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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Kickstarter

Silo Eclipses $1.4 Million On Way To Kickstarter Smart Kitchen Top Three

The “smart kitchen” category on Kickstarter has a new member of the top three.

Silo, the smart vacuum seal storage solution that debuted a little over a month ago at the Smart Kitchen Summit, just completed its successful Kickstarter campaign this week with over $1.4 million in backer pledges. This haul puts the product just behind PicoBrew and Anova as the crowdfunding site’s top smart kitchen campaigns.

Of course, it should be noted that Kickstarter doesn’t technically have a smart kitchen category, but that doesn’t keep us from segmenting campaigns that way. The reason to do so is the site’s food category – with everything from sous vide circulators to crickets – is massive, and so for our purposes it’s helpful to separate the more technology-forward offerings from the campaigns featuring products like barbecue sauce and bacon jerky (not that those aren’t delicious).

Silo’s campaign puts the company just behind onetime belt holder Anova and current smart kitchen champ PicoBrew C. Both PicoBrew ($1.9 million) and Anova ($1.8 million) not only top our “smart kitchen” category, but they also lead the actual overall food category for Kickstarter.

I personally backed Silo’s campaign because, like so many, I struggle with food waste and found my old school plastic containers aren’t cutting it.  I also like the idea of a vacuum sealer that could extend the life of my food, especially if I can track that food in some way through an app.

The company is one of a new crop of startups focused on food preservation. Earlier this year Ovie also succeeded with a Kickstarter for its food tracking solution, while companies like Karma and Goodr are looking to push tech to tackle food waste further up the food chain.

Kickstarter: SVANKi is an Electrically Heated Ice Cream Scoop

I wonder if the Germans, who have a word for everything, have a word for “impatiently trying to scoop ice cream before it thaws so all you get is small little unsatisfying discs.”

While it isn’t German, SVANKi (inexplicably pronounced “Swanky”) is a word people who have those ice cream related problems might want to know. Now running a Kickstarter campaign, SVANKi is an electrically heated ice cream scoop that promises to cut through that rock hard rocky road to dish out perfectly round balls of Instagrammable bliss.

Let’s just get this out of the way, SVANKi is solving perhaps the most first world of first world problems — serving dessert. But if you love ice cream (like me) and are impatient (also like me), then SVANKi might actually be… useful?

SVANKi sits on a wireless charging station. Push a button and the SVANKi will, according to the Kickstarter campaign, heat up and maintain a temperature between 140 and 150 degrees Fahrenheit. The batteries are rechargeable and last a half hour when topped.

That Ben & Jerry’s Americone Dream at the bottom of your freezer doesn’t stand a chance.

You can pick up a swanky SVANKi via Kickstarter for the low, low price of $39. That’s only twice as much as one that uses body heat to warm up. But that $39 is just for early backers. It looks like the retail price will be $89 for one SVANKi when it comes out next year.

But do you really need one? And by “you,” I mean “me.” I asked a couple of friends who bascially shot it down saying that if I needed a heated ice cream scoop I was eating too much ice cream, which, is probably true.

Sigh.

However, I could probably make a case that I could get forty bucks worth of use after a couple of holiday gatherings and kid’s birthday parties. But, given that limited use case, crowdfunding’s spotty record when it comes to hardware actually making it to market, and the fact that I could, you know, just wait a few minutes before scooping, there’s a different word I’m trying to avoid: “sucker.”

Low-Tech Le Coupé Pro Lets You Bake and Cut Perfectly Sized Treats

Fun Fact: I always skip the last two minutes of The Great British Baking Show. It’s just too painful to watch some poor soul who has tried their best get the boot because their chocolate mirror glaze didn’t have enough of a sheen.

The technical challenges seem to befuddle contestants, especially when they need to make something like 48 tea cakes that have to look identical to one another. Ugh. Just typing that sentence stresses me out.

Perhaps contestants will be able to use Le Coupé Pro in the next season. Now on Kickstarter, Le Coupé Pro is a combination baking pan + mechanical cutting grid. Push down on the handles and voila! You have 40 identical servings of cakes, brownies, bars or whatever you baked. The bottom is even removable so you can easily pop your treats out of the tin.

