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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

RF Cooking

Miele Shipping the Dialog, Their Oven With Solid State Cooking Tech, to 20 Countries

In 2017, Miele had attendees at Germany’s big appliance fair, IFA, raving with a demo of a new appliance called the Dialog.

The appliance, which uses solid state cooking technology instead of the more antiquated technology featured in microwave ovens, was an exciting development because it was the first time a high end consumer appliance brand had introduced a product with the cutting edge technology.

However, after 2017 we heard little about the Dialog. Sure, at IFA 2018 the German company talked up a meal delivery service through a partnership with another German company MChef, but, other than that, details of when the Dialog would be available were few and far between.

So imagine my surprise when Miele told me this month that the Dialog is now shipping in 20 countries. According to Miele spokeswoman Julie Cink, the Dialog is currently available in European countries such as “Germany (of course), Austria, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Italy or Great Britain.”

Cink said that in the second quarter of this year, the Dialog will be available in additional European countries such as France, Norway and Greece.

Still no word on when the Dialog will be available in the US. Miele’s executive director and namesake Markus Miele told me via email the holdup is because the required regulatory approval for the Dialog’s RF technology would require significant adaptations to the product.

“The regulations concerning the use of the frequencies are very different and so we have to modify the appliance (a lot),” wrote Miele.

The price tag on the Dialog is high, but in line with what you’d expect for a premium brand like Miele’s biggest product launch in years: 7,990 Euros.

MChef Meal Service Available Across Germany

I was also interested to find out that the meal delivery service we wrote about in 2018 is also available across Germany.

From Miele’s website:

“Customers can order individual dishes or three-course menus for the discerning from MChef, which are then shipped on elegant porcelain plates together with a matching wine to addresses throughout Germany.”

The meal service offers up to 20 different dishes which, according to Miele, are delivered via a “patented transport crate which guarantees freshness; used crockery is returned to the empty crate which is picked up and returned.”

Bottom line, the availability of the Dialog is a big deal and an overall win for solid state cooking. Most appliance companies I’ve talked to are working on developing their own RF cooking appliances, but have yet to push them to market because of the high price tag of the technology. With the Dialog now available, I expect that will put some pressure on other premium brands to look to accelerate their own pushes towards solid state cooking.

Scoop: Omidyar Invests in Markov, A Startup Building An AI To Change Cooking

Last week we learned about Spero Ventures, a new $100 million investment fund that had been spun out of the Omidyar Network. According to Forbes, the new venture fund has eBay founder Pierre Omidyar as its sole limited partner and counts a company called Markov as one of its first investments.

What exactly the still-stealth Markov does is a mystery, at least until you do a little digging. Markov’s team includes much of the founding team behind the retail point of sale startup Clover Network (including CEO Leonard Speiser), as well as engineers from the likes of Facebook, Linkedin, and Google. While neither Markov’s website nor Crunchbase details how much the company has raised (as of this writing Crunchbase didn’t even have Markov listed), the company subtly lets us know this information via Linkedin, where the company profile says they’ve raised $20 million.

What do they plan to build with that money? Markov’s website uses purposefully vague language about what exactly it does (“The Markov Corporation builds products that can see the world, understand it, and then take an action”), but does say they are building “convolutional neural networks and deep reinforcement learning combined with hardware to make magic.” Their Linkedin page indicates they are building AI that will automate hardware that does “boring work”.

AI. Automation. Neural networks. While that sounds like any number of pitches coming out of silicon valley nowadays, things got interesting for me when I saw how the company’s head of channel sales, Rich Miller, describes Markov: “Revolutionizing a space that hasn’t seen innovations in decades using Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence, and Computer Vision to change the way food is cooked in commercial applications.”

Based on that description, we can surmise that company is building AI for cooking. In a way that sounds similar to the technology behind June, which uses computer vision and machine learning to help their high-end consumer smart oven cook, only Miller indicates Markov’s target market is commercial kitchens.

All of which what makes what I found next even more interesting: two patent applications from the company’s founders. According to the first patent application entitled “Electronic oven with infrared evaluative control“, the company has developed technology for a control system that utilizes infrared camera sensors to assist in the cooking process. The patent application describes how they plan to use an infrared camera as part of a learning and control system that will more evenly apply heat as compared to a more traditional microwave oven.

