done. If you are cooking steak, after you’re done with the sous vide, give it a quick sear on ripping hot pan or grill, and you have tender, juicy meat that will be the star of any meal. It’s also just $75, so it won’t break the bank. -Chris


Tovala Gen 2
One of the questions asked this year at SKS was whether, in a world where great food can be ordered with a click of a button, kitchens will even be necessary in the future? While some may see this choice between a kitchen/non-kitchen future as divergent, smart kitchen startup Tovala asks why we can’t live in a world where both food delivery and good home cooking coexists? We’ve tried the Tovala Gen 2, and found that for $349 (or $249 when you order 100 meals in advance), you get both an auto-piloted cooking appliance and a powerful steam oven for aspiring chefs in one tidy little package. -Mike

SO/Yourself/Partner


NutriMill Harvest Grain Mill
Baking bread may be a known stress reliever, but those of us who do it often come up against a couple frustrations: store-bought flour sucks, but versatile grain machines are expensive and hard to find. Enter the NutriMill Harvest Grain Mill, a countertop device that will grind soft or hard wheat, oats, rice, and just about any other grains, as well ad dry beans and lentils. So you can make bread to your heart’s content but also cereals and soup ingredients. Each machine is made from sustainably sourced bamboo, which makes it a nice-looking addition to the countertop, too. And at $229, it’s relatively affordable, depending on how avid you are about baking. Sure, bread has a lousy reputation nowadays, but a device that makes it easier to get your hands on fresh flour and other grains might just help change that. -Jenn

Joule + JouleReady bags
At $179, ChefStep’s Joule is not the cheapest sous vide on the market (that honor goes to the Anova Nano). However, it recently launched Joule Ready, a line of sous vide-ready bags filled with sauces like Thai Green Curry and Salsa Chamoy. Just scan the bag with your Joule app, fill with your choice of protein and cook for a pretty-finished meal, just add starch. Together, the Joule + Joule Ready combo would enable anyone — confident home cook or no — to make top-notch meals in under an hour. -Catherine


June Oven
Listen. The June Oven is big and it is not cheap ($600). But it’s actually seven appliances in one (oven, toaster oven, dehydrator, air fryer, etc.). To be honest, I don’t even use most of the functions because it’s become my primary oven. From salmon to chicken to leftover pizza, the June’s camera recognizes what you put in it and pre-set cook programs do the work for you (with no pre-heating!). It has changed my relationship to cooking, and by that I mean I actually cook now instead of ordering in. Plus, as the June becomes more of a platform (see: Whole Foods integration), it will only get smarter and more useful. -Chris


The Pizzaiolo Smart Pizza Oven
Ok, so it’s expensive ($800!). But if you really love that pizza lover (or yourself), you might want to sell that tanking Apple stock or Bitcoin and buy your loved one a Breville Pizzaiolo pizza oven. The new Breville Pizzaiolo can not only cook a pizza in as fast as 90 seconds using its three-element heating technology that can reach up to 750 degrees, but it can also emulate all your favorite pizza styles (wood-fired, Chicago style, pan and more). -Mike

I Tried ChefStep’s JouleReady Bags: How a Sous Vide Virgin Became a Convert

I have a confession: I am a full-time writer about food technology and the smart kitchen, and I’ve never tried my hand at sous vide. Maybe it’s because I don’t eat much meat, or because I have a pint-sized kitchen, or because — gasp! — I actually gravitate towards old-fashioned cooking techniques. Half the time I don’t even use a recipe.

But a few weeks ago Mike and I went by ChefSteps HQ to learn about their new Joule Ready sauces, a line of sous-vide-ready bags filled with sauce, which CEO Chris Young told us they’d developed in part to “help first time sous vide users.” So I decided to shed my Luddite culinary ways and give the Joule a spin. Here’s how it stacked up:

ChefSteps launched the initial 12 flavors of Joule Ready with 8,000 of their community members this month, ranging from Sauce au Poivre to Roasted Red Pepper Walnut Muhammara. I decided to try Thai Green Curry, which I thought would go best with the salmon in my fridge.