But all of these perfectly proportioned-portions don’t come cheap. You can reserve your Le Coupé Pro with a pledge of $155, which gets you the pan, gear handles, riser stand and 40 square cutting grid. As a bonus, you’ll get the 9 count cutting grid (evidently useful for pizzas and breads). But before you can get your hands on it, the campaign needs to raise $190,000 (!) to get fully funded, and it’s not estimated to ship until March of 2019.

While I appreciate a delicious sponge with a solid structure and a good bake** as much as the next person, $155 is pretty pricey unless you’re a caterer or someone with some serious baking OCD.

But maybe if you’re a contestant on The Great British Baking Show, this could be the perfect weapon in your artisnal arsenal. Hopefully you’ll make it all the way through to the end.

**To quote Paul Hollywood.

Crowdfunding Fiascos: Smart Plate, iGulu, and the Curious Case of HOPii Shutting Down

Crowdfunding your hardware product ain’t easy. Well, getting a crowd to fund your hardware product at least seems easier than actually getting that product to market. Crowdfunding cases in point: The oft-delayed Smart Plate and iGulu are oft-delayed once more, and in mysterious turn of events, crowdfunding darling HOPii has shut down entirely.

First up is Smart Plate, which bills itself as “The world’s first Intelligent Nutrition Platform that instantly analyzes everything you eat.” It’s been a long (now longer), strange trip for the combination plate + scale + mobile app that recognizes your food, weighs it and gives you its nutritional information. From the original pitch on Shark Tank that aired in early 2016 to a crowdfunding campaign that raised more than $150,000 to the promise of a ship date last summer, the Smart Plate has gone through a few iterations over its many months in developments. And based on an Indiegogo update earlier this month, backers are going to have to wait a few months more. From that update:


“…unfortunately, we have a new shipping date due to some manufacturing issues that developed during the latest quality testing.

…The new shipping date is this Holidays (November/December 2018).

We fully understand that the product delays have been causing a lot of frustration, but as they say ‘A delayed product is eventually good, but a rushed product is forever bad.’ We sincerely ask for your understanding and support.”

Backers who have been waiting are understandably upset and are venting on the Smart Plate campaign page. However, it won’t do them much good. As the refund policy points out:

“From now through shipping, we will not be able to provide any refunds. This is because all funds have been used for the production and materials of SmartPlate. We’ve already placed the order for 10,000 SmartPlates to be manufactured, and the production process is on-going and cannot be reversed at this point. We’d like to ask for your patience and support one last time. Give us until shipping, and if you are not satisfied with what you get, we will give you a full refund.”

Elsewhere, when we last checked in with the home beer brewing machine iGulu in December, that company had bumped its promised delivery date from Q3 of 2016 to July of this year. At that time, the company had even raised funding from three different Chinese venture firms. The amount raised was undisclosed, but iGulu’s CEO told us via email that it was enough to “…cover the full mass production and delivery for our first-generation machine. Then it also can support us to jumpstart development of our second-generation machine.”

Looks like the company should have raised more, as an Indigogo update from iGulu on August 5 said:

“Finally, we’d like to address all questions regarding the shipping date again. We have heard your voices, and we don’t mean to ignore them. We were overly optimistic about the shipping date when we launched the crowdfunding campaign. We certainly won’t make that mistake again. Instead, we chose to be transparent about development, testing, and production. Of course, there has been a fair share of bumps in the road. Due to our small company’s production numbers, we are not in a strong negotiating position with any of the suppliers. This position is because they can dictate the timing of the production. At this point, we feel it’s more productive to be prudent and provide honest updates on each stage of development rather than taking a guess and then having to correct it. Thank you for your understanding.”

Can’t miss a new ship date if you don’t make one, I guess.

Finally, we were taken aback to hear that HOPii, another crowdfunded home beer brewing system that had raised more than $380,000, has shut down completely.

HOPii’s sudden demise was surprising to us in particular because their countertop beer machine was a big hit as part of our Startup Showcase at last year’s Smart Kitchen Summit, and was Innovation Award Honoree at this year’s CES.

In an update on Indiegogo on May 24, 2018, HOPii CEO, Jong Shin wrote:

“This is going to be an update that no founder of a company would ever want to write. There is never a good way to deliver a bad news, but I am going to be as transparent as possible. We recently ran into an unexpected tragedy and unfortunately will have to close down the project. We will be sending you the details shortly in a separate email.”

