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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

refrigerator

Tomorrow Wants To Reinvent The Refrigerator to Make Fresh Food Last Longer

If there’s one appliance category in the kitchen that’s stayed stuck in time, it’s the refrigerator. Sure, cool new features like see-through doors and touchscreens have been added to some models, but in reality, the fridge has largely remained the same for most of the past century: a big, cold box where we put food inside and hope we remember to eat it.

A new Seattle-based startup called Tomorrow hopes to change that with their eponymous new refrigerator, the Tomorrow Fridge.

So how is the Tomorrow Fridge different? The company is keeping most details under wraps for now, but according to CEO Andrew Kinzer, the main difference is in how the Tomorrow Fridge treats fresh produce. Kinzer says the typical modern refrigerator is built to extend the life of produce through dehumidification, or the drying out of air to slow spoilage.

“What most people don’t know is that that stuff’s actually alive,” Kinzer told The Spoon. “It’s got metabolism, it’s breathing, it’s generating heat and carbon dioxide.”

In fact, pretty much all modern refrigerators function like dehumidifiers, drying out fruits and vegetables. While this helps eliminate mold, it also leads to more rapid spoilage.

“Anytime you see carrots that get really bendy, broccoli that gets kind of floppy, or lettuce that looks sad, that’s water loss,” Kinzer explained.

Kinzer says the Tomorrow Fridge will be able to adjust the environment in different storage spaces within the fridge to better preserve fresh produce.

While Kinzer and Tomorrow aren’t sharing specific details about their cooling system, he did reveal that they’ve filed for a patent and plan to release more information as they approach the fridge’s 2025 delivery date.

Another big feature of the Tomorrow Fridge is its ability to track what’s inside. Kinzer says the fridge will have overhead cameras to monitor inventory and help households plan meals. By leveraging AI-based large language models, the fridge can suggest recipes or notify users of what’s running low. This feature will be accessible through the Tomorrow Fridge app.

Unfortunately, we don’t yet have a clear picture of what the fridge will look like, feature specifics (such as whether it will include a freezer), or pricing. The company is keeping most details secret for now. One feature it won’t include, according to Kinzer, is gas-detecting sensors like those hinted at in Amazon’s patent or found in products like BlakBear food storage containers.

No matter what features the Tomorrow Fridge ultimately offers, we’ll be keeping an eye out. Readers of The Spoon know I’ve often bemoaned the lack of innovation in refrigerators. Sure, there are occasional new takes, like Samsung’s Family Hub or futuristic patents, but for the most part, fridges remain big, cold, air-drying boxes where a large percentage of our food goes bad.

Let’s hope the Tomorrow Fridge delivers on finally bringing some fresh ideas to the fridge.

CES 2021: LG to Unveil New Knock-Knock Fridge with UV Cleaning and Voice Control

In a normal year, right about now we would be busy packing and prepping for the annual trip to the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Vegas. Even though we won’t be boarding a plane to attend, CES has gone virtual and there is still a bunch of news that will be coming out of the show.

News like LG’s announcement today about its new InstaView fridge that will be officially unveiled at CES. The new fridge features an enhanced knock-knock see-through door, UVNano technology for the water dispenser and voice controls.

The InstaView has always been a fun fridge because of the knock-knock capability, which allows you to knock twice on the fridge to make the glass panel built into the door change from opaque to transparent. This handy feature lets you see what you have inside the fridge without opening the doors and letting all the cold air out. The new InstaView panel is 23 percent larger than previous models allowing users to see even more of what’s inside.

LG has also outfitted the new fridge with UVNano technology to the built-in water dispenser. The new feature uses light to create a more hygienic water dispenser, with UVNano operating “once every hour to remove up to 99.99 percent of bacteria” on the refrigerator’s tap.

Voice control is also coming to the new LG InstaView fridge. Hands full of groceries you need to put away? No problem. Just tell the InstaView to “Open the refrigerator door” and the fridge pops open. Users can also their voice to check the status of ice and water dispensers and order more filters.

If all that isn’t enough to entice you, the new InstaView also comes with a craft ice maker, which makes 2 inch, slow-melting ice balls that won’t water down your craft cocktail.

All this InstaView news is, err, cool, but considering CES is just two weeks away, stay tuned. The kitchen appliance space is just warming up.

Speaking of kitchen tech and events, you’ll want to be there for the third annual Food Tech Live. Since we can’t be in Vegas for CES, we’re taking our annual food tech innovation showcase virtual on Jan 11th, so you can join us from anywhere in the world. Register here.

FirstBuild Hackathon Produces “My Fridge Safe,” a Lockable Drawer for Your Fridge

Affixing a padlock to your fridge to help was a pretty standard joke/plausible weight loss solution in the sitcoms and cartoons of my youth. The “My Fridge Safe” puts a modern twist on that old saw using a Raspberry Pi, an electromagnetic lock and a power supply.