For those who haven’t used the Joule app before, it’s a piece of cake. The app has tips and tricks for sous vide newbies, and also offers a myriad of recipes organized by protein type. My only qualm is that their “beginner guide” only has four options, all of which are meat. I’m a pescetarian, and I know that most people get sous vide to perfect their carnivorous cooking — but I’d appreciate at least one fish, egg, or vegetable dish on there.

When it comes to the Joule Ready, however, it’s even easier. You just scan the QR code on the bag and the app prompts you to select your protein, pick how done you like it, and note its thickness. You can also choose to follow the Featured Recipe for that particular sauce, which will show you how to make a full meal out of your protein. For the Thai Green Curry the featured recipe is chicken over rice with grilled eggplant and a sweet pepper and herb salad, but I went with salmon instead.

Once you’ve entered in your protein info the app then tells you to put the sous vide in your water vessel, plug it in (not the other way around!), and connect it via bluetooth so it can start heating the water to the exact specifications for perfect cooking. Once it reaches the right temperature, the Joule app alerts you that it’s time to put your protein into its saucy bath, pop it in your water, and start the timer. I didn’t even use a clip to affix the bag, and yet the salmon stayed perfectly submerged.

My sous vide setup.

After 40 minutes my app alerted me that my protein was ready, though I kept it in the water for a few minutes more while I finished my brown rice (doesn’t it always take longer than you think?) and sweet potatoes. One of the benefits of sous vide: your food will never dry out!

After I messily extracted my (perfectly cooked, perfectly tender) salmon from its saucy bath, I was left with the sticky problem of how to get the tasty green curry sauce out of the bag and onto my plate. ChefSteps is clear that the sauces are meant not only as a marinade/cooking accompaniment to your protein, but also as a finishing sauce.

Spooning it out worked, but not without plenty of it getting all over my hands. I realized after the fact that I could have snipped one of the corners of the bag and squeezed the sauce out like I was piping icing — I’ll try that next time.

My completed Joule Ready meal of Thai Green Curry salmon with rice and kale.

A few thoughts:

  • Yes, yes, I’m a sous vide n00b — but I didn’t realize that you were supposed to sear your protein before putting it into the bag, lest it the sugars in the sauce burn. My Joule app didn’t instruct me to pre-sear after I scanned my Joule Ready. Luckily the salmon worked well tender and didn’t need a caramelized exterior, but for some proteins I imagine you’d really need that sear.
  • Eventually, it would be nice to have multiple recipes for each Joule Ready sauce. The more customizable the recipe, the more people would use it; after all, people want the sauce so that they have to think less about what to make for dinner, not brainstorm a whole extra side dish or starch just because they don’t eat/want the particular meat recommended by the recipe.

In the end, Joule Ready delivered on its promise: it made sous vide cooking simple, even for someone who’d never tried it before. Forty minutes isn’t a quick meal by any account — and it would take even longer with, say, steak — but with a little planning ahead it was simple to pop in some protein, put on a pot of rice, and have a way above-average meal for a Tuesday. Bonus: if you get distracted doing laundry or watching TV while you wait for your food to cook, you don’t have to worry about returning to a smoky kitchen and charred dinner.

I haven’t (yet) tried out other devices from Anova or Nomiku, but with Joule Ready, ChefSteps did the hard work of getting me — a sous vide skeptic — to actually give this kitchen technology a whirl. Plus, I love how the sauces are shelf-stable, so I can make a fancy-pants sous vide entrée anytime the mood strikes, without having to order pre-made meals ahead of time or plan out a recipe.

Good thing I have six more sauces in my cabinet to try out.

With Joule Ready, ChefSteps Establishes Sous Vide Food Delivery Business

This week Mike and I got invited to the ChefSteps headquarters for that most elusive meal: a free lunch. What we got was free lunches, plural, plus a sneak peek at the newest product from ChefSteps. No, it’s not a new update on the Joule, their sous vide machine. It’s much saucier.

