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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

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Food Tech News Roundup: GM Hops, Food Delivery Mergers & Meat MRI’s

Happy weekend. This was a big week for food tech news, with funding updates from Instacart and Impossible Foods, and big partnership announcements from Innit/Chef’d and Kenwood/Drop. But there were also a bunch of smaller stories that caught our eye, even if we didn’t have time to write a post about them. So we rounded them up in one place for you! Put an egg on something and eat it while skimming through our roundup of this week’s food tech news stories.

Report: Postmates and DoorDash mull over merger 

Sources told Recode that Postmates and DoorDash, two food delivery giants, have discussed a possible merger at least once over the past year. This move would be a bid to gain advantage over competitors like GrubHub and UberEats in the hotly-contested food delivery war.

These murmurings come only a month after DoorDash secured $535 million in funding, which they said they would use to expand operations (and maybe invest in robots?). As of now there’s no deal, but this wouldn’t be such a bad idea. The food delivery sector is just too crowded — if these competitors could pull off a merger and optimize their service, I say go for it.

Photo: Pixabay

Unilever wants to turn plastic waste into food safe packaging

Unilever announced this week that it’s starting a new initiative to recycle polyethylene terephthalate resin, which is commonly used in clothing, food and drink packaging, and engineering projects. They want to turn any of their products made with PET resin, including ones that are colored, into transparent, food safe packaging. The consumer goods giant is partnering with recycling tech startup Ioniqa and Indorama Ventures, the world’s largest producer of PET resin, on the project.

It’s an interesting time in the world of food packaging. Various groups, including NASA and the military, are trying to make it lighter, safer, and more resilient. This initiative from Unilever might make it more environmentally friendly, as well. But it’s got a long way to go; currently, 91% of plastic waste isn’t recycled. With a massive company like Unilever behind it, this project might be able to reduce that statistic significantly. 

Credit-TECAL-GIM-UEx.jpg

MRIs can qualify meat taste without touching them

Researchers at the University of Extremadura in Spain have found a way to use magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), the same technology used in hospitals to look inside our bodies, to measure the taste properties of whole loins and hams — without touching them.

The technology uses non-invasive magnets and radio waves to take images of the meat, which is then run through a computer vision algorithm. Scientists can use the images and readings they see to make predictions on the quality of the meat, including its fat content, color, and salt content, without having to damage a pricey Iberico ham.

This research indicates another approach to food safety monitoring and quality control, which is a fast-growing market full of startups like Mimica and FoodLogiQ.

 

Would brewers replace hops with GMO yeast?

Hold on to your IPAs: A team of chemists and geneticists in California have developed a genetically modified yeast that can mimic the flavor and aroma of hops. To make it, they spliced DNA from mint and basil plants into the genes of brewing yeast, which gave the yeast a grapefruit-like flavor typical of the Cascade hop.

By swapping out hops for GM yeast, brewers could have greater control over their product, reduce the costs of beer-brewing, and reduce environmental impact. As might be expected, craft brewers aren’t eager to replace hops with GM yeast — they feel it takes some of the art out of brewing. But we’re seeing more and more intersections of beer and tech, from IoT-powered beer tracking systems to beer publishing systems for at-home brewers.

 

Photo: AgVend

AgVend raises $1.75M in seed funding

Last week ag-commerce startup AgVend raised $1.75 million in seed funding. The round was led by Drew Oetting at 8VC, with participation from Green Bay Ventures, Seahawk Capital, The House Fund, and others.

Agvend is a digital commerce platform which lets farmers compare prices and purchase ag services and inputs. With AgVend, farmers can order a specific fertilizer and have it delivered (via AgVend’s partners) the same day or take advantage of flash sales promotions, without ever leaving their farm. The startup launched at the beginning of 2018 and now covers states across the Midwest and Pacific Northwest, with plans to expand later this year.

This year has been a big one for agtech startups. In the last few months indoor farming company Agrilyst and peer-to-peer farming network WeFarm also closed fundraising rounds. Agtech is definitely a growing market, and one to keep an eye on.

