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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Plum

BSH Partners with Plum to Make Next-Gen Kitchen Appliances

BSH Appliances North America has partnered up with a wine-appliance maker Plum to create “next generation kitchen appliances,” according to an announcement made by the two companies this week.

From the announcement:

 BSH Home Appliances Corporation, the manufacturer of home appliances known across North America for high quality and superior innovation, and Plum, the creator of the first fully-automated appliance transforming wine by the glass, announce they have entered into a strategic partnership to explore potential smart appliances for the kitchen.

The headline of the announcement makes it sound like this could be something big. After all, the term “next-generation kitchen appliances” sounds important. My guess, however, is that the two companies are basically working on a wine dispenser for the Thermador brand, which is part of the North American division of BSH Appliances Group.

Why? First off, Plum makes wine chillers and dispensers. That’s it. Up to this point, it hasn’t appeared to actually have any bigger appliance aspirations.

Second, this looks like it’s a strictly North American effort, not part of the broader smart appliances efforts driven out of the BSH’s global headquarters in Germany. The global holding company, BSH Home Appliances Group, has its own smart home platform in Home Connect, an investment in Chefling (a smart kitchen software platform), and partnerships with the likes of SideChef. None of those, from the looks of it, are involved in this effort.

Not that a wine appliance for Thermador isn’t interesting. While there are a few appliance brands like Samsung and LG that have built wine refrigerators for the home, no big brand has yet to make a smart wine dispenser.

And the Thermador brand makes sense since it’s both a purely North American-centric brand and also a high-end appliance for people who, most likely, drink some wine.

As for Plum, the deal is interesting in that it looks like the first partnership for the company with a larger appliance brand, and when you look at the company’s leadership, BSH North America makes sense. Company CEO, Michael Traub, joined Plum last year after heading up mattress company Serta. Before that? He was president and CEO of . . . BSH Home Appliances North America.

Market Map: Booze Tech in 2019

From countertop devices used in the home kitchen to delivery services, the number of avenues in which companies can get booze to customers has expanded in recent years. And since it’s still the time of year when drinking on patios is a popular sport, we decided to focus our latest market map on all the tech out there currently changing the alcohol space.

In the U.S., alcohol consumption has actually stagnated, according to IWSR, but part of this is due to consumers now seeking quality over quantity when it comes to their drinking. Which might explain the rise in the number of companies offering recommendations apps that rate beers, wines, and spirits as well as at-home devices for the kitchen countertop that give the user a little more control over the quality of their drinks.

For The Spoon’s Booze Tech in 2019 market map, we divvied the market up into several categories where technology is making the biggest impact on the way people get, create, and consume beer, wine, and spirits. That’s everything from apps that update you on the best craft beers available to at-home bartending devices that let you release your inner mixologist to the many ways in which companies are making it possible to get the booze delivered right to your doorstep. We’ve narrowed the companies down to a collection of startups and major corporations alike. As with any post that outlines a market, this list isn’t exhaustive. So if you have thoughts and tips for who else you’d like to see here, feel free to drop us a line.

While we’re on the subject of maps, be sure to check out our 2019 Food Robotics market map and our Food Waste Innovation in 2019 map.

Booze Tech in 2019

Kuvée, Maker of Connected Wine Dispensers, Is Shutting Down

Kuvée, a maker of connected wine dispensers, is shutting down.

In an email sent to customers today, Kuvée CEO Vijay Manwani said the company, which had raised nearly $10 million in funding, would need to raise significantly more in order to educate the market and have a “louder voice”. Because of this, the company would be closing effective immediately.

For those not familiar with the Kuvée products, the company makes smart wine dispensers that extend the life of a bottle anywhere from 30-60 days. The company’s wine preservation technology utilizes a proprietary bottle system and they monetize through wine subscriptions send new wine bottles to a customer’s home each month.

From the email:

Thank you for being our companion in our journey to redefine the wine experience. Wine is meant to be enjoyed by the glass (not by the bottle) and four years ago, we built Kuvée and a great portfolio of wines to deliver just that experience.