Joule Ready is a line of sous vide-ready bags pre-filled with sauces in flavors like Thai Green Curry, Salsa Chamoy and Roasted Red Pepper Walnut Muhammara. Here’s how it works:

You can scan the code on the Joule Ready packaging through the ChefSteps app, which will give you the option to select your protein: chicken, fish, tofu, etc. Once you make your choice and add your meat (or veg) to the Joule Ready bag, the app will automatically start your Joule and instruct you on how to cook the rest of the dish, which may include pan-searing or grilling to finish. (Joule Ready can be used with other sous vide appliances, though obviously the app won’t be able to start and stop cook-time in the same way.) Each sauce also comes with one featured recipe — basically a complete meal of protein + side + garnish — which you can access by scanning the Joule Ready code in the ChefSteps app.

Joule Ready has been in beta since the beginning of 2018, and will launch with 8,000 ChefSteps community members later this month. After that, they’ll aim to hit a 15% week over week growth rate.

The bags are all shelf stable without refrigeration for one year, and each one feeds 2 – 4 people. A key appeal of the Joule Ready packs is their variety of flavors — no cooking ennui here. ChefSteps CEO Chris Young told us that they’ll offer 12 initial Joule Ready flavors at launch, and already have 12 more queued up and ready to go. Options will change weekly: sauces that perform well will stay, while those that don’t, go.

ChefSteps hopes that Joule Ready’s constantly rotating lineup of sauce flavors will push consumers to use their Joule more frequently, and with less forethought. “Customers would get into a rut,” explained Young. They would master sous vide-ing steaks or pork chops, but they would get bored of the same preparation every time. The premade sauces also help save time and energy, so home cooks don’t have to do anything more than plop in some protein and make a side of rice. “We want to help people actually cook on a busy Wednesday night,” he said.

Joule Ready featured recipe with Salsa Chamoy.

For ChefSteps, the beauty of this undertaking — as well as their decision to bring everything but printing and laminating the sous vide bags in-house — is its agility. Young told us that they could produce a new sauce within 3 – 5 weeks. That means they can easily capitalize off of new trends on cooking sites or social media, upcoming holidays, as well as feedback from their consumers.

There are three reasons ChefSteps can do this so quickly. The first is size: by making, say, 500 bags of Truffle Jus Gras instead of 500,000, which are the type of numbers in which Big Food has to deal with, the company can be flexible and take risks with their sauces. It also means they can make holiday or limited-time Joule Ready bags without being stuck with a ton of leftover inventory.

The second reason is their manufacturing practice: namely, that it’s almost all in-house. Everything but printing and laminating the sous vide bags is done by ChefSteps, from recipe testing to production to packaging design. The company ultimately built their own facility in order to build a filling machine that would work at their comparatively low volume. That gives the ability to pivot and develop new sauces super-quickly, and have complete control from end-to-end.

Lastly, there’s ChefSteps’ not-so-secret weapon: its data. Whenever any of its community cook with a Joule Ready bag, the company registers it and can ask them through the app how their experience went. ChefSteps can then leverage all this data to see how their users are liking each sauce, and make adjustments accordingly. “We’re 100% connected to our customers,” said Young.

Though they’re still testing prices, Young said that the Joule Ready bags wouldn’t have across-the-board pricing. For example, a truffle one might be cost in the double-digits, while most other bags would set you back around $6.95. If you buy a four-pack, the price would go down to around $4.95, and the company will eventually add a Subscribe & Save feature.

Young said that Joule Ready would be in retail stores by 2019. However, he was very clear that retail is more of a customer acquisition channel than the end goal — their focus will be on direct sales through the ChefSteps site. Which makes sense: the company can ship sauces cheaply, since the pack flat and don’t require ice or other refrigeration. That gives them a big advantage over direct-ship full and pre-cooked meals.