Smart Kitchen News Roundup: Personalized Pints, The World’s Best Steak, & Ranch Dressing

It’s been a big week for the smart kitchen, so we’re doing a quick roundup of some of our favorite food tech news stories that we didn’t have time to turn into full pieces.

Speaking of smart kitchens: we just returned from the Housewares Show in Chicago! If you want to read about some of the cool new products and trends we saw (cough, guided cooking, cough), check out this post and look out for a recap podcast coming your way soon.

Introducing Beer Ripples

Beer Ripples lets you personalize your pints

Just in time for St. Patrick’s day, latte art-printing company Coffee Ripples is bringing their technology behind the bar. Their edible 3D-printing technology allows you to print any imagine that moves you on a pint. Dubbed Beer Ripples, the machine, intended solely for commercial use, uses an edible malt-based ink to transfer designs, text, and images onto your brew’s foamy top. Imbibers can either choose from options on Ripples’ library or upload a custom image onto the Ripple app using their foam. It’s not cheap—the machine is priced at $3,000 plus an $1,500 annual subscription fee—but in a world run by Instagram, it may help give bars an extra buzz.

 

Photo: Hidden Valley website.

Hidden Valley dips into Allrecipes/Amazon Fresh partnership

This week the media and marketing company the Meredith Corporation announced that Hidden Valley will be the first advertising partner to take advantage of the Allrecipes/Amazon Fresh integration. Now when users select shoppable recipes from Allrecipes that call for bottled ranch or powdered ranch mix, a Hidden Valley product will automatically be added to their AmazonFresh shopping cart and delivered to their doorstep. In addition to geo-targeted offers and ads, users will see a “May We Suggest” native recipe integrations pushing Hidden Valley ranch as a pairing whenever they click on pizza recipes. Customers can switch out Hidden Valley for another brand if they wish, but this partnership is just a taste of how CPG’s will use shoppable recipes as a tool to take advantage of the growing egrocery market.

 

Photo: Crowd Cow website.

Crowd Cow expands to Japan

Crowd Cow, the startup which helps people directly source meat by crowdfunding a cow online, has expanded their reach into Japan. They now offer A5 Wagyu beef sourced from Kagoshima, a rare cut of meat which their website claims is “the world’s most marbled steak.” This expansion shows that Crowd Cow’s model of direct-delivering specific cuts of whole cows has some market power behind it. It also speaks to the growing demand for ethically sourced luxury beef. If you’re interested, Crowd Cow’s A5 Wagyu will go on sale on March 19th, and promises to sell out pretty quickly. Get your Béarnaise sauce ready.

 

Photo: SmartQ website.

SmartQ gets funding to facilitate food court experience

This week the Chennai-based food tech startup SmartQ raised $1 million from Dubai-based investors. Founded in 2014, SmartQ aims to eliminate cafeteria lines by “digitizing food courts.” Their suite of products includes a food ordering app, a self ordering kiosk, and a POS system to facilitate restaurant billing. While keeping all of those services straight may seem more complicated than just waiting in line, SmartQ’s products are catching on in food courts around India. The company has been growing 50% month to month, and currently has big players Shell and Epsilon as clients. SmartQ hopes to use their funding to grow their business outside of India.

 

Photo: PR Newswire Asia

2018 AWE wowed with smart kitchen appliances

Smart kitchen gadgets abounded this week at the 2018 Appliance & Electronics World Expo (AWE) in Shanghai this week. Consumer appliance manufacturer Midea showed off some pretty snazzy demos appliances like their second generation Fun oven, which uses AI and machine learning to recognize foods and calculate the perfect cooking curve. There was also a voice-controlled microwave and a range hood with steam cleaning and air purification capabilities. Also at AWE, Chinese appliance company Haier debuted their smart home solution, featuring a smart fridge with a built-in camera which can see your food and recommend recipes accordingly.

Review: Meet Meater, the Connected Thermometer

Proteins are generally the hardest part of the meal to make. Overcook them and they turn to inedible leather; undercook them and possibly send loved ones to the ER. For the nervous meat cookers who are skittish around the skillet, Meater is a new, connected thermometer that’s here to help.