It’s when you hop (pardon the pun) over to the Kickstarter comments page that things get intense. There’s a thicket of comments and angry backers and updates from HOPii, but it appears that there is some legal battle (possibly with LG, if one commenter in the thread is accurate) going on in Korea. Shin won’t provide details as the litigation is ongoing, but an update from three months ago says he was in Korea for the “start of the battle,” and that “justice will win and we will fight to stand for what we believe in.”

Additionally, there are walls of text outlining in detail a litany of production and money issues. There’s so much that we are actually putting together a follow-up story and have reached out to Shin for more details. We’ll provide a link to that story when it goes live.

Unfulfilled promises in crowdfunding projects help illustrate why Kickstarter launched its Hardware Studio to help make sure hardware projects don’t crash and burn through so much of other people’s money.

Do you Really Need a Smart Olive Oil Bottle? You may Actually Want Olivery’s

As I explain what the Olivery (pronounced like delivery) does, you will be tempted to scoff and stop reading. But power through that response because, on the surface anyway, Olivery sounds kinda neat.

Now in the middle of its Kickstarter campaign, the Olivery is a “smart” olive oil bottle and refill system. (This is where you’ll want to stop reading because, “ugh” another smart device — but keep going!). The bottle itself is made from a special kind of glass that helps the olive oil stay fresh for longer. From the campaign page:

Our smart bottle is made from Violettglass, a special type of light reflecting glass for a very good reason. Our friends at the engineering agency Miron in Switzerland did research into the behaviour of light in glass and it’s effect on the contents inside. They concluded that not all colours of the light spectrum cause fruit and veg to oxidise and, in fact, violet and infrared slow down the aging process. So Miron have helped us create a bottle that blocks all colours except these two. This special black glass means your Olivery oil stays perfect for up to six months.

If true, that’s pretty cool. Glad you kept reading? The bottle also has an LED lit base that tells you when you are running low on olive oil. Once you’ve used up 80 percent of the oil, a chip in the bottle talks via Bluetooth to the oLi mobile app on your phone that lets you order more. OK, so that’s not that new, there are plenty of companies working on auto-refilling — but what is interesting is how Olivery ships its refills.

Instead of sending you a whole new bottle, Olivery sells replacement olive oil in small plastic pouches that lay flat in a small box which can fit through a mail slot for easy shipping. Once you receive it, just pour the pouch into your Olivery bottle and you’re back in business.

As for the quality of the oil, Olivery says: “Our extra virgin olive oil is made from cold pressed olives in Puglia in the South Italy. In the middle of Puglia, you’ll find the Gargano National Park, a protected nature reserve of great beauty.”

The folks behind Olivery are looking to raise $40,865 to fully fund its campaign and produce the first 1,000 bottles. Early backers can get get a starter kit that includes the bottle and 500 ml refill of oil for €49 (~$57). Refill packs will cost roughly $12 USD. Though the campaign says it will ship anywhere in the world, the Olivery people told me that they are shipping to Europe the U.S., and Canada.

Olive oil may seem like a pretty niche market for such an intricate and “smart” system, but this actually the second startup we’ve written about in the past three months that wants to improve your olive oil experience. Earlier this summer, the Israeli-based Olive X-Press fully funded its own campaign for a countertop olive oil press. The company behind the X-Press claims that the market for olive oil globally is $10 billion.

Olive oil costs roughly $20 a bottle for something that will last you a few weeks if not a couple months. So ponying up $60 for an olive oil bottle may seem pretty steep. But if the oil is good and the shipping cost doesn’t add too much to the $12 refill, the Olivery might be actually useful, and nothing to scoff at.

Bartesian Ships to Kickstarters this Week, Backers Will Get Two Machines

Bartesian, the startup behind the eponymous automatic countertop cocktail making appliance, gave The Spoon a heads up that it will be shipping its first batch of devices to Kickstarter backers this week.

The fact that a crowdfunded consumer hardware product is actually making it to market is enough cause for celebration. But Bartesian backers will be able to raise more than one celebratory glass when they receive their robot bartender; the startup revealed that they will eventually be getting two Bartesian machines.

Wait. What?

Evidently the Bartesians that backers will shortly receive are being considered “beta units.” But fear not, backers! It looks as though you are not getting a knock-off, hurriedly constructed out of balsa wood and chewing gum. Here’s an email exchange I had with Bartesian Co-Founder and CEO, Ryan Close, that explains this unusual situation:

The Spoon: You’re shipping to Kickstarter backers this week. To all Kickstarter backers? Or just early birds?

