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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Nomiku

Here Are Three Ingredients For Building Services In The Connected Kitchen

Sure, the kitchen of the future will be driven by data and standards, but one crucial element not to be overlooked among all the gadgets and tech is the human touch.

This is one of the insights you can glean from watching the video for the “Building Services for the Connected Kitchen” panel at our recent Smart Kitchen Summit. Brita Rosenheim of The Mixing Bowl moderated this fascinating and forward looking discussion with Lisa Fetterman, CEO, Nomiku; Mike Wallace, CEO, Perfect Company; and Tony Ciepiel, COO, Vitamix.

They cover a wide range of topics, but here are three big takeaways:

Data Brings Out Needed Connections
Connected devices are able to record a lot of data about what, when and how often you eat or drink. This data doesn’t just help the device maker better understand you — but it can help companies throughout the consumption process better serve you.

Perfect’s platform fills in a huge knowledge gap for spirit makers who currently have no idea how their product is used after the sale. And Nomiku’s connected sous vide system, they can identify what types of food you prefer and fulfill accordingly.

Standards are Needed
Right now every connected device has its own app. This can be confusing and overly complicated for the consumer. This obviously is not the best solution for creating a vast interconnected kitchen where your fridge knows when you get home and automatically starts up your sous vide.

The solution, however, isn’t so cut and dry. It’s doubtful that any one company will cede control of a platform to another, but as Fetterman points out, things are moving so quickly that no one has time to invent an independent unifying language. Consumers have shown they can live with a multi-app approach (see: navigation on your phone), but will it be a stalemate rather than superiority that determines the outcome?

The Human Touch is Needed
As 80s rocker Rick Springfield once sang — we all need the human touch. And this is true for the connected kitchen as every speaker on the panel talked about the role of personal interaction leading to adoption. Vitamix does 48,000 demonstrations a year to show people how to use its product. Perfect’s cocktail maker is by nature social and almost becomes like a modern day, boozier Tupperware party.

This is just some of what was touched on in the panel. Watch the full video right here and leave a comment with your thoughts on the best path for building connected services in the kitchen.

Company Which First Made Sous Vide Affordable Reinvents Flagship Product With Wi-Fi & Alexa

Long before there were low-cost sous vide immersion circulators from companies like Anova, ChefSteps and Nomiku, there was the SousVide Supreme.

The SousVide Supreme, first available in 2009, was arguably the first consumer-priced sous vide appliance on the market.  And unlike today’s popular sous vide immersion circulators that are essentially long cylinders that combine with a pot full of water to create a sous vide water bath, the original SousVide Supreme “water oven” is a fully contained sous vide machine not unlike the expensive commercial water ovens first used by professional chefs

It’s easy to forget how instrumental this product was in its early days of sous vide, but consider what Kenji Lopez-Alt wrote after attending an early demonstration of the Sous Vide Supreme by Heston Blumenthal back in 2009:

“I’ll be getting one of these puppies in my kitchen some time in the next couple weeks, and I plan on putting it through some serious paces, so stay tuned to find out what it can do. If the Showtime Rotisserie taught us anything, it’s that kitchen appliances come and go. The difference here is that the Sous-Vide Supreme is more than just another well-marketed appliance. If it really does what it claims to do, it offers home cooks something that has never been offered before: the opportunity to cook their food in exactly the same way that every three-Michelin starred restaurant cooks. Not just a pale imitation of how they cook, but exactly how they cook.”

And while since the SousVide Supreme has seen companies like Anova since steal much of their early sous vide thunder, the company is hoping to steal some back with a complete revamp of their water oven. The company’s new product, the SousVide Supreme Touch+, launched this past week on Kickstarter and surpassed its funding target of $250 thousand in just four days.

So what features does the Sous Vide Supreme Touch+ have that earlier generations of the product does not?

Quite a few:

Touch screen.The old SousVide Supreme control screen, which had buttons similar to those of an Instant Pot or Crockpot, will give way to a new touch screen on the front of the Touch+ (though the video of the touch screen makes it seem the screen requires pressure similar to that of the old buttons)

Wi-Fi

This is the first Sous Vide Supreme model with Wi-Fi, which allows for remote cook enablement, alerts and app based control.

Speaking of app…

App

With Wi-Fi on board, the SousVide Supreme finally enters the app-control age. The app includes the usual remote on-off control features, but what is most intriguing is the new app will include the ability to program recipes.