Meater is a $69 bluetooth- and wifi-enabled meat thermometer, but it’s actually more than that. With its accompanying app, Meater is actually a guided cooking system that monitors your meats, tells you when they’ve reached a safe cooking temperature, and lets you know when to remove your meat from heat to let it rest properly.

The device itself looks like a shiny five inch nail. You stick Meater into the meat and leave it there while cooking. Truth be told, you have to jam the Meater in there pretty deep for it to work properly.

The depth needed for the probe actually caused a problem for my first test. The chicken thighs I was going to cook were too small for the Meater to work properly, even though the Meater app lists chicken thighs as something you can cook with it. Meater seems to be meant for larger cuts of thicker meat, so I opted for a pork loin in my second go-round.

Setup for the Meater itself was straightforward. I chose the Bluetooth option over the wifi because wifi required setting up a (free) account. Meater paired easily, but because the device is in an oven, or wrapped in foil, the signal dropped if I took the phone out of the kitchen.

Once Meater is inserted, you select what type of meat and what cut you are going to cook from the app. Then you choose the target internal temperature you want the meat to cook to. It gives you a few options based on the level of done-ness you prefer, as well as the USDA recommended cooking temp. With just a few taps on your phone, you’re ready to cook.

The app gives you a readout with three indicators: The current internal temp, the target temp, and the ambient temp. After a few minutes in the oven, it also provides an estimated cooking time. Once it starts cooking you can watch the various temperatures move around the dial.

What’s nice, for a nervous, OCD nelly like me, is that with the probe always in the meat, there’s no need to repeatedly open up the oven (letting heat escape) to re-insert a traditional thermometer. Since you have a constant running readout of the internal temperature, it frees you up to do other things in the kitchen.

Where Meater gets more helpful is when you’re meat is almost ready. The app delivered a nice little alarm when there was about five minutes left on my cook time, and then it instructed me to remove the meat before it reached the final temperature. It kept cooking out of the oven and hit the targeted 145 degrees as promised without overcooking. I even checked with a second meat thermometer to confirm the accuracy of the Meater.

The result was great. The pork loin came out tender and flavorful and, most important, safely cooked.

When not in use, Meater comes in a handsome wood holder/charger. The holder requires one AAA battery to charge Meater, and has a magnetic backing you so you can stick it to an oven hood to keep it handy. At $69, Meater is a pretty good value considering a Thermapen costs at least $79.

For a cautious cook such as myself, Meater would be a great addition to my kitchen, and would give me more confidence to cook proteins I might not normally try.

Meatme Raises Money to Trim the Fat Between You and Local Farmers

Plant-based meat alternatives are on the cusp of becoming mainstream. But until they actually do crossover, the USDA expects the average American to eat 219 pounds of meat per year by 2025, with Big Meat making a big, negative impact on the planet.

Meatme is trying to combat this impact by going small. Based in Vancouver, Canada, the company is making it easier for consumers to buy from local, sustainable sources of beef, chicken and other animal products.

Meatme transformed from co-founder, Victor Straatman’s side project into a full company a little over a year ago. “What we want to do is move towards a system where people source meat from small scale farmers,” said Straatman. “Small scale farmers struggle to get to consumers.”

The company works with local farmers to sell one animal at a time. Meatme only partners with farmers who raise their animals “ethically and holistically.” To reduce its carbon footprint, the company only delivers to areas local to that farmer. Meatme currently partners with eight farms in the British Columbia area. Customers in that Canadian province can go online and choose the cuts they like and have the meat delivered

If it sounds a lot like CrowdCow, you’re correct. Straatman applauds what CrowdCow has done to help people think about where their meat comes from, but says Meatme is different because it only sells meat from a consumer’s local farmer. Meatme won’t ship meat from anywhere else.

This is a lofty goal (one CrowdCow aspires to as well), and one that will require capital to achieve. The company has been bootstrapped thus far, but is currently securing $400,000 (Canadian) as part of a forthcoming $1.1 million seed round.