Created at the recent FirstBuild (which is backed by GE Appliances) 2018 “Hack the Home” Hackathon, “My Fridge Safe” was built in 35 hours and beat out hundreds of competitors to win first place and take home $3,000.

From the official press announcement:

“Josh Weil, Eric Ott and Alex Vance, a trio of local makers competing in their third FirstBuild hackathon, invented a locking drawer inside a refrigerator designed to keep medications, alcohol and even food safely locked away from children.”

Here’s a video that demonstrates the lock in action.

As refrigerators become smarter, packed with more features and the center of our digital kitchen, it’s easy to see this type of drawer lock becoming a common option. Though one can imagine the locking mechanism evolving into something more robust and incorporating a keypad on a fridge touchscreen, or event recognized voice activation through a built-in Alexa. Or on a more enterprise-y level, office fridges with locks so people can’t steal your tuna salad sandwich.

In addition to stowing away booze and meds, there are also less severe uses like keeping sweets away from kids — or, you know, yourself — without having to bolt anything on to your refrigerator door.

The IFA 2017 Smart Refrigerator Roundup

Fridges are sexy again.

Ok, so maybe they weren’t ever sexy in the first place, but if you were at IFA this past week, you would have seen a host of fridges with interactive touchscreens, image recognition software, internal cams and even the ability to move around the home and deliver a frosty one.

If this year’s CES and IFA are any indications, the fridge is fast becoming the focal point for many appliance makers, who are jumping at the opportunity to remake their product with advanced hardware and software that transform their fridges into the smart kitchen – and smart home – hubs.

Let’s take a quick look at some of the fridges that were on display at IFA:

Haier Link Cook Series

Haier showed off their Link Cook series of smart refrigerators, a new line of products that looks similar in feature set to the Samsung Family Hub refrigerator.

Haier smart fridge "Link Cook" @IFA 2017

The Link Cook series of fridges is part of a broader lineup from Haier. According to Ashlee Clark Thompson at CNET, the Link Cook is part of “Haier’s U+ Smart Home Platform, which connects the Link Cook Series to a Haier oven and range hood. According to Haier, you’ll be able to select a recipe on the refrigerator, automatically send the heating instructions to the oven and view the recipe on a small screen on the range hood.”

At this point, Haier is vague on timing and pricing. It will be interesting to see is if Haier’s new fridge eventually enters the US market under the GE brand.

Samsung’s Family Hub

Samsung tends to make its biggest news at CES, but it had a nice update on some new features and partner integrations for its flagship smart fridge at IFA.

While the company has had voice commands (both Alexa and its voice assistant, Bixby), they announced expanded voice command features at IFA. From the press release: “Family Hub’s voice capabilities provide a new way to interact with the refrigerator. Users can ask for the time and weather updates, search the internet, read news articles, play music and radio, add items to their shopping list, and even view inside of the refrigerator without opening the door.”

It also became more evident that Samsung sees their Family Hub as the central command center for the smart home. They teased this at CES and at the Smart Kitchen event at Samsung’s NYC location in June, but now users can use the Samsung Connect smart home features from the fridge. Samsung Connect, based on the SmartThings platform (which Samsung acquired a few years ago), is now built into the fridge.

Panasonic’s Mobile Fridge

Panasonic turned in one of the most intriguing showings of IFA as far as future kitchen tech is concerned, showing off an AI-powered kitchen assistant and a combo microwave-steam oven, but the show stealer was their moveable fridge named “Cool.”  Cool utilizes similar technology employed by any number of robot vacuums in that it has internal sensors that measure the distance between itself and obstacles in its way like, say, a kitchen island, and continuously develops a map and improves its understanding of the overall home layout as moves around.

Cool, which is about the size of a dormitory fridge, does not currently have a price or ship date.

Smarter/Liebherr

The smart fridge showing at IFA wasn’t all touch screens and robot fridges. Smarter, the smart kitchen appliance startup from the UK founded by Dragon Den wunderkind Christian Lane and his wife Isabella, showed off production models of the smart fridge cam is debuted last year at IFA and also had a major partner announcement. The company announced that their FridgeCam smart fridge camera would ship with every smart refrigerator from German industrial conglomerate Liebherr, the biggest privately held manufacturer of refrigerators in the EU (and also the inventor of the tower crane).  The deal is a good one for Smarter. While the announcement did not break out what percentage of total volume from the German manufacturer is smart, the company ships an estimated 2 million fridges per year.

The Rise of the Smart Fridge

In many ways, this focus on the fridge by big appliance manufacturer makes sense. In many homes, the fridge is the central focal point of the kitchen, where pictures, school assignments, and shopping lists go. Why not digitize that?

The fridge is also where the bulk of our fresh food is stored, all of which have a limited lifespan. Smarter fridges could help us manage this inventory and make sure we waste less (and keep us from buying redundant food that will inevitably be wasted).