Ryan Close: Yes, all KS backers this week.

You said you were treating these shipments as “beta units” — what will be the difference between these and production models?

These KS units have been hand assembled in Canada by our team. The retail units will be made in a top tier factory in China that makes other premium appliances. The handle on these KS/Beta units is not as intuitive as it needs to be, so we have already re-engineered it for the retail version coming out in Winter/18. The handle is a big change as it’s the #1 touch point for the consumer. We also made a few design tweaks to decrease the amount of pressure required to pierce the capsule, further increasing the ease of use. The new machine will look generally the same as the KS unit. If necessary, we can also make any design changes we uncover after our KS folks have had a chance to use our product. We’ll harness their input and implement any changes they feel would improve the overall experience.

You said Kickstarter folks will receive a free unit from Hamilton Beach this winter. So will people who receive the beta units ship those betas back to you to receive the full production unit? How will that work exactly?

Our KS backers have been incredibly patient and supportive while we battled through the R&D and production of launching both innovative hardware and customized CPG’s. They will each keep the KS unit, the retail version is an extra and all about gratitude for being with us from the start – extreme patience – and cheering us on from the sidelines.

For a little more background, earlier this year Bartesian entered into an exclusive, three-year manufacturing and distribution agreement with Hamilton Beach. The move, according to Close at the time, would leverage Hamilton Beach’s massive manufacturing expertise and distribution network and allow Bartesian to focus on the drinks that come out of the machine.

Or if you’re one of its backers, both of your machines.

Spirugrow Wants You to Grow Fresh Spirulina in Your Home

My only experience with spirulina is that a former roommate used to sprinkle it on top of her cat’s food. That kind of put me off it, but maybe I’m missing something? Maybe there are enough spirulina die-hards out there to warrant the Spirugrow Kickstarter project, a new countertop appliance that cultivates fresh spirulina in your kitchen.

Spirulina is an algae-based super food high in protein and anti-oxidants. You add it to drinks or food, and can even use as a face mask. You can buy spirulina in a dried form at the market, but the creators of the Spirugrow say that the dried version loses its potency, tastes bad and isn’t traceable. So they created Spirugrow, a machine that uses a combination of CO2, nutrients, water and salt to create fresh spirulina, which, from the promo video, looks like a thick, dark green almost gelatenous liquid.

I love that Kickstarter allows people to follow their bliss, create a very specific product, and connect with a community of like-minded people looking for that same bliss. Kickstarter’s given us the PicoBrew, and launched Suvie and the Yomee. All of which are very exciting. And while I’m all for people eating superfoods, I’m having a harder time getting jazzed about Spirugrow, mainly because I think they are going after the wrong market.

First, there’s the price. Very early birds can pick up a Spirugrow for €471 ($549 USD). That is not cheap for a device that makes something you eat 5 grams of per day (the machine make 20 grams at a time), and that doesn’t even take into consideration the cost for replacement nutrient cartridges. Spirugrow is also big, coming in at 17 inches wide and tall, and 14 inches deep. And while I’m sure that the ability to grow fresh algae on your counter is a feat of modern engineering, the process is complicated.

There are a lot of steps — add CO2 cartridge, connect hoses, add water, add nutrient cartridge, add “inoculum,” add salt, add filter — then wait for 24 hours. Not to mention the disassembling and cleaning and disinfecting that needs to happen on a regular basis.

Like I said, I’m sure Spirugrow is the result of a ton of research and development and hard work, and it is a good looking machine. I just don’t know how many consumers would want to spend $500+ for a single-use device that only makes a dietary supplement and has to stay on the kitchen counter for literally days in order for the user to get the most out of it. You might be saving some money making your own rather than buying it at the store, but you’d have to really love spirulina to get the most value out of it.

It seems like at that price point, they should go after natural foods markets, juice bars, smoothie shops and healthy cafés. Establishments that will have the money, space and customers who would actually appreciate the freshness of the spirulina. Kind of like how Carbine Coffee will enable supermarkets and cafés to roast their own coffee.

As of this publication, Spirugrow has raised $33,860 of its $69,681 goal with 19 days to go. We’re always rooting for new kitchen tech to succeed here at The Spoon, and while I can honestly say I haven’t seen anything like the Spirugrow before, I just don’t know if this homemade superfood can find a super large home audience.