With the money, Straatman says Meatme is first going to expand further into Canada before tackling the US. But scaling on an international level will be a challenge. At each market it will need to find a sizeable enough customer base, farms that fit its sustainable criteria, as well as people to butcher, process and provide delivery.

But if it can rise to those challenges, and more people become interested in where their meat actually comes from, Meatme’s small farm approach could make a big impact.

A First Taste of Firstchop’s Sous Vide Meat Delivery Box

I am terrified of cooking meat. I worry so much about giving someone food poisoning that I overcook my chicken or steak until it is leather. Which is why I was so excited to try out firstchop’s chef-prepared meats, and even more thrilled that it produced two of the best meals I’ve eaten in a long while.

Launched this month, firstchop is a meat-box subscription service that sends you a selection of chef-prepared, vacuum-sealed, fully cooked proteins. Store them in your freezer and when you’re ready to cook one, you simply dump the bag into a sous vide bath and re-heat. The company even sends you a sous vide wand in their starter box.

Firstchop sent me a box to try out earlier this week. Based on that experience, here’s what you can expect.

PACKAGING
The starter box comes with everything you need: a firstchop-branded sous vide wand and a selection of four proteins. All of the meat arrived frozen (which was good because the California wildfires had caused shipping delays) and labeled. The company also offers a larger and smaller box, neither of which come with the sous vide wand.

SOUS VIDE WAND
Smart kitchen aficionados will notice that the firstchop sous vide wand looks a lot like the Anova. Firstchop’s wand, however is not WiFi enabled, so there’s no smartphone app to control it.

THE FOOD
I was sent Spicy Green Curry Chicken, Peruvian Style Chicken Breast, Peppercorn Beef Medallions, and Boneless Osso Bucco Lamb Shoulder with Root Vegetables (you don’t get to pick your proteins). Each were in their own sealed pouch with heating instructions on the paper sleeve. The portions are plenty for two adults.

COOKING
When I initially talked with firstchop, they said the meals were perfect for busy people because they could be prepared in about forty minutes. This is technically true, but there are a few caveats. If you keep your meat frozen, the reheat time is about 45 minutes, however, that doesn’t take into consideration the amount of time it takes to bring the water to temperature. So people using the service should budget in at least an hour if not an hour and half.

The firstchop wand works remarkably well. I actually cooked two proteins at the same time, one with the First Chop wand and one with the Anova. The firstchop was a little wonky in setting the timer, but it was actually a little easier to use than the Anova because of the lack of WiFi. The Anova kept buzzing my phone with temperature notifications because it wanted me to use one of its preset guides.

Once the bath was at temperature, I dropped the food in and let it alone. When the timer beeped, I pulled the bag out of the water and removed the protein. Unlike sous videing raw meat, there wasn’t a need to sear the firstchop meat after. I just sliced it up and served it to my family.

TASTE
I made two proteins: the lamb and the beef, and both were remarkable. Incredible. Fantastic. The meat was tender and perfectly seasoned. At the risk of sounding fanboyish, it was like a restaurant meal from my kitchen. My whole family loved both the beef and the lamb, and we devoured it all.

OVERALL
My first firstchop experience made me a convert. My wife immediately wanted to know how much a box was and how big of a “problem” this was going to be for our family. I can definitely see myself ordering, at the very least, the small box to supplement our weekly routine.

My only complaints right now are around the sourcing of the meat. Firstchop describes their meat as “restaurant quality,” which means nothing to me. I eat and enjoy meat, but am also conscious of where it comes from. The firstchop FAQ says it will roll out grass-fed and organic meats in the future, and I hope they do so soon. I’d pay extra for sustainably and humanely sourced animal products.

A firstchop starter box comes with ten “servings” of meat and a sous vide wand for $79, and there’s no monthly commitment. The company is basically giving the wand away to get you to try the service. And based on my experience, you definitely should.

UPDATE: After we published this article, firstchop changed their pricing. This post has been updated to reflect that change.

Q&A With Crowd Cow’s Ethan Lowry

Used to be if you wanted to buy meat directly from a farmer without a middleman, you’d have to go find a farmer to sell you a side of beef.  The only problem is, not many of us have a giant freezer to hold hundred of pounds of meat let alone time to drive out and find a farmer.