This patent application appears to be related to another a patent application from the company founders called “Electronic oven with reflective energy steering“, which describes a way to use RF/microwave energy to more precisely and evenly apply the heat within the cooking chamber. This patent application includes an image that compares and contrasts cooking eggs with a traditional microwave:

To a system (using the technology in the patent) that more evenly applies energy:

Based on these clues it looks like Markov has developed an AI controlled electronic cooking appliance that utilizes infrared vision to gather data as part of a control system that more precisely and evenly applies electromagnetic energy to heat and cook food. While we have no idea if this is all Markov has developed – there might be a lot more they are working on – that they’ve applied for patents for this lets us know it’s what they see as one of their main core technologies.

It’s interesting to note that there has been significant IP built over the past couple years for new solid state cooking systems that use RF energy in the cooking process.  The demo from Miele at IFA showed off an oven that utilizes solid state cooking with technology that applies RF energy with surgical precision.  Early in 2017, the IBEX One, a solid state cooking appliance for pro kitchens, was announced as well with similar technology.

How exactly this Omidyar-invested company’s technology will be used in practice is where things could get interesting, so we’ll be keeping an eye out for further developments.

Miele Introduces The Dialog, A High-End Oven Powered By RF Solid State Cooking Technology

Over the past few weeks, high-end appliance manufacturer Miele hinted at a forthcoming new product they said would reinvent cooking.  The luxury provider of ovens and other home appliances invited journalists from around the globe to join them in Berlin to get a first hand look at this miraculous new product they planned to unveil at IFA, Europe’s largest consumer electronics trade show.

And so this week at a splashy launch event complete with celebrity chefs and multi-course meals, Miele unveiled the Dialog, a new wall oven powered by RF solid state cooking technology.

RF solid state cooking uses radio frequency powered by semiconductor technology as a heat source, unlike traditional microwaves which use antiquated technology (by today’s standards) originally developed for radars used for military applications in World War 2. And unlike microwave technology, RF cooking allows for much higher precision cooking because the RF signals provide a feedback loop to help the oven understand and target specific zones within the cooking cavity.

An illustration of RF solid-state cooking utilizing closed-loop feedback to target heating

And while the introduction of the Dialog marks the first time a luxury home wall oven brand will incorporate RF solid state cooking technology into one of its products, Miele is not the first company to announce (nor ship) a solid state RF cooking product.  Two very different products were announced last year from Wayv Technologies and Midea. The Wayv Adventurer, which was originally expected to reach market this year, is a portable RF cooking device. Midea, a Chinese appliance manufacturer, announced they were working on a product called the ‘Semiconductor Heating Magic Cube’.

And while neither of those products have shipped, the IBEX One, a cooking appliance targeted for the professional kitchen, has. The IBEX One is a new product from commercial kitchen equipment conglomerate ITW, the company behind well known pro kitchen brands such as Vulcan and Hobart. The IBEX One, which has a MSRP of $18,000, is targeted at high-volume fast casual and lodging food establishments.

So while the Miele Dialog may not be the first product to have RF solid state cooking built in, there’s no doubt that the entry by a luxury brand will raise the awareness of the technology and spur other brands to accelerate plans to introduce their own RF cooking products into the consumer market. Companies like Whirlpool and Panasonic have already spent significant effort researching RF energy technology. Both are ‘promoter members’ of the RF Energy Alliance, an organization focused on creating awareness for RF energy applications like RF solid state cooking.  Both Midea and Miele are members of the group.

The Miele announcement is a big win for Goji Food Solutions, a company which has 147 issued patents in the area of solid stage RF heating. The company is a spin-out of Hobart Group, where Goji founder and chairman Shlomo Ben-Haim amassed hundreds of patents around the use of RF energy for medical applications. The Miele announcement is the first design win publicly announced utilizing Goji’s technology.

The early reviews of the Dialog are impressive as the company pulled out all the stops to showcase the unique power of RF cooking. At the launch event this week, the company wowed the audience by cooking fish enclosed within a block of ice, a clever way to demonstrate the high precision heat targeting capabilities of RF cooking. RF solid state cooking from Goji utilizes algorithms to interpret sensing data gathered from what is a feedback loop from signals used to heat the food, allowing the oven to target very precise cooking zones (including, as demonstrated, fish within ice).  This type of demonstration is a powerful way to showcase the differences between RF cooking and microwave technologies, and judging by the early reviews it certainly seemed to capture the imagination of journalists.