PicoBrew Goes Beyond Beer with Pico U, a Universal Brewing Appliance

Today PicoBrew announced the Pico U, a new multi-drink brewing appliance that allows users to make beer and a variety of other craft beverages such as cold brew coffee, kombucha, and horchata.

While the move into what the company calls “fusion drinks” is a significant new direction for PicoBrew, it’s not altogether surprising. The eight-year-old company has become reliably predictable by introducing new products every year that are both more affordable and offer greater functionality.

The dimensions of the Pico U are significantly smaller than both the Pico Pro and Pico C, which PicoBrew told us was in part an effort to make the appliance more attractive to those worried about kitchen counter space. Makes sense, since the crowding of countertops is real in the era of kitchen gadget proliferation, and the Pico U’s footprint is closer to that of an espresso machine to that of the Pico C’s countertop microwave oven-like dimensions.

With the move to smaller form factor and fusion drinks, the Pico U also comes with a smaller step filter which holds the company’s compostable ingredient pods called PicoPaks (the smaller PicoPaks for the mini step filter will be called, naturally, PicoPak Minis).  The smaller step filter makes 1.3-liter batch drink brews, and those looking for larger batches (or who want to brew beer) will need the standard 5-liter step filter.

To brew fusion beverages such as kombucha, horchata or yerba mate, Pico U owners will need to buy a PicoPak through the PicoBrew website. The company has indicated that they will offer both multipak and single pak versions to buy online and that the pricing for the Paks will range depending on the price of the ingredients. More exotic brews with high-priced ingredients like saffron or peaberry might cost over $15 for a batch; simpler tea based brews will be lower.

In typical PicoBrew fashion, the company is launching the new product via Kickstarter. The Pico U, which ship this fall to backers, comes in both a “basic” and “deluxe” configurations seen below:

Pico U Model Configurations

As can be seen above, Kickstarter pricing for the basic configuration starts at $169 and pricing for the Deluxe configuration is $189. My guess is that with only a $20 price difference the Pico U Deluxe package will be the most popular, particularly for those who have been on the fence about buying previous Pico models and were waiting for the price to come down. When these models come to retail, they will be priced $249 and $299 respectively.

One feature of the Pico U that is intriguing to me is the single serve coffee capability. With its single-serve coffee function,  PicoBrew allows the Pico U owner to brew coffee with “Gold Cup” standard precision temperature control, which means the water must be 200°F plus or minus a couple degrees when it hits the grounds.  That’s pretty cool since Gold Cup coffee makers are a thing, but I’m more intrigued by the ability to do single cup brews, one of the things I wanted with my still MIA Spinn.

I also like the idea of being able to use my own coffee beans, a departure from other beverages such as beer which require PicoPaks. If there’s one complaint I’ve heard from home brewers considering previous Pico models, it’s that the cost-per-brew of the Pico is still fairly high. PicoPaks range in cost from $20 for the PicoBrew house brands up to $25 to $29 for PicoPaks from their brewery partners. That translates to about $1.50-$2 per 12 ounce beer, which is less than buying in bottles but still not exactly cheap.

Pricing gets us to the broader question of is whether this is the PicoBrew model that will take the company – and home brewing – more mass market. The company seems focused on making that happen by continually dropping prices, improving the ease of use and making their products smaller all while adding new features like fusion drink brewing. And certainly, by doing all that with the Pico U, my guess is they will likely entice more wannabe homebrewers into the PicoBrew universe.

However, going more mass-market will ultimately depend on how many are ok with paying for ingredient packs.  Long term, it will be interesting to see if the company starts to bring the pricing down on their ingredients, something which will ultimately be heavily dependent on volume. Of course, this is dependent on how many Picos are out in the field brewing up batches of beer and kombucha. If that sounds like the classic chicken-egg problem, that’s because it is.

However, there’s no doubt the Pico U is the most approachable and mass market-ready PicoBrew yet, so I expect we’ll see the company beat its past crowdfunding records and sell a whole bunch of beer brewing appliances.

First Set of Kickstarter Hardware Studio Connection Projects Launch

If you’ve ever backed a hardware project on Kickstarter, you know that it can be a roll of the dice as to whether or not you’ll actually get it. For every Picobrew success, there are many more failed Brewbots and Gardenspaces littering the Kickstarter platform.