ChefSteps has been working to diversify into food sales since 2014. Last year the company beta-tested a new line of business selling locally raised meat and fish to Joule users (a move not that different from other Seattle food tech startup Crowd Cow). A few months later, also dabbled with frozen pre-cooked meals and teamed up with PostMates to enable delivery.

While neither of those products were rolled out beyond their initial beta test phase, Young said the company learned a lot from both efforts which they incorporated when creating the Joule Ready lineup. One obvious lesson was that by focusing on long-shelf life sauces where the consumer adds their own protein, the company is able to sidestep all the logistical expense and complications that go along with shipping meat across the country.

ChefSteps is not the only smart kitchen company getting into the food business. Tovala made food delivery a core part of their offering, paired with their countertop smart cooking device, and First Chop ships frozen proteins in various sauces pre-packed in sous vide bags. Sous vide pioneer Nomiku has also expanded pretty aggressively into food delivery.

Michael Wolf wrote about this phenomenon for the Spoon: Eventually, Fetterman decided to recreate the entire experience for her consumers,  one which included not only a sous vide circulator, but the food itself. She had decided that Nomiku would make the act of creating a meal easier by offering pre-packaged, pre-portioned, and pre-cooked sous vide meals. All the consumer would need to do is scan the RFID tag on each component of a meal – usually a main course and a couple of sides — and drop them into the water. In thirty minutes, food is ready to eat.

Neither Nomiku nor ChefSteps is immune to the challenges of growing an audience for a smart kitchen “luxury” gadget. According to Young, there are three main challenges that face widespread consumer acceptance of sous vide. The first, price, is already being solved with the $99 sous vide wand. The second, convenience, is solved by the Joule Ready sauces. The third, time, has thus been elusive — but Young hinted that it could be solvable with AI.

With a glint in his eye, he said that ChefSteps would be unveiling tech by the end of the year that would enable Joule Ready meals to cook in 30 minutes, making them competitive with Nomiku’s pre-cooked meals — only customizable. “These sauces are meant to help first-time sous vide users,” said Young.

Soon, we’ll put it to the test. Keep an eye out for later this week, when a sous vide virgin (me!) tries her hand at making a Joule Ready meal for the very first time, with her very first sous vide wand. Will it be a tasty success? Tune in to find out.

If you want to hear ChefSteps CEO Chris Young talk about why the company created Joule Ready, make sure to come to the Smart Kitchen Summit where he’ll be discussing new business models in the era of the connected kitchen. 

Celebrate a FoodTech Fourth of July

It’s weird when a major holiday falls on a Wenesday, right? Do you take just the day off? The first half of the week? The last half? The whole week? Regardless of how much time you take off, we can help make your time at the grill a great one with these FoodTech finds.

FOOD
The Fourth–and most summertime grillin’–is all about the meat. Normally, we’d suggest you purchase your steaks and burgers through CrowdCow, which meticulously sources all of its meat from small ranches. But your guests will be hungry tomorrow, so here’s a twist, maybe try a meatless option this year?

I know! I know! “Heresy!” you cry! But really, we love the Beyond Meat burger patties available at many local grocers. The company says it wants their plant-based meat that “bleeds” in the supermarket butcher section, but I’ve only ever found it frozen with the other alterna-meats.

Personally, I think the Beyond Meat patty is a delicious replacement for the traditional meat burger, so much so that I stock up on extra when I’m at the store just to have it around when I crave it. Beyond Meat won’t fool any carnivores, but it’s a tasty substitute and perfect if you’re trying to cut back on your red meat intake.

BRING THE (CONTROLLED) HEAT
Everyone has an opinion about the best way to grill, we won’t waste your time with some obscure technique. We will however, recommend a pair of devices that can help make your steaks and other proteins turn out great.

Photo: Anova

Sous vide-ing your steak is a fantastic way to get juicy meat with no overcooking. There are a ton of sous vide wands out there that will turn any pot of water into a precision-heated circulating bath. We like the ChefSteps Joule and the new Anova Nano (review forthcoming). They are small, well built, and work with an accompanying mobile phone app to bring your meat to a desired internal temperature. Sure it takes a little longer, but it also helps remove the risks of over- or undercooking your precious steaks.