Enter Crowd Cow. The company makes directly sourcing meat from a farmer much easier through crowdfunding a cow (or technically a heifer or steer) with others online.

The company was founded after former UrbanSpoon founder Ethan Lowry heard a friend rave about the beef he had bought directly from a farmer. Before long, he half-joked with his eventual co-founder Joe Heitzenberg that they should crowdfund a cow.

They eventually did just that and, when to their surprise it worked, Crowd Cow was born.

We decided to catch up with Ethan to ask him a few questions about his company that is trying to bring meat directly to the consumer through crowdsourcing.

Wolf: Grass fed beef delivery services tend to serve local geographies. How do you plan to scale Crow Cow as you go nationwide?

Lowry: Giving consumers across the country access to high-quality, sustainably and ethically-raised beef is exactly what Crowd Cow aims to do. With the rancher relationships we have today, we can reach customers in 14 states. But we’re excited to be national by the end of this summer. To make that happen we need to bring in new ranchers, which is a time-intensive process since we need to do very thorough vetting. We also need to build fulfillment centers across the US so we can efficiently reach customers in different markets.

Wolf: Why use a crowdfund mechanism for each cow? Does it lead to more engagement? 

Lowry: One thing that makes Crowd Cow unique is that we sell the entire animal from a ranch. By crowdfunding each cow, we’re giving consumers exactly what they want, and doing it in a way that doesn’t waste any part of the beef. It’s a nose-to-tail selling experience that you won’t find elsewhere. Some people just love strip steaks and tenderloins, other people just want roasts, and others are really excited to get harder-to-find cuts like oxtail, heart, kidney and tongue.

It gives our customers a sense of community too. It’s not just a one-off purchase they’re making. They, along with their friends and family, can get together and support a particular farmer with a particular story. Also, it’s a bit of a game to watch a cow move towards tipping, the term we use when an entire animal has been purchased. It encourages people to rally their friends and family, buy up shares, and make sure the cow tips.

It’s also important to point out that the small, independent farms we work with can only sell an entire animal. Industrial farms producing thousands and thousands of animals can have them slaughtered and then distribute all the tenderloins to one place and then all the hanger steaks to another. Our farmers don’t work with massive wholesale buyers who do this type of piece-by-piece distribution. They rely on buyers like us, or local butchers and restaurants that can really use all the parts of the animal. We respect this process. We know our ranchers are great at raising delicious beef and we enjoy the challenge of buying the whole animals and finding innovative ways to sell them to consumers.

Wolf: As you go national, do you see regional or even local crowdfund campaigns? (and does that mean the consumer in a specific geography only sees cows that are being crowdfunded in their local geography?)

Lowry: We can’t wait to have partners across the country so we can offer customers locally-raised beef. We’d love to offer California customers California beef and Chicago customers Midwestern beef.

But beyond that, we want customers to experience beef in the same way that you would a fine wine. Beef raised on one ranch actually tastes different from beef raised on another ranch. The flavor comes from what it grazed on during its life, the particular breed it came from (like Angus or Hereford or Wagyu), and importantly the care and treatment it received. It’s exciting to sample beef from different ranchers and find the one you absolutely love.

Crowd Cow is about great-quality beef from the best farmers, but it’s also about experiencing different types of beef and finding your favorites. Featuring regional farms will help us achieve this.

Wolf: Grass fed beef is around 2% nationally, but growing fast. Is your growth a result of this trend as well as the movement towards newer ways to buy food more locally (the Portlandia consumer as you define it)

Lowry: There’s certainly growing interest in understanding how our food is produced. Part of that is consumers being better educated about the downsides to both the animals and ranchers that comes with industrial farming practices. Another part of that is understanding how the food we eat truly impacts our health. When you realize that much of the meat you find at your local supermarket has been pumped full of growth hormones and antibiotics, most people would think twice about eating it.

We’re definitely benefiting from this overall food supply chain awareness. Because we partner with farmers that follow ethical and sustainable practices, customers can have confidence in what they’re eating, and it’s a primary reason our customers are telling us that they shop from us. Now, the reason they keep coming back is because this beef happens to be delicious.