Clear lid

This is the first Sous Vide Supreme model with a clear lid. A fairly obvious improvement, but a welcome one since who doesn’t want to see what they’re cooking?

Alexa

Finally, the new SousVide Supreme Touch+ will have Alexa. While voice control almost seems like a requirement for those of us who buy connected kitchen products, the company could have easily just added Wi-Fi and app control and called it a day. Kudos to the creators for future proofing their newest version with Alexa compatibility.

Overall, this new generation of the SousVide Supreme looks to be a major step forward for a company founded by Drs. Patrick and Mary Dan Eades, a married couple that first cobbled together their own DIY sous vide bath after tasting a room service pork chop that was cooked sous vide. The new machine, which is available for $349 on Kickstarter (early bird pricing of $249 and $299 have already sold out) will be available to backers in March of next year and will retail for $599.

If you want to hear about the future of precision cooking and the connected kitchen, make sure to come to the Smart Kitchen Summit. Just use the discount code SPOON to get 25% off of tickets.

Podcast: Amazon Buys Whole Foods

Every now and then a deal of such magnitude happens, it makes you almost speechless when you first hear about it.

Amazon buying Whole Foods is one of those deals.

On this quick-take podcast, Mike gets together with Nomiku CEO Lisa Fetterman to discuss this mind-blowing deal, what it could mean for Amazon, what a future Amazon-ized Whole Foods could look like and the implications for the broader grocery industry.

Make sure to subscribe to the Smart Kitchen Show here on iTunes.

You can also check out Mike’s initial take on the deal over at the Spoon.

Make sure to check out the Smart Kitchen Summit, the only event about the future of food, cooking, and the kitchen. Use the discount code SPOON to get 25% off of tickets. Also, make sure to subscribe to get The Spoon in your inbox. 

ChefSteps Expands Further Into Food With Launch Of Pre-Cooked Meals

Back in February, I  wrote about ChefSteps’ plan to create a meat ‘marketplace’ that would connect “independent ranchers with ChefSteps users, offering them direct access to high-quality meat and ingredients at great prices.”

As it turns out, this effort was part of a larger initiative to expand into food sales that is starting to come into fuller focus. The most visible part of this foray into food sales is the company’s growing business selling meat and fish sourced from local food providers in the Seattle and Portland markets. In the Seattle market, the company offers fresh meat and fish from four local providers (three for meats, one provider of fresh fish). The kits for sale on the company’s website range in price from $79 to $239. And yes – one package, the ‘Mountain of Meat,’ includes 30 pounds of steaks. (Holy meat sweats).

And now, the company has started selling pre-cooked, frozen meals.The pre-cooked meals are sold as what ChefSteps is calling, ‘Joule On-Demand BBQ.’ The meals are all single-serve portions and range in price from $7 to $12. Unlike the fresh meat and seafood, the pre-cooked meals from ChefSteps offer local shipping as a fulfillment option.  Deliveries are fulfilled by PostMates.

The Mountain of Meat meal kit from ChefSteps

These pre-cooked meals appear similar to those announced by Nomiku in April. As with Nomiku’s new meal kits, the BBQ meals are intended to be prepared in a shorter amount of time than traditional sous vide, usually less than an hour.

This move into pre-cooked meals by both ChefSteps and Nomiku shows the growing effort by both companies to expand the appeal of sous video to a broader audience.  Sous vide has traditionally appealed to foodies who are willing to invest more time in preparing chef-like meals, but with pre-cooked meal offerings, the companies believe sous vide becomes more appealing to those home cooks who prioritize convenience.

Of course, pre-cooked meals aren’t the only way to make cooking with sous vide easier for the home cook. ChefSteps and Anova have both been busy launching hands-free voice interface integrations this year, and in February ChefSteps became the first cooking appliance company to launch a chatbot for cooking with their Facebook Messenger bot.

So what became of the meat marketplace teased by the company’s February job listing? According to ChefSteps CEO Chris Young, the idea was to create a nationwide marketplace for “sous vide ready ingredients during the holiday season last year in partnership with the Snake River Farms brand.” As part of the effort, they sell meats nationwide to help ChefSteps customers get, as Young put it, a “center-piece protein for their holiday meal.”

As they worked on the plan, ChefSteps realized that costs of setting up a nationwide delivery system would be too high at this time, so for now the company is content to work out the kinks while selling meat and delivering pre-cooked meals in the Seattle and Portland markets.

