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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Samsung

SCHOTT Debuts New Ceramic Cooktop Glass That Can Double as Full Color Video Display

Tired of boring black-glass cooktops?

How about a cooktop that provides video cooking guides, color images, and more? That’s the idea behind SCHOTT’s new CERAN Luminoir TFT (thin film transistor) display.

At last week’s IFA conference in Germany, SCHOTT announced a new TFT display technology that enabled a full-color touch screen to display high-fidelity video and images. This is a big deal for cooktop manufacturers, who, alongside their customers, typically embrace the sleek black aesthetics of glass-ceramic surfaces. However, using any integrated display would normally mean sacrificing the dark black display associated with high-end ceramic cooktops, as black glass tends to absorb light, making display integration challenging.

However, SCHOTT says they solved this issue by optimizing light and color transmission through the glass-ceramic substrate, enabling the integration of high-resolution TFT displays while maintaining a deep black appearance when the display is off. This allows for the “dead front” effect, which keeps the cooking surface looking clean and like a typical high-end cooktop when not in use, but enabling a multicolor display when activated.

You can see the SCHOTT CERAN Luminoir TFT on display in the video below:

SCHOTT CERAN Luminoir® TFT - “Ready for undiscovered possibilities?”

Could this mean the cooktop surface itself has entered that chat as the preferred video display in the kitchen? Maybe, but it’s early. Over the past decade, various appliance and system manufacturers have jockeyed to position their preferred platform as the primary video display of choice in the kitchen. There was Amazon with its digital assistants, GE Appliances with its video-enabled built-in microwave oven, and Samsung pushing its Family Hub fridge with its large digital displays in the door. However, no one has really pushed the cooktop, mostly because the dark-black ceramic surfaces did not make for very good digital displays.

At least until now. We’ll keep an eye on this space to see if any cooktop makers move to integrate this technology and push their ceramic cooktops to become multimedia hubs. At the very least, expect some appliance brands to use this technology to offer visually rich touch-screen user interfaces, and most likely some of these will be on display by this time next year at IFA.

Samsung’s 2024 Family Hub Gets Enhanced Food Recognition Features With Latest Update

This past week, Samsung announced they were updating software for those with a Family Hub fridge.

The update has a bunch of new features, many of which were announced at CES in January, but the most interesting one is what looks to be its much-improved food recognition capability. The new computer vision-powered features were are specific to the latest edition to the Family Hub line, the official name of which is the incredibly long Samsung Bespoke 4-Door Flex Refrigerators with AI Family Hub+ and AI Vision Inside.

According to the Samsung release, the latest update will allow the 2024 Family Hub to recognize more than 33 food items, including fruits and vegetables. Samsung notes in the release’s small print that they will continue to expand the number of items the system can recognize and that if the item is blocked by your hand, it will be listed as “unrecognizable.” The new update will also recommend recipes based on what you have on hand, including “thousands of recipes from the Samsung Food community.”

The update also includes enabling ‘Samsung Tap View, ‘ which mirrors content from Samsung Galaxy phones, such as photos or videos, as well as recipes you find on your phone.

On one hand, we have to hand it to Samsung. They’ve been at the smart fridge thing for a decade, and they’ve evolved the fridge from being primarily a fridge with a big monitor to stream music and video to one that looks like it’s finally getting smart inside with the camera and update.

As is always the case with Samsung, the company has so many platforms it can get confusing. One example is that the company made a big to-do almost a year ago when they announced Samsung Food, which is the evolution and Samsung-ification of the Whisk app. Samsung Food essentially looks to be the consumer electronics giant’s central recipe and food planning app, yet there’s just one passing mention of it in this latest update.

My guess is that in 2025, the integration between Samsung Food and Family Hub will be much farther along, and we may ultimately see the Samsung Food and Family Hub food and recipe management merged under one monolithic Samsung food and fridge app.

The Story of Samsung Food with Nick Holzherr

Nick Holzherr, founder of Whisk and head of Samsung Food, is this week’s guest on the Spoon Podcast.