Stylish holder/charger.

Regardless of whether you sous vide or not, you can use the Meater thermometer to get just about any type of meat to the proper temperature. The Meater is kinda big (like a beefy nail) that sits in your protein while you cook it. Using the Meater app on your phone, you can keep track of both ambient and internal temperatures, and Meater will even tell you when to pull out and rest your meat to achieve optimal results.

If you’re going camping and want a greener experience, you could grab a GoSun portable grill that cooks food by simply harnessing the power of the sun.

BEER
The good news is, if you live in the right location, you can still run out and buy your own PicoBrew to make homebrewing much easier. The bad news is that even if you bought one today, there isn’t enough time to brew and ferment your beer before tomorrow. (Maybe just pop by Spoon founder Mike Wolf’s house for a bottle of his.)

PLAN FOR NEXT YEAR
It’s never too early to start planning for an epic Independence Day celebration next year. Here are some items to put a pin in and revisit next summer:

  • If it makes its crowdfunding goal, the Ambassador 5-in-1 grill features rotating cooktop that spins through flattop and grate surfaces.
  • The Bartesian cocktail robot (due out by the end of this year) can whip up delicious boozy concoctions on demand.
  • And for the truly adventurous, you can throw a slice of ketchup, yes, a “slice” of ketchup on next year’s burger.

No matter how much time you’re taking off, have a Happy Fourth of July, everybody! Be safe.

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.

Hestan Cue & ChefSteps Integrate Apps, Show Us Glimpse Of The Future

Today Hestan Smart Cooking and ChefSteps debuted a deep link integration between their two cooking apps. What this means is the user can initiate a cook within the Hestan app, seamlessly transfer to the ChefSteps Joule to sous vide a protein like steak, and then finish the cook with the Hestan Cue smart cooking system.

This from Hestan’s app page:

“We’ve come together with the team at ChefSteps to bring you a new “Sous Vide” mode for Mix & Match with sear-only recipes. Each recipe links directly to the corresponding protein in the ChefSteps’ Joule app for seamless sous vide cooking. Our team of culinary scientists developed these recipes to give you the best sear and the crispiest skin to pair with all of your favorite Cue sauces (plus a few new ones from our friends at ChefSteps)!”

While this may seem like a relatively small piece of news, I think it’s an interesting glimpse at what a more fully evolved connected kitchen could look like.

Before I get to why I think that is so, let’s step back and look at the problems the smart home industry has had with broken and incompatible experiences in multibrand, multi-device smart homes.

The Smart Home Is Often Not So Smart

One of the biggest problems with the smart home is consumer confusion and frustration over the incompatibility of different products and consumer experiences. More devices often mean more apps and more connections to manage, the result of which for the consumer can be a growing number of disjointed experiences that often require more work than less technology-centric approaches.

When I surveyed smart home industry executives at the end of last year, they identified consumer confusion over technologies as the biggest hurdle preventing greater adoption in their industry.

Efforts to create widely adopted frameworks like HomeKit have helped, but these are still vendor-driven offerings that don’t eliminate a consumer’s exposure to incompatible apps and broken user experiences. Universal front-end interfaces like Alexa offer great promise and will no doubt play a big part in more seamless and unified experiences across a multi-vendor smart home environment, but today’s voice integrations are often shallow and usually don’t enable inter-product integration experiences.

Which brings us to the kitchen. While the connected kitchen is embryonic compared to the broader smart home, 2017 has seen strong movement among appliance makers, housewares companies and technology vendors who see an opportunity to make their products more connected. Of course, the danger here is the same as with the smart home, where consumers have a bunch of non-interoperable devices and apps and give up because trying to make it all work is just too much work.