The jump from prototype (and a dream) to manufacturing has stymied many Kickstarter creators. They underestimate how much creating a real product at scale will cost, and wind up having their project die a painful, crowdfunded death.

This mortality rate was not lost on Kickstarter, which realized that a failed project creates a bad experience on its platform. So to help creators set more realistic campaign goals, the company announced the Hardware Studio Connection last year. The first four of these Hardware Studio projects were announced today.

The Hardware Studio is a partnership with Avnet and Dragon, experts in electronics and manufacturing (since the time of the initial program announcement, Avnet has acquired Dragon). Any hardware Kickstarter project creator can apply to the Studio and, if accepted, engineers at Avnet and Dragon go through the project to look at the components and manufacturing plan to assess its readiness. According to the Hardware Studio Connection website:

The ideal products for Connection are electro-mechanical and connected ones like robots, connected-home devices, and wearables, with an expected production run of at least 2,000 units. Connection will help you plan for manufacturing before you launch on Kickstarter.

There are actually three levels of readiness, and each level comes with its own badge that projects can proudly display on their Kickstarter campaign page:

Level 1 – Project has a mature prototype that can become a manufacturable product.

Level 2 – Project is manufacturable at expected volumes and production plans are in place.

Level 3 – Project is fully designed and engineered; manufacturing and production processes are in place.

The program is free for creators and so far, 30 projects have been accepted. Among the first four projects to launch today was Syphon, the argon-injecting wine preserver (it’s rated a level 2). A Kickstarter spokesperson didn’t disclose the terms of the deal between Avnet and creators, but said that the Hardware Studio is a way for Avnet to potentially get creators to sign up for advanced services.

In addition to the expert consultation, the Hardware Studio site is a knowledge resource for accepted project creators, featuring articles, videos, and a product planner.

Here at The Spoon, we are constantly scouring Kickstarter for up-and-coming food tech hardware projects — but always with a skeptical eye. Not only do creators often underestimate their costs, but they can also fail to take into account the complications of working with factories across the globe (often China). Having a Hardware Studio badge displayed on their page will certainly raise a project’s credibility. And for everyday backers, seeing a badge prominently displaying a readiness level will provide nice guidance to help prevent them from throwing away their money.

The badge could also mean higher campaign goals for hardware projects. With expert advice, new creators will have to be more realistic about their funding needs. This will make campaign goals harder to reach, but also provide a little more assurance that they will be seen to completion and backers will get their rewards.

Sous Vide Pot Is Just a Pot… For Sous Vide

Sous vide fiends, gadget lovers, and devotees of the perfectly-cooked steak, listen up.

Tuxton Home recently launched their Sous Vide Pot on Kickstarter, which is a pot… that holds your sous vide wands in place. The pot is essentially a large stockpot with a 2.4 inch sous vide adapter hole, which they claim will accommodate most sous vide products on the market — or at least any one that is less than 2.4 inches in diameter. (Which notably excludes the Chefsteps Joule, though the Kickstarter page says they’re developing an adaptor to fit it.)

There are some quantifiable advantages to the Sous Vide Pot. Compared to an open Triply pot, it is 31% faster to reach goal temperature, and it requires less water and energy. The Kickstarter page also touts the silicon-rimmed lid as a replacement for clips you typically need to keep sous vide packages in place. The lid prevents evaporation, so as long as you completely cover the meat (or whatever) you’re cooking with water, you should be good. Tuxton Home also offers a custom-fitted rack to ensure that your food pouches stay fully immersed. Whether or not that makes it worth a buy depends on the frequency you sous vide and how much you value convenience.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2024375030/sous-vide-pot-here-we-cut-the-hole-in-the-lid-for?ref=category_newest&ref=discovery

The cool and not so cool part of this product is that it is basically just a nicely made large pot. Which means it is a versatile piece of kitchen equipment, but also means it’s not especially groundbreaking. But if your kitchen is teeny tiny (like mine), every gadget has to have multiple uses — and the Sous Vide Pot does, at least, seem to be relatively high quality. Though it might have made more sense for Tuxton Home to have designed a variety of sous vide-adaptable lids to fit pots that are already in your kitchen.