“We’re continuing to experiment based on the positive feedback we’re getting from our Seattle and Portland customers, and we’re very aware that we have customers across the United States,’ said Young. “We definitely want to be able to serve those customers asap, but only when we think our service will deliver the experience and value our customers expect from us.”

Make sure to subscribe to the Spoon newsletter to get it in your inbox. And don’t forget to check out the Smart Kitchen Summit, where ChefSteps CEO Chris Young and many others will speak at the first and only event about the future of food, cooking and the kitchen. 

Smart Kitchen Summit 2017 Announces First Round Of Speakers

The Smart Kitchen Summit is back for its third – and biggest – year yet. Heading back to Benaroya Hall on October 10 and 11 in Seattle, the Summit will once again bring together the who’s who of the smart kitchen world. A combination of leaders from the worlds of Big Food, tech, commerce, culinary, design, delivery and smart home, SKS speakers, sponsors and attendees represent some of the biggest names in their respective industries.

The 2017 Smart Kitchen Summit agenda will be live in the next few weeks, but the Summit crew has started to announce the first round of speakers for this year and it is filled with rockstar talent. Notable speakers this year include CTO of Barilla, Victoria Spadaro Grant who will speak to the role of technology and innovation in the world of Big Food as well as Neil Grimmer, CEO and founder of personalized meal kit delivery startup Habit.

Because the consumer kitchen and consumer food preferences are constantly being influenced, SKS will welcome Top Chef alum and owner of ink, Chef Michael Voltaggio.

The Summit will explore the how the smart appliance is changing in the face of new interface, delivery, commerce and technology models; appliance leaders Yoon Lee, senior VP of innovation at Samsung along with Ola Nilsson, CEO of Electrolux’s small appliance group will join us for those discussions.

With innovation in food tech and the connected kitchen moving so rapidly, Summit themes around business models and startups will help attendees think about their own product roadmaps and understand where the space is headed.  Evan Dash, CEO of StoreBound will be on hand to discuss how his company is helping to bring to market such products the the PancakeBot and SoBro, through a fully integrated model of a go-to-market pipeline.

The Smart Kitchen Summit has also drawn an elite group of journalists who are covering and looking at how technology is transforming the way we eat, shop for and cook our food. Maura Judkis, food and culture reporter for the Washington Post, Ashlee Clark Thompson, associate editor at CNET, Carley Knobloch from the HGTV Smart Home, Lisa McManus from America’s Test Kitchen, Keith Barry, editor-in-chief of Reviewed.com (owned by USA Today) and Amanda Rottier, Product Director of Cooking at the New York Times, will all help facilitate discussions.

Other 2017 Smart Kitchen Summit speakers include:

For the full list of speakers and 2017 sponsors and partners, visit the SKS website.

No other event brings together the decision makers and disrupters from across the food, cooking, appliance, retail and technology ecosystems like SKS. Join us on October 10 and 11 in Seattle to connect with new people, find partners, see the latest technology and startup demonstrations, hear the leaders of the space and make deals.

Early bird tickets are on sale now through July 31, 2017 and if you use code SPOON, you can get 20% off tickets through the end of this month. So, if you want to grab a front row seat as we map the future of cooking and the kitchen, register now.

Samsung Adds Bixby AI To Family Hub Fridges

When Samsung debuted Bixby, its AI-enabled home assistant on Galaxy S8 phones, we wondered how well it would do as an Amazon Echo or Google Home competitor. After all, carrying your phone from room to room to control your smart home with voice makes about as much sense as….carrying your phone room to room to control your smart home with an app.

But it didn’t take Samsung long to take Bixby out of the phone and put it in some of its existing smart appliances – namely, the mother of all smart appliances, the Samsung Family Hub 2.0.

The Family Hub debuted at CES several years ago, with a giant touchscreen interface on the front and all kinds of interesting kitchen functions, including grocery ordering and to-do lists for family members. But Samsung clearly had plans to use the technology they were building inside these fridges as more than just glorified tablets.

On Sunday, Samsung announced it will include Bixby’s AI functionality inside Family Hub fridges, allowing users to search for recipes and ask Bixby for news and weather – very similar to competitive AI-powered speakers. But the Family Hub also allows for food ordering through partners such as Nomiku (sous vide company making sous vide-ready meal kits) and Grubhub and with the native voice functions paired with the touchscreen, along with possible connectivity to Samsung’s other smart devices in the home, it makes for an interesting voice solution in the kitchen. Samsung recently invested in Nomiku as they launched their RFID meal kits and laid out clear plans to form a cohesive ecosystem in the kitchen.