In addition to RF cooking, the Miele Dialog also incorporates cooking automation capabilities that mixes the capabilities of RF cooking and the other heating methods incorporated into the product such as convection and broiling.

The Miele Dialog is expected to ship next April and will have an MSRP of around $10 thousand.  The product will first be made available in Europe and is expected to eventually make it to the US market.

Want to learn more about RF solid-state cooking? Listen to my podcast with Goji Solutions President Yuval Ben-Haim and hear Ben-Haim and others talk about RF cooking at the Smart Kitchen Summit in October. 

Happy 50th Birthday, Microwave. Here’s Why You Won’t Make It To 100

Happy 50th birthday, microwave oven.

This year, the ubiquitous cooking box born out of an accidental discovery by a Ratheon military researcher has reached the half century mark, and as the last new cooking appliance category to become indispensable in nearly every American home, it’s certainly a milestone worth celebrating.

However, there are signs that the fast-cook workhorse will soon be on the decline as newer, better technologies make their way to market. On this 50 year celebration of the microwave, let’s consider how pervasive they’ve become and the many reasons the microwave oven will not be around for its hundredth birthday.

Surpassing Oven and Ranges

Ever since Amana introduced the first countertop unit back in 1967, consumers have embraced the convenience of the microwave. They helped usher in an era of fast-cook food like microwave popcorn and pizza, and as the microwave became cheap and plentiful in the 70s, they were soon everywhere.

Eventually the microwave rivaled traditional ovens and ranges in adoption, and today there are more microwaves sold quarterly than gas ranges.

Microwave Unit Shipments 2005-2017. Source: Statista

Still, for all its success, the microwave’s future is in doubt.  Perhaps the biggest reason is that while the microwave is fast and efficient, it’s actually pretty poor at its job. Not only do microwaves cook and reheat food unevenly, they are not good at cooking multiple items simultaneously.

And it’s these shortcomings that have opened the door for newer technologies such as…

Here Comes RF Cooking

RF cooking, which utilizes solid state (semiconductor) technology in place of the microwave’s old school technology, cooks with a much higher degree of precision.

Here’s what you can do with an RF cooking enabled oven:

  • Cook multiple foods at once within the same cooking chamber at different temperatures
  • Can sense when a food is done
  • Cook evenly across and through an entire piece of food rather than the uneven cooking results you get with a microwave

There are multiple companies with RF cooking technology products in development. One is Goji Food Solutions, which originally developed its RF cooking technology for medical applications as a way to heat tissue evenly. The company claims to have 147 issued patents in the area of RF solid state heating and another 76 pending. Other companies, such as NXP, have chip solutions that early system builders are bringing to market. Lastly, there is an industry consortium called the RF Energy Alliance that includes Whirlpool as a founding member that is working on standards for solid state RF technology.

Let’s Get Steamed

Tovala Oven

For many years, the combi oven has become the darling of chefs for its ability to combine multiple cooking modes (convection, steam, combination) into one and its ability to produce delicious food. However, despite its many advantages, the combi oven has been relegated mostly to the pro kitchen despite efforts by high end manufacturers such as Miele and Jenn-Air to bring to the home.

But that may change soon, as companies such as Anova and Tovala to bring low-cost counter top combi ovens to market for under $500.  The Tovala oven first sold to backers through a crowdfunding campaign and will be available for under $400 this year, while the Anova oven, which is expected to ship in mid-2018, will sell for under $500 when available.

The Instant Pot Generation: Slower Cooking Takes Hold

Lastly, while we may never see an end to prepackaged convenience food, it’s safe to say the heyday of the Hot Pocket is well past us. More and more Millennials are embracing slow cooking by using revamped old-school products with modern tech flourishes like the Instant Pot. This multifunction pressure cooker has become a phenomenon, garnering over 18 thousand reviews on Amazon to become the #1 overall product in the kitchen and dining category.

The Instant Pot

By adding multiple cooking types beyond just pressure cooking such as rice and yogurt mode as well as processor-driven programmable cook modes and automation, the Instant Pot has tapped into a generation of young cooks and wannabe cooks who love Swiss Army knife devices that can save space by combining multiple functions while also producing high quality results.  There are best-selling cookbooks, as well as dozens of websites and large and active Facebook and Reddit communities where enthusiastic Instant Pot users share recipes and cooking tips.