In my kitchen, I have a variety of connected food appliances, none of which work together. This includes three sous vide appliances, a connected grill, a beer brewer, and coffee maker. All connected, but none to each other. And while I may not have much need for my coffee maker and my sous vide machine to communicate now (or ever?),  I can see an obvious reason for my sous vide app and my grill app to work together. Taking it a step further, it makes sense for my shopping app, food storage app (smart fridge), oven, countertop cooking apps (sous vide, etc.) to work together to hand off between stages.

But it goes beyond connecting the various cooking steps.  Take health and nutrition, where there are companies like Bosch who are working on food scanners to let us know instantly the nutritional makeup of food in our kitchen There would be tremendous value in allowing that info to instantly be shared with any of my cooking devices, my fitness wearable, and my fitness apps.  I also believe Apple’s HealthKit will someday incorporate info in realtime about the caloric and nutrient makeup of your food intake; that info is not nearly as valuable if it is not useable with a connected kitchen.

So you can see where I’m going. The ability to connect devices, even at the app level, will ultimately reduce consumer frustration and likely result in faster adoption of these products. Longer term, there is great promise in better integration of appliances, and only through greater integration will we realize the promise of a connected kitchen.

Oh yeah, About That News

Still interested in the specifics of the announcement? I caught up with Hestan’s product software lead Jordan Meyer, who told me the three components of the latest version of their app:

The availability of new sous vide recipes. These recipes will walk you visually through cooking sous vide and will work with any sous vide circulator.

The ChefSteps integration. This is where the sous video recipes go next-level. Jordan said that Hestan recognized their smart pan and induction heating system would not cook a 2″ steak as well as a sous vide circulator, so they decided to work with the ChefSteps (he tells me the Hestan folks are fans of the Joule). Where the Hestan does excel, such as sauces and finishing a steak, the user can then use the Cue.

Lastly, Hestan also took some of ChefSteps recipes and added their step-by-step cooking guidance within the app.

Bottom line, this type of device and app integration makes these appliances more usable. If you are a cooking enthusiast who embraces modern tools as a way to put food on the table, eventually you’ll want to ensure your tools work together without suffering from app fatigue or a lack of interoperability.

Today Hestan and ChefSteps showed us what such a connected kitchen might look like.

Wanna Sous Vide Some Bacon? Smart Kitchen Data Shows You’ll Do It On Saturday

I don’t know about you, but Sunday evening dinner at my house usually means something simple like sloppy Joes, tacos or even the occasional brinner.

But not everyone mails it in when it comes to the end of the weekend meal. According to data gathered by ChefSteps, which recently reached the milestone of a million meals cooked by users of their Joule sous vide immersion circulator, users of the cooking appliance are making decidedly tastier meals like lamb chops and tenderloin roast for their Sunday evening meals.

Three Joule cooking guides that are popular on Sunday

It used to be that any guess about what people cooked on a given night was just that, a guess, often times based on survey data. But when a device is connected, it’s actually possible to look at usage data in realtime.

Data like cooking frequency and the types of meals people are cooking on what nights. According to ChefSteps CEO Chris Young, about 2 in 10 users are likely to use their Joule on any given day, and about 4 in 10 are likely to use it each week. Each Joule has about a 70% likelihood of being used in a give month.

The way in which ChefSteps determines what a given person is cooking with the Joule is through analyzing the different cooking guides, the visual instructions found in the Joule app that walk users through a recipe.  According to Young, about half of Joule users use the cooking guides when making a meal, with the other half cooking in manual mode.

Young says that as the company has released more cooking guides, usage of ‘guided cooking’ has jumped from 30% to 50% of all cooking sessions with the Joule. He also indicated that the company is also able to effect behavior by releasing certain guides.

“When we create a guide, we can spike demand,” said Young. “When we published the overnight bacon cooking guide, bacon cooking went through the roof.”

And when is bacon cooking popular? Saturday, of course.

You can check out the which days of week each cooking guide are most popular by looking at the graphic below:

Usage of Joule cooking guides by days of the week

And since this is sous vide we’re talking about, it’s not altogether surprising that the most popular type of meal cooked with the Joule is steak. After steak, chicken, pork and eggs also show up as favorites.