According to Pulse News in Korea,

“Bixby’s deep learning will enable the fridge to control temperature automatically, call up recipes based on user’s eating habits or recommend favorite music.”

Samsung recently invested in Nomiku as they launched their RFID meal kits and laid out clear plans to form a cohesive ecosystem in the kitchen. From Mike’s piece on the investment and news, “Fetterman said Samsung plans integrate the Nomiku with their smart home platform, SmartThings….However, the consumer electronics giant has been fairly successful in their effort to integrate SmartThings with their various product lines in the home such as appliances and TVs. While Samsung had previously announced an integration of SmartThings with their own Wi-Fi ovens, Nomiku appears to be the first small precision cooking appliance integrated with the SmartThings smart home platform.”

Current Family Hub users can also get upgraded to include Bixby functionality inside their fridges through a software update – a nice feature for a pricey appliance that we’ve often wondered how appliance giants plan to support with new functionality coming out regularly.

The install of Bixby has just begun and the updates aren’t rolled out yet. But soon, the voice in the kitchen might be your fridge telling you what’s for dinner.

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

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

Enjoy!

Podcast: Nomiku’s Lisa Fetterman Talks New Hardware, Meal Kits & Samsung Investment

It was a big week for Lisa Fetterman, who not only was named top 30 under 30 by Inc. magazine, but her company also happened to drop the news of new hardware, a new meal delivery service and, to top it all off, an investment by Samsung Ventures.

I caught up with Lisa the day before the Nomiku made their big announcement. You can hear us talk about the latest Nomiku hardware, their entry into meal delivery and – bonus – hear Lisa give details about the planned integration of Nomiku with Samsung’s SmartThings and Family Hub refrigerator.

In the second half of the pod, you can also listen to super smart James Ehrlich of ReGen Villages talk about how he’s trying to create the Tesla of Ecovillages.

Have a listen!

With Investment In Nomiku, Samsung Expands Presence In The “Connected Kitchen”

Today Nomiku, maker of sous vide immersion circulators, announced their latest generation connected cooking appliance and the launch of a subscription meal service that will deliver frozen, pre-cooked meals that owners of the new Nomiku can cook in 30 minutes or less. As part of the announcement, Nomiku also announced that Samsung Ventures had invested in the company.

Food delivery marks an ambitious new direction for Nomiku, one of the original sous vide startups that has been shipping immersion circulators since 2013. By moving into subscription food delivery, Nomiku has its first business line with recurring revenue. The move also makes Nomiku one of the first companies to create a connected hardware device tied to a subscription meal service. While other companies such as Whirlpool and Barilla have been selling RFID powered cooking systems with specially designed packaged food for a couple years, and startup Tovala announced a meal subscription service tied to their cooking appliance last year, Nomiku appears to be the first to launch a meal subscription plan with intelligent auto-reordering built into the connected cooking appliance.

By offering fast-prep meals, Nomiku is also hoping to expose sous vide cooking to a wider audience. Sous vide is often seen as the domain of foodies, the types that are willing to wait longer for a cook to finish in exchange for a better tasting meal. By accelerating the cooking process, the company hopes to change the perception of sous vide circulators from a device synonymous with slow cooking to one that offers both convenience and better tasting food than other fast-cook methods such as microwave ovens.

Nomiku Pork Shoulder pre-cooked meal. Photography by Albert Law

The company plans to start small, shipping to 100 customers in May and expanding to a broader audience in the early summer time frame. The subscription food packages will be modular in nature, consisting of both “mains” and “sides” that can be mixed and matched. The average price of a meal is $15 and, after 20 or so meals, the company says it will credit the price of the Nomiku circulator ($149) towards meals.

The circulator is equipped with an RFID reader, which allows the user to scan an RFID tag on the meals and send the Nomiku circulator specific time and temperature settings for each dish. The device will also be synced with the customer’s existing food inventory and, according to Nomiku, will automatically reorder food when the meals left available are down to four.