I should also note that not all of our beef is exclusively grass fed. We’re certainly open to working with farmers that grain-finish their beef — which means they feed their cattle grain to fatten them up before slaughter. Provided they aren’t using hormones or antibiotics, crowding their animals into pens, or otherwise acting in ways they would ashamed to admit to customers. In fact, we work with some amazing wagyu beef farmers that grain-finish their cattle because it results in a beautifully marbled beef.

What we focus on is transparency. We think people want and deserve to know where their food is coming from, and that supermarket labels are misleading and insufficient. When we ask our customers what really gets them excited about beef from Crowd Cow, it has much more to do with this aspect of our business. Customers care where their food comes from, and we can give them that insight.

Wolf: As consumers move towards local food purchasing enabled through technology-driven marketplaces, how does this look in the future?

Lowry: As consumers, we’ve gotten used to having more and more information about the products we buy, so we can make more knowledgeable decisions and tradeoffs. Digital marketplaces are a fantastic way to get that information. A two-inch label on a grocery store shelf just can’t offer that kind of help.

Wolf: Part of the charm of buying local is getting out and talking to local producers at farmer’s markets, local butchers, etc. Have you thought about ways to keep that alive since you are moving this process online?

Lowry: Absolutely! When you come to our site one of the very first things you’ll see is a complete feature on the farmer whose beef we’re selling that day. You get a video tour of the ranch so you can see their pasture and their grazing herd. We present detailed background about the farmer, their practices and the beef itself.

The digital space is an amazing place to engage with people just like you who may live thousands of miles away. You don’t usually see customers talking to each other at a farmer’s market about favorite recipes, grilling techniques, or even the tastiness of different cattle breeds. But with an online community, we can create this one-to-one experience.

Wolf: One of your local Seattle startup peers, ChefSteps, is looking to build a direct-to-consumer steak marketplace.  Is the market still nascent and big enough to lift all boats, or do you see competition rising?

Lowry: Getting the best quality, sustainably and ethically raised beef delivered to a consumer’s door is quite a bit easier said than done. We let you order just the cuts and quantity you are looking for, from the farm you choose, delivered to you. We have to be unbelievably diligent about who we work with and how we assess their practices, we have to efficiently package and deliver each custom order, and fuel a growing community. That’s no easy task.

Right now we’re not seeing anyone offering what we are, and we know (from hard experience) that it will be difficult for anyone else to do this.

That said, I think other companies talking about the importance of high-quality meat is great for us, and consumers, by simply raising awareness. Our biggest challenge is to get the word out so people realize they have a choice.

Wolf: We focus a lot on the future of the kitchen. Have you thought about ways to leverage growing interest in cooking tech and new technology in the kitchen for your business of crowdfunding cows?

Lowry: Each and every Crowd Cow beef cut is vacuum-sealed in a food safe pouch and then flash frozen. At a very basic level, this makes it easy to keep fresh in your freezer until you’re ready to cook it up. But, this is also really great for sous vide cooking. Customers are always sending us pictures of their sous-vide-prepared meat and it looks amazing.

As the cost of sous vide devices comes down and the features and quality get better and better, I’m sure more customers will want to try it out. At this point an Anova is less than $150, and it’s an amazing little machine. We’re definitely excited to help people learn more about sous vide and how it can help them prepare restaurant-quality beef at home.

I also think new food tech innovations like June, the “smart” oven, align beautifully with what we’re about. This is a device that’s designed to give you high-quality food, coupled with convenience and simplicity. That’s almost exactly what we’re trying to do with Crowd Cow — bring you the best quality beef, with the convenience of ordering online and home delivery.

Wolf: Can you see extending Crowd Cow into other forms of locally produced food?

Lowry: Definitely. There’s a ton of demand for ethically and sustainably raised meat. Almost since day one we’ve had customers asking us for pork, chicken, lamb, fish and other more exotic meats.

Right now however, we’re hyper-focused on finding fantastic beef farmers across the US. Once we’ve nailed that, we’ll work with farmers to offer other great products.

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.