Building a better wine bottle, the Kuvée FreshPour bottle, that keeps wine from spoiling for 30 to 60 days, was no easy task. It took an enormous amount of innovation, sensory testing and collaboration with open-minded and forward looking winery partners to make that a reality. Combined with our Kuvée Connect dispenser and the Kuvee.com website, we delivered a wine experience that freed you, our customers, to enjoy wine on your terms – what you want, when you want them.

We achieved all of this with an amazing team of 20 passionate and highly skilled professionals, all driven by the common goal to deliver this better wine experience.

However, it became clear that, to properly educate the market, we would need a much louder voice and considerably more capital. The last year’s Napa fires, affected our ability to scale our customer base over the holiday season and hence our ability to raise the funds required to continue building awareness of Kuvée.

Therefore, it is with great sadness and a heavy heart we are announcing that all Kuvée business operations will cease effective today.

Manwani went on to say the company is looking for a buyer for the (patented) technology and will be fire-selling the rest of their wine inventory over the next week.

While the story of Kuvée might make you a bit skeptical about wine tech, other companies like Coravin and Plum are doing quite well with new-fangled dispensing systems. Coravin, which has raised over $60 million in funding, has become immensely popular among wine enthusiasts for its argon-based preservation system that lets you dispense wine without pulling the cork.  The Plum wine dispensing appliance also uses argon and has been growing popularity as well.

I also suspect Kuvée suffered from what is often a fatal mistake among young startups: trying to hold customers captive within in a product “walled garden” that limits choice rather than adapting to consumer buying behavior. Unlike Coravin which allows the wine drinker to connect to any bottle of wine, Kuvée essentially required the customer to buy wine bottled in their proprietary bottles. While the company had some decent wine partners to choose from as part of their subscription program, my guess is customers just don’t buy wine that way and weren’t willing to limit their choices.

Kuvée also targeted the consumer market almost exclusively, while Coravin has been able to tap into the restaurant and pro-market where preserving expensive bottles of wine is a real problem.

Plum Raises $9 Million To Create An AI-Powered Keg For Wine

One of the worst things about opening a bottle of wine and not finishing it – aside from the lack of drunkenness – is the shortened shelf-life that bottle now has. Once air hits the wine, oxidation kicks in and at first may allow the beverage to open up but will eventually cause the wine to go bad.

That is the main problem driving wine startup Plum, a company that’s created and patented a smart wine serving appliance (aka a fancy keg for wine) that preserves a bottle of wine for 90 days, allowing single serving pours for up to three months. Plum has just raised a Series A round of $9 million and plans to ship pre-ordered systems this fall. Similar attempts have been made to create devices to make serving beer more enjoyable and close to an “on-tap” experience but Plum claims to have the first appliance that “automatically preserves, chills and serves wine by the glass” in the home market.

Plum has several unique features and requires very little of the consumer to get started. Place a 750 mL bottle of wine into the appliance’s chamber and close the door. The machine’s specialized (and patent-pending) needle will pierce whatever material surrounds the bottle’s opening and extract wine while also injecting argon gas to prevent oxidation.

The appliance is pretty high-tech too: with built-in cameras along with a cloud database of over 6 million wines, Plum will read the wine label and identify on the touchscreen what bottle is inside. The company claims the device is able to accurately identify wine’s 95% of the time. Plum is a good example of the growth in the use of cameras inside cooking and storage appliances paired with cloud intelligence to enhance the consumer experience with food and beverages.

The machine also chills the wine based on the varietal but can be manually adjusted by the user. And the life of the argon gas chamber is up to 200 bottles (refills are $29) so Plum’s initial longevity can be pretty long, depending on your individual drinking habits. The price of Plum’s smart wine appliance isn’t cheap – one system will set you back $1499 and the company is still taking preorders with plans to ship in “fall 2017.”

The $9 million investment, led by Khosla Ventures (Hampton Creek, InstaCart, Consumer Physics) and Las Olas Venture Capital along with other angel investors from the tech, wine and hospitality markets. The company says the investment will be used to take the smart appliance to the hospitality industry, allowing hotels to put Plum in guest rooms to deliver a better “mini-bar” experience and adding another in-room revenue source. Plum has already inked deals with big hotel chains including Four Seasons, Hilton, Marriott and the Hyatt among others.