The Samsung Connection

One of the most interesting aspects of today’s announcement is the Samsung connection. Samsung’s investment arm invested an undisclosed sum in the company, an amount that Fetterman calls “the most money any single investor has put into Nomiku”. The move marks the second investment in a precision cooking/sous vide startup by a large appliance maker in a short time period, coming just a couple months after the acquisition of Anova by Electrolux.

According to Fetterman, Samsung “is a logical partner for us because they do the connected home.” The investment in Nomiku is, according to Fetterman, a move by Samsung “to dominate the connected kitchen.”

Fetterman said Samsung plans integrate the Nomiku with their smart home platform, SmartThings. Samsung acquired SmartThings almost three years ago, and since that time has had somewhat mixed success in establishing the platform as one which other companies will commit to building around. However, the consumer electronics giant has been fairly successful in their effort to integrate SmartThings with their various product lines in the home such as appliances and TVs. While Samsung had prevously announced an integration of SmartThings with their own Wi-Fi ovens, Nomiku appears to be the first small precision cooking appliance integrated with the SmartThings smart home platform.

Fetterman also told The Spoon that Samsung plans to launch a Nomiku app for the Family Hub refrigerator. The app will come preloaded with the Family Hub and will control the Nomiku device directly from the fridge. Fetterman also believes existing Family Hub models will see in-field software updates that will install the Nomiku app on the connected fridge.

It will be interesting to see where Samsung takes this investment/partnership. I am sure they will be watching Nomiku’s efforts to enter food delivery closely since that business represents a new potential revenue stream for the company. The South Korean consumer electronics conglomerate displayed an early and aggressive embrace of the smart TV market and the associated revenue streams tied to apps included on these new devices. With their investment in Nomiku and the growth of the connected kitchen, one has to wonder if they possibly see food delivery as an enticing new service model in an era of ever-declining hardware margins.

To see Lisa Fetterman and other leaders talk about the future of the connected kitchen, come to the Smart Kitchen Summit. Get your tickets today.

Mellow’s Zé Pinto Ferreira On Flex Partnership, Smart Kitchen & Sous Vide

Last week, Mellow, the maker of an innovative sous vide system that includes features such as built-in refrigeration and a scale, announced a partnership with contract manufacturer Flextronics to help push the product into production.  That’s good news for Mellow’s early backers, since the $400 (presale price) product was expected to ship in early 2015.

But the announcement hinted at more than just a typical contract manufacturing relationship.  The two companies execs not only talked about bringing Mellow’s machine to market, but also said they would collaborate on future products. Adding to the intrigue is Flex, which had moved into the smart home when it acquired the business of distressed smart home company Wink from Quirky last year, sees the smart kitchen fitting nicely into the broader connected home.

From Flex’s president of Global Operations, Mechanical Technology Solutions, Gerhard Zebe: “We believe Mellow’s connected appliance could be an integral part of the smart home kitchen, and something consumers will want and enjoy.”

The Mellow smart sous vide machine

With news of this partnership for a company we’ve been tracking for the last two years, we decided to catch up via email with Mellow’s founder and CEO, Zé Pinto Ferreira, to ask him a few questions.

Below is our email interview. Answers have been edited slightly for brevity.

What is the nature of the partnership with Flextronics?

Ferreira: Flextronics has invested in Mellow in non-traditional ways (no equity or capital have been exchanged) that really come down to a much closer and more trusting working relationship than any customer I’ve ever seen have with a manufacturer. The best I can tell you is that Flex’s upper management is heavily involved in Mellow, and they’ve put a disproportionate amount of care in shipping the best possible product.

Mellow originally was intended to ship in early 2015. What was the reason for the delay in shipment?

Ferreira: The technology was harder to scale than we thought. That’s the hard part of building such a unique product, you never know what problems will show up when you scale from prototypes to mass production, especially when you have the standard for that quality we have. We’re on the cusp of shipping now, and we’re so proud of the product people will get.

The product is unique with its refrigeration and sous vide in one unit. Was trying to do both in one device a challenge?

Ferreira: It was insanely hard, but it was the only way to build the product we wanted to ship: a fully automated sous-chef that cooks while you’re away from home. Back when we started, lot of clever people thought what we were trying to do was impossible. We knew it wasn’t, and we’re about to prove it at scale.

Given how close Mellow is to production, how will things change with the partnership?  

Ferreira: The most exciting thing about a software-driven product like Mellow is that you’re not finished with it by the time it goes into a box. We’re shipping a simple proposition: An app and a device that make a great product together. But we’re extending that product to more platforms and integrations soon.