Tuxton Home will start shipping Sous Vide pots to early backers in May 2018. Which seems ambitious — but the company is confident they’ll hit their goal ship date. This is because they control every aspect of the production, from design to manufacturing to distribution. Tuxton Home’s parent company Tuxton also has 20 years of experience manufacturing and distributing cookware, so this isn’t their first rodeo.

You can get a Sous Vide pot for $115 with the Early Bird deal. Which is kind of a lot for a glorified stockpot, but if you’re a sous vide fiend who wants to be able to make perfectly-cooked steak slightly more quickly than you already do, it might be worth the investment.

Kickstarter Project Asks: Would You Like a Slice of Ketchup?

If you’ve worked in the front of house of a restaurant, chances are you at one point did ketchup bottle rotation. This task consists of emptying out one ketchup bottle on top of and into another, which somehow prevents them from exploding. But this server sidework could soon disappear if a new Kickstarter project catches on.

Bo’s Fine Foods has developed Slice of Sauce (registered trademark!), a “no-mess slice of Ketchup.” That’s right, slices of ketchup. Judging from the promotional materials, the 3 3/4 x 3 3/4-inch slices look like thick pieces of tomato-based fruit roll-ups, and are packaged like store-bought deli cheese.

According to the campaign information, the benefits of the ketchup slices are:

  • Ingredients that are vegan, non-GMO, and gluten-free with no artificial flavors
  • Uniform ketchup application with no “soggy bread”
  • Shelf stable product that will last up to a year in the pantry, no refrigeration needed

The recipe for these ketchup slices came from Bo’s Fine Foods Founder, Emily Williams. She was experimenting with her father’s old recipe for BBQ sauce, which called for braising lots of vegetables and then discarding them. Rather than tossing them, Williams ground them up, then baked and dried the mixture. Voila! A slice is born. We reached out to the Slice of Sauce folks to find out more about this miraculous discovery, but didn’t hear back in time for publication.

Initial reaction to sliced ketchup around the Spoon offices was decidedly… skeptical. From the campaign video, it doesn’t look like the slices melt, which just seems weird; like eating the ketchup crust that forms at the top of the ketchup bottle. But we were all intrigued enough to potentially try it, and wondered what other condiments could be slice-a-fied. Mustard? Mayo? Sriracha? (That last one would be delicious).

Slice of Sauce has raised more than $12,000 of its $15,000 funding goal. Early backers can get their own ketchup slices for a $10 pledge, with delivery estimated for June of this year.

What do you think? Would you add a slice of ketchup to your burger, or wrap or grilled cheese? Leave us a comment and let us know!

CupCooler Promises to Chill Your Drinks Quickly

If you grew up reading comic books like I did, you might be inclined to call CupCooler the Anti-Ember. Whereas Ember mugs keep your drinks hot, the soon-to-be-Kickstarted CupCooler makes your beverages frosty, fast.

CupCooler is a new project from Dutch design firm, Allocacoc. The small device is a roughly five-inch cube that weighs 15 ounces. Plug the CupCooler directly into an outlet, pour a little water into the accompanying aluminum container and set your lukewarm can or bottle inside of it. A company spokesperson told me that it will cool a drink from 35 °C (95 °F) down to 15 °C (59 °F) in ten minutes.

You may wonder: why not just pour the drink over ice, which will cool it down much faster? A few reasons: ice can dilute your drink and there are certain beverages (like beer) that you might not want to pour over ice. Plus, the company is really going for an Ember-like experience, where the beverage stays cool for a long period of time so you can stay refreshed while you’re working at your desk. No melting ice means your drink stays cold, without the dilution.

Unlike Ember, however, you can’t manually adjust the temperature, and there is no accompanying app to control the product. In fact, CupCooler doesn’t stop at a particular temperature. It keeps lowering it, though the speed of the cooling slows down quite a bit after a certain point.

CupCooler will launch on Kickstarter on March 14 (Update: CupCooler’s launch was pushed back to April 3), with the earliest backers able to purchase one for $55. Once those are sold out, other backers will pay $65. If fully funded, the company says it will ship CupCooler this July.

Allocacoc says it can sidestep the manufacturing issues that tend to befuddle and hamper other Kickstarter hardware projects because it has its own manufacturing facilities in China. All they have to do is source the raw materials.

As someone who prefers cold beverages to hot ones, and with summer heat fast approaching, I’m interested to see if CupCooler lives up to its promises–and keeps me quenched as I sit back and read a stack of comics.