Those in the smart kitchen industry know Nick, in part because his company helped pioneer the early tech behind shoppable recipes, but also because his acquisition by Samsung is the culmination of one of the true success stories in this market.

Today, the technology that Nick and Whisk built is what powers Samsung Food, the AI-powered food and recipe platform that the consumer electronics giant debuted at CES 2024.

Some of the things we talk about this latest episode of The Spoon Podcast include:

  • The story of how Whisk was the first recipe startup to explore how to use AI and apply it to recipes.
  • Nick’s experience going on the British version of The Apprentice and appearing before Lord Sugar (the British version of Donald Trump) to pitch the company. 
  • The growth of the company as Whisk started working with grocers in Europe and eventually appliance brands
  • Nick fielding calls from three companies who presented offer sheets to buy the company.
  • We talk about what Nick is excited about and how he sees technologies like AI being applied in the kitchen in the future.

You can read the full transcript of the conversation below and listen to the full interview by clicking play on the podcast player below or heading to Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

If you’d like to connect with Nick in person, he will be at the Smart Kitchen Summit on June 4th. You can get your tickets here.

Conversation Transcript:

Michael Wolf: Nick just told me whatever I throw at him, he’s ready for, especially with that new microphone. You look great in that, in your little room there, the microphone.

Nick Holzherr: It’s brand new. It was three months old. I realized I needed to start upping my game when everyone’s podcasting now, right?

Michael Wolf: Everyone’s podcasting. So when’s the Nick Holzherr podcast start, by the way?

Nick Holzherr: I haven’t got my own podcast, but if anybody wants to invite me onto theirs, I’ve now got a good mic.

Michael Wolf: Yeah, well, Nick, I feel I’ve known you probably since 2016, 2017. I think Whisk was the first company I remember that was really talking up AI and recipes. That was one of your original stories, right?

Nick Holzherr: Yeah, I mean, we started with the problem that users want to use recipes anywhere, not just from one manufacturer or one publisher or one grocery company or one tech startup with a couple hundred recipes. And the only way to really make that happen is with AI. If you want a smart experience, that is. Use AI to parse all these recipes and make them smart. So we did that, but that was before deep learning, before it was accessible to startups. We were literally flying out on planes to America, buying the latest processors, latest chips, graphics cards, and using them with basically PhDs, ex-professors that we had hired to build these models. It was really early in AI, before TensorFlow, before these libraries. Of course, now it’s totally changed. Super early.

Michael Wolf: I was looking back in the history a little bit and I didn’t realize Whisk had started back in 2012. Back then, you were actually on a British TV show, British Apprentice on the BBC. Was it pitching Whisk at the time?

Nick Holzherr: Yep. It actually was. It’s called the Apprentice, and it’s the same thing as basically Donald Trump has in the US, right? And we have a different person running it called Lord Sugar. The guy in the UK is called Lord Sugar and he was an advisor or member of the Labour Party, which is the left side of the government. So it’s kind of a little bit the opposite of Donald Trump.

Michael Wolf: Lord Sugar. Way better name.

Nick Holzherr: Yeah, he was originally Sir, I think, and then they made him a Lord. This is the British monarchy system, which is also hilarious. It was amazing fun. You do 12 weeks of tasks competing against other people. And then if you get to the final, you get to pitch your business plan. If you win, he gives you money and becomes a partner in your business. I got to the final and I didn’t win. But because it was such a popular TV show, and I got to pitch it to him and his advisors and therefore the UK, everyone wanted to invest in it, but not everyone, but enough people wanted to invest in it. Most people would take the meetings with me. So I got inbound from a lot of the grocery stores and publishers and stuff saying, hey, we’d love to work with you.

Michael Wolf: The Tescos the world came in with you say, hey, let’s meet. Was it immediate like the next day?