How do you see a sous vide maker benefitting from a partnership with a company that owns a smart home platform player like Wink?

Ferreira: We don’t see Mellow as a sous-vide device. Bear with me: It cooks food sous-vide, but it’s so different from everything else out there. Most sous-vide devices end up only being used for special occasions, and there’s a limited amount of work connectivity can do for you when you’re cooking a whole hog for 20 people. Mellow is made to be left at home cooking while you’re at work, so working together with the rest of the home to anticipate your needs/changes in your day makes a lot of sense to us.

Will your role change at all now with this partnership?

Ferreira: Not at all. Flex has been great at leaving us to do what we do best – designing a killer product for busy home cooks. Their interest is in taking our designs and making them at a level of quality where it can proudly be in any kitchen from day 1. Usually, when a hardware startup plays Apple, there’s a lot of compromise down the line. We haven’t had to compromise at all working with Flex, they understand our obsession with quality.

It’s been a few years since Mellow was announced. How has the market for consumer sous vide changed in this time?

Ferreira: We’ve seen a few new products come out since we announced, but nothing that really excites me. I have a Joule, Anova and Nomiku at home, and I get a lot of mileage out of them on special occasions, but I still haven’t’ seen anything that really screams mainstream. All (especially Chefsteps) are doing a great job with education and it shows in the category’s growth, but we’re still very far away from sous-vide being in every kitchen. In my opinion, that’s because circulators aren’t the tool for the job. But I’m pretty biased on that 😉

The Year In Smart Bar

Ah, 2016, the year we all needed to take a big ol’ drink. Fortunately a flurry of innovation in gadgets, apps, and platforms has helped make that easier in more ways than one. Here are the most notable happenings and advancements in the past 12 months.

Make It From Scratch

People have been home-brewing for decades, but in the past few years it’s reached a fever pitch, with every wannabe hipster (sorry, Mike) fermenting in their basement. The Pico simplifies this process with a plug-and-play model, including ready-to-brew PicoPak ingredient kits and the ability to brew five liters of craft beer in about two hours. Meanwhile Hopsy premiered its HomeTap so you can enjoy the mouthfeel of a freshly poured pint out of a tap, even if you didn’t brew the beer yourself. And just in case there’s not enough foam, get yourself the Sonic beer foamer device to add the perfect amount.

Even big players like Whirlpool entered this space in 2016: In July its crowdfunding project reached over 220 percent of its goal, and soon you’ll be able to buy the Vessi beer fermentor and dispenser for $1,800. (In other words, crowdfunding is finally legit, with Wired even profiling one of the first companies to run a successful crowdfunding campaign — for 3D-printed cocktail ice.) And foodie inventor Dave Arnold launched a crowdfunding campaign for his Spinzall, a small centrifuge designed for restaurant and home use for under $1,000.

Robotic Bartenders

The ready-to-drink (RTD) market is somewhere around $3 billion, and the hottest thing in the smart bar this year was clearly robotic bartenders. There are a spate of different companies vying for space: Bartesian raised an undisclosed sum, reportedly in the “millions”; Somabar raised $1.5 million; and Monsieur raised $1.2 million. In less professional news, the Open Bar robot was submitted to the 2016 Hackaday Prize contest and is actually open source, so all you eager coders can help perfect it.

Expect the playing field to become even more crowded in the next year with lookalike companies proving our eternal interest in robots.

Pour Yourself the Perfect Drink

Apps for the perfect cocktail, beer, and so on abounded this year. Competing with the Perfect Drink smart bartending platform, the Bernooli device and app make it easy to make a balanced drink, and even Alexa can help you figure out how to make a cocktail or give you wine recommendations. And Spanish chemists have created an app that will tell you if your beer is, for lack of a better word, skunked.

Meanwhile Hooch doesn’t want you to drink at home, alone: The company raised $1.5 million to expand its subscription platform that gives you one drink for free at bars all over New York and Los Angeles.

Totally Unnecessary Technology

What kind of year would it be without some totally ridiculous, over-the-top technology that we don’t need? A boring one, that’s what.

Enter the data cocktail machine that makes cocktails from tweets. Yes, the Arduino-powered robot pulls the latest five tweets from around the world that mention ingredients and then mashes them into a cocktail. Surprisingly, there aren’t any plans to commercialize the machine.

But who knows: 2017 is a whole new year.