So, while it’s time to step back and wish the one of the most unlikely success stories of the modern kitchen a happy 50th birthday, it’s also a time to recognize that the microwave’s best days might be behind it. Newer and better technology technology, combined with changing consumer behavior, could mean we might be celebrating a new type of cooking appliance 50 years from now.

Make sure to subscribe to the Spoon newsletter to get it in your inbox. And don’t forget to check out Smart Kitchen Summit, the only event about the future of food, cooking and the kitchen.  

NXP Is Trying To Reinvent RF Cooking. We Check In On Their Progress

Outside of good old fire, one of the oldest heating technologies in wide use today in the kitchen is that used by microwave ovens. That’s because microwave ovens use what is called microwave radiation, a form of dialectic heating that was discovered way back in the forties.

Radio transmission technology has come a long way since then, but for some reason the use of RF transmission technology in cooking has largely stayed stuck in time.

Will that change?

If NXP has any choice in the matter, yes. That’s because the company has been slowly but surely working to find product manufacturers to adopt their solid state RF cooking technology that is not only much faster than that used in the typical microwave, but also offers significant advantages in terms of precision heating.

I first head about NXP’s cooking technology (then Freescale) a few years ago, and thought it stood a shot at eventually displacing the technology used by microwaves.

With that in mind, I decided to check in with Dan Viza, the manager for the RF cooking business at NXP and see where things stood in late 2016. Based on my interview below, it looks like progress is slow but steady and we should start seeing cooking devices using this new form of cooking in 2017.

What companies have announced they are using NXP RF cooking technology and when will we see it on the market?

It is an exciting time for us to transform conventional methods of cooking using solid state RF. The number of customers that are working with our products and technology is extensive. They are in development mode and haven’t made any public announcements of their products. That said, there are a few that have made public statements regarding the use of NXP’s RF cooking technology. They include Goji Food Solutions, Wayv Technology, and most recently Midea. I expect at least one product to be available for purchase in 2017 although that is ultimately up to each OEM.

Can you characterize the types of products you are seeing?

OEM’s are exploring and developing a wide range of cooking appliances using solid state energy. These range from RF only appliances to combi-ovens, counter top and built in, consumer and commercial cooking, and even portable, battery operated. In most cases the energy from solid state devices is the primary heat or cooking source but it isn’t always the case as the solid state energy can also be used as a cooking assist function to a conventional thermal source like radiant, convection, or steam heat.

It seems as if you’ve had some traction in China and from new startups like Wayv, but can we expect to see any major small appliance brands launch a new cooking device with your RF cooking tech?

Yes, that is the plan, but as to who and when, that is for the OEM’s to disclose.

What are the biggest hurdles around educating the appliance and manufacturer community about your new technology?

Actually appliance OEM’s have experience in developing recipes for their appliances, and separately in developing algorithmic or software based solutions for controlling their appliances. The challenge can be in combining those two capabilities for the purpose of delivering a specific feature or benefit of the cooking appliance.  One way we enable customers to accomplish this is by providing them with an engineered cooking module solution that comes with an API so they have less RF engineering to perform and more algorithm, software, recipe development and systems integration that best matches their existing capabilities. Of course it helps for customers to have RF power engineering capability but we are working to deliver solutions that minimize that as much as we can.

Is there a hesitance to try and create a new category – if this is indeed a new category? Or is this simply a respin of existing categories with new technology?

We have seen OEM’s take both approaches (new category and revision of existing). We have seen instances of some established cooking appliance OEM’s stay within their existing categories. With others that are new to cooking appliances, they seem to be more willing to push into the market with new categories. To be fair, we think there is value in both as we help OEM’s deliver value whether it is in the quality of cooking, in the adaptability of the recipe execution, the speed or convenience of cooking with RF, or sometimes a combination of all the above.

Are there appliance makers looking to add this to existing ovens or other categories as a new feature, or are most looking at creating a focused RF cooking device?

As I mentioned before, we have experience with OEM’s pursuing both approaches. I expect we will see a variety of implementations as OEM’s gather experience and fine tune their end products.

How would you characterize 2016 for your efforts and what do you expect for 2017?

2016 was another fantastic year of progress for us both technically and commercially. We had notable advances in our components and solutions capabilities as well as the engagement we have had with many OEM’s. I expect 2017 to build upon this year even more.