You can see the overall ranking of the meal types by popularity below:

Popularity of all meals by type for the Joule

Why The Chatbot Interface Might Just Be The Smart Home Story of 2017

Voice interfaces are so 2016.

Not that Alexa and Google’s voice assistant won’t grow a bunch more in 2017, they will. But the reality is the smart home continues to evolve at a rapid clip, and one of the early trends I’ve noticed for 2017 is the emergence of the social messaging chatbot as a natural language interface for the smart home.

Credit Mark Zuckerberg for kicking off the trend in a big way at the end of 2016 when he debuted Jarvis, a personal growth project that the Facebook founder worked on for much of 2016. But Jarvis was more than just a skunkworks project, as the chatbot platform built into Messenger is gaining steam, including as an AI assistant for the smart home.

I recently used Facebook Messenger’s chatbot myself when I cooked steak with my Joule, and I was struck by how intuitive chat was as a command and interaction interface. While Joule is the first connected home device I know of to use the Messenger chatbot, I can certainly envision more devices that would work well with Messenger as the primary interface.

And if you’re more of a text message person than a Facebook Messenger user, don’t worry: text chatbots are coming your way as well.  As Lauren wrote this morning, a startup by the name of Unified Inbox is working with the likes of Bosch and Samsung to text-messaging based chatbots into the smart home as a way to work with their products. And while Yahoo’s text-messaging chatbot platform Captain is mainly focused on organizing communication with other family members, it’s not a stretch to imagine it as a control interface for our smart home.

While this trend is picking up speed, we should note that it’s not entirely new. Back in 2015, I wrote about how one of the biggest social messaging platforms in WeChat had started to integrate with smart home platform company Arrayent to utilize the messaging platform as an interface for products using Arrayent’s IoT platform.

While Alexa and other voice interfaces will no doubt continue their eye-popping growth this year, the reality is they are only one form of conversational interface for connected products. That’s why you can expect 2017 to be the year people starting talking about – and to – chatbots as a way to start controlling their things.

ChefSteps Working On Marketplace To Connect Cattle Ranchers With Consumers

Just last week, ChefSteps announced the rollout of a new Facebook Messenger bot to assist users of its Joule sous vide cooker in the process of making a meal. This just a few months after adding an Alexa skill for the Joule, and we know from conversations with the company they have plans to create a platform that would enable influencers like chefs to create branded content for the Joule.

If this wasn’t enough to convince you the busy Seattle cooking startup has a whole lot of balls in the air, there’s one more business they’d like to add to their juggling act. According to a job posting on ChefSteps.com, the company also has plans to launch a new line of business that allows independent ranchers to sell their meat directly to users of the Joule.

According to the job listing, the new product manager position will oversee a marketplace that connects “independent ranchers with ChefSteps users, offering them direct access to high-quality meat and ingredients at great prices.”  The new position would oversee the marketplace and help to manage the home delivery service portion of this new line of business.

It’s an interesting move for ChefSteps. The world of high-quality meat is one that is largely still dependent on the traditional wholesale food distribution business, with the vast majority of meat still being bought through grocery and food retail.  Changing this business would take a heavy lift, but given that sous vide customers are already somewhat enlightened when it comes to the quality of food, ChefSteps probably believes it can extend that higher awareness into the actual steak purchase itself.

Could it work? Maybe. Success would be dependent on whether there is an underserved market for quality steaks and if ChefSteps can provide a unique way to connect producers of meat and consumers that has interesting economics for both parties.

The motivation for moving into ancillary areas to their current hardware business is clear. The consumer sous vide appliance market is heating up, as companies like Anova, who is now part of Electrolux, and ChefSteps are starting to see increased competition from low-cost brands such as Gourmia and InstantPot.  ChefSteps early success with the Joule resulted from successfully tapping into the company’s large online community, but recent moves suggest that they see continued innovation around new features and services as a way to keep ahead of the crowd.