Lastly, no platform really dominates the kitchen screen, but with the rise of guided cooking, the growing popularity of food and cooking content, and more and smarter appliances to manage, the front of the fridge makes sense for that big attractive touchscreen.

And of course, there are those of us there are who have long dreamed of a day when a robot assistant could bring us a beer. Just who could have predicted that robot would also be a fridge?

Samsung Continues to Push the Smart Fridge Envelope at CES 2017

Samsung continues to push forward with its vision of the smart refrigerator as the center of the smart kitchen with the announcement of its Smart Hub 2.0 model (dubbed Family Hub 2.) at 2017 CES. Family Hub 2.0 represents an update to the company’s flagship 1.0 version announced at the 2016 CES. Family Hub 2.0 will be expanded into 10 new models as opposed to four which featured the initial version.

Improving upon such features as its voice controller, Samsung announced new application partners such as  GrubHub, Nomiku, Glympse, Ring, Spotify, and iHeartRadio. In Europe, Samsung is working with local home grocery services to add greater consumer convenience, and with music/audio services, the new Family Hub can offer the latest tunes, news headlines and weather reports from a central family gathering place.

Family Hub 2.0 has increased its usability by offering an internal camera to keep track of what food needs to be replenished and then connecting to a MasterCard grocer-ordering app. Integration with AllRecipes allows cooks to connect to recipes that can be read in large text via a 21.5-inch LED screen. As a smart hub, individual family members can set up their own profiles and use the built-in screen to create shopping lists, calendars, and memos.

The new Family Hub 2.0 smart refrigerators start at $5,799, not exactly priced for mass consumption. Samsung continues to have faith in the smart fridge category, firmly believing that the refrigerator is a logical hub for other IoT appliances in the smart kitchen including its new line of ovens. Beyond the kitchen, if Samsung were able to tie together its various point-solution hubs from around the home (using its IoT platform ARTIK) it could become a dominant player in the world of IoT.

LG also announced a new smart refrigerator at CES 2017, the InstaView model with its standout feature being integration with Amazon’s Echo to provide voice-control. Echo’s Alexa voice assistant can be used to order groceries from the Seattle-based retailer with Amazon software built into the appliance. A 2-megapixel camera with a wide-angle lens will allow consumers to see what food needs to be reordered via the 29-inch LED screen built into the front of the appliance.

Running on the same WebOS as LG smart TVs, pricing and availability of the InstaView was not announced.

Whirlpool, who won a CES 2017 innovation award for its Zera food recycler, announced new technology for its line of refrigerators including a door within a door, but has yet to come out with a smart fridge.

Reinventing Refrigeration With Phononic’s Tony Atti

Over the past 10 years, the world of lighting has witnessed a massive transformation. Old incandescent bulbs have given way to modern technology in the form of solid state, more commonly known as LED lighting.

Now, some in the world of refrigeration are hoping for a similar reinvention by replacing traditional vapor compression cooling systems with new thermoelectric cooling systems powered by a centuries old physics concept called the Peltier Effect.

While Peltier coolers have been around for decades, they’ve mostly been restricted to niche applications like telecom wiring closets. But now, a company called Phononic thinks they’ve cracked the code on making thermoelectric/solid state cooling mass market.

We talk to the CEO of Phononic Tony Atti about their efforts to take this technology out of labs and into the mass market.

Phononic Gets $40 Million To Help Reinvent Refrigeration

So now that you’ve installed those solar panels, drive a Tesla and even take the blue line into work now and then to make sure you’re doing your part for the environment, you’re feeling pretty good about yourself, aren’t you?

Well before you go bragging about the size of your carbon footprint over Thanksgiving dinner, you might want to consider how you’ve done absolutely nothing to reduce those harmful ozone-killing refrigerants from that old refrigerator humming away in the garage.

But don’t worry, you might have bragging rights for that fridge soon too. That’s because a thermal cooling startup, Phononic, is trying to reinvent refrigeration by embracing solid state cooling techniques, not only in consumer refrigerators but pretty much anywhere in your home that needs cooling.

How is solid state any different from that old Kenmore buzzing away in your garage? In short, solid state refrigerators use semiconductor technology instead of the gas compressor-based systems that make up the vast majority of residential refrigeration. Solid state is the same foundational tech used in LED lighting, and much like the technology was able to reduce energy consumption drastically in pretty much any form of lighting, it can do the same with cooling as well.

And what about you climate change deniers? Phononic has you covered too, since not only will solid-state refrigeration reduce your energy bill, but it will add significant space to any refrigerator since solid state cooling requires much less space than traditional gas compressor refrigeration.

Today Phononic announced they raised $40 million to add to a $71 million C round of funding. And while this post in Techcrunch focuses mainly on commercial refrigeration, Phononic has made it clear it wants to bring it’s solid state cooling technology to residential refrigerators and pretty much anywhere in the home that you might want to keep things chilly.

So not only can you soon brag about your energy and environment-friendly fridge, you might also want to take them downstairs to see that new solid state wine cooler too.