Nick Holzherr: Yeah, literally that night, my inbox, my LinkedIn and my inbox just filled up with loads of people who wanted to work, who said, ‘I love it. I know he (Lord Sugar) didn’t invest, but can I invest or can I work with you? And then the ones who hadn’t, when I messaged them months later and said, Hey, this is the idea, I pitched it to on the Apprentice, they would take the meeting, not necessarily because they’re interested, but just wanted to meet the guy who’s on TV.

Michael Wolf: There was a curiosity in meeting you, right?

Nick Holzherr: And for a salesperson, that’s what you need, right, a foot in the door.

Michael Wolf: I feel The Apprentice was the predecessor to Shark Tank, which is also Dragon’s Den in the UK. The value for you as an entrepreneur is it’s just a giant commercial. The value is in the millions of dollars in terms of free publicity.

Nick Holzherr: Exactly. It’s huge. And it’s also actually fun. It is really, really fun. It is also challenging because it’s not a show about business success. It’s about conflict, essentially, right? Of people conflicting and trying to make something work. It’s like a business assault course. They put you through psychometric tests and psychology interviews to basically choose people that they think will conflict with each other and create good TV. So that part is stressful, but you also get to do some really cool things on the show, like build products super quickly and pitch them to big people. So it’s really fun. But ultimately it was the platform I needed to get Whisk started.

Michael Wolf: And so you got Whisk started and I think I connected with you in around 2016, 2017. From those early days when you had the business plan, what you pitched on Apprentice BBC versus when I met you around 2016, what had changed? Obviously you’d started the company, went from business plan to actually starting this thing, but had the vision changed at all?

Nick Holzherr: The core mission was to help people cook, make it more joyful as we talk about it today, and to help them in that process. That hadn’t changed. But what had changed was we started off with a consumer app and we couldn’t get it to what we thought was enough scale. So we pivoted from trying to build a consumer app to looking at all that tech we’d built. And you started off talking about AI. We’d built a lot of AI way back, 10, 12 years ago. And so we were really early in that. And businesses wanted to use that. We knew that because we had, when we built our consumer, we had built widgets that publishers could integrate on their sites. And through that, we had loads of conversations with big publishers, big retailers and big CPG brands. And a lot of them said, ‘we love this widget. Yes, we’ll integrate it, but can we also use some of the other tech?’

So, in2014, 2015, and into 2016, we couldn’t make the consumer app work. So we pivoted into a B2B platform, offered all the tech that we had built for anybody to use, built an API platform for people to use. We were powering half a billion monthly consumer interactions at one point, at the height of it, which was pretty impressive and we were powering it for a lot of the big players in the world like a lot of big CBG brands. If you made a list of the top players, maybe half of those were using our technology.

Michael Wolf: Were you on big publisher websites?

Nick Holzherr: Yeah, the biggest, right? Food Network, Allrecipes, BBC Good Food, About.com, the big, big sites with many tens of millions of hits a month, users, those were integrating us and we were sending them across to grocery retailers like Walmart, Amazon, Instacart, the UK ones like Tesco. And the big CPG brands wanted to be part of it because they wanted to have their products featured. So when it’s butter, they want it to be the Unilever butter, or when it’s stock, the Unilever stock, right? So they cared about that. And they also wanted to connect their own websites to commerce. Because we had those integrations, they then said, can you power more of our platform? We said ‘yes’. Then all the big IoT companies came along, the appliance manufacturers came along and said, ‘hey, can we use your platform as well?’ So we were powering a whole bunch of different IoT players. And that’s, I think, where you and I first started talking.

Michael Wolf: So just real quickly, you were with the publishers and you were essentially doing shoppable recipes. So, like Bisquick, Nestle wants their yogurt or whatever. You were one of the pioneers in the whole shoppable recipe concept. And that was around the 2013, 2014 time frame.

Nick Holzherr: That’s right. I mean, there was Constant Commerce (now Constant.co), which are no longer there, but Constant Commerce was there at the same kind of time as us, super, super early. But it was basically only Constant Commerce and us. And we took a different approach to them. They were more enterprise-y in their proposition. So some of the big enterprise players wanted them. And, but we were more like open and like, let’s integrate the whole market kind of sort of game. So someone wanted us and we had a bit more of a B2C to B2B2C kind of play where we integrated onto their sites and then they added to a shopping list. It would still be our shopping list and it users could save the recipe into our recipe box. Our consumer experience is always there, but it was integrated on other people’s sites and shops and brands.

Michael Wolf: And the appliance guys showed up around in the 2015, 2016 timeframe. And what were they asking you? ‘Hey, we want apps. We want people to have recipes.’ What were they showing up with, and what questions did they have?

Nick Holzherr: It was ‘we want to connect our appliances, so can you give us recipes in a structured way?’ Or can you make it work with our products?

Michael Wolf: It was the guided cooking recipe era.

Nick Holzherr: Exactly. But also shoppable recipes. I think everybody always thinks and starts in the early stages of developing an experience that thinks, ‘I want to make money. How do I make money? I make it by connecting to commerce. So, let me connect to commerce.’

So that was definitely part of the game as well. And then what happened was really at that point what we were offering was in its infancy. It was not a mainstream thing to do. And it was really around the 2016 and 2017 mark when suddenly the e-commerce market had grown. Penetration of e-commerce had doubled or tripled from what it was back in 2012. And so you suddenly have everyone wanting it. And it was kind of a crazy time where we had struggled as a business until 2016, 2017, and suddenly they were inundated with everyone saying, ‘hey, can we use your platform?’ And we suddenly became profitable. We went from five people to 30 people in a year, not from any investment, just revenue. We had no investment at that point. Everything was bootstrapped. We were making money, and the business was profitable. It was like, wow, this is really fun. What is it like to make money? A startup making money? What is this?

Michael Wolf: It’s nice to make money. And so how were you making money? You were doing these recipes, and were you kind of taking every recipe impression that went through, you got a little bit of money? Was there a big appliance company that wanted to pay you to do a custom integration?

Nick Holzherr: All of those. So, we had three revenue models. We had the license fee model, a monthly fee for the API. We had a grocery per click or per new customer fee, which was a small fee per transaction. But when you add it all up, it works out relatively well. And then we also had an ad model where you, as a CPG company, if you’re Nestle and you want to get your yogurt sold, you pay to have your yogurt featured. It doesn’t say Nestle yogurt in the recipe, but yes, Nestle yogurt the customer gets. And so they don’t pay on a per acquisition there, they pay on a per view because you are, you’re inspiring the customer. You’re not just selling the customer.

Michael Wolf: Okay, and so this thing’s going crazy. You had 30 employees and you’re making money. Life is good. And then, at some point, or probably I imagine around this time, you’re the kind of the apex of this ride, you get a call from Samsung?

Nick Holzherr: Yeah, I mean, there’s three companies, another one of the big appliance companies, and one of the world’s slash one of the world’s biggest technology companies all rang up at roughly the same time. Like in the six month period of time, we had three serious acquirers wanting to buy us and a bunch of other ones on the side saying, ‘maybe could we, would you be open to it?’ But three of them were kind of term sheet level interest, like real interest. Flying people into our offices saying, ‘hey, can we buy you?’ And it was a really good time; we were profitable, and we didn’t need to sell. And then, ultimately, we chose to go with Samsung.

Michael Wolf: And you’re looking and you’re just thinking in your head. “Lord sugar. You should have made a better offer’. So you had these three offers; a technology platform company, two big appliance companies, it sounds like. Were you inviting them in, or was their head of acquisitions calling you up?

Nick Holzherr: The latter. They were ringing in us. And this was kind of what’s crazy about it because initially I was even saying no to them, not to the acquisition teams, but to the initial integrations. I was like, why do you want to integrate to an appliance? Are we going to get any users from this? I was in the user’s head and thinking I’m not going to make any transactions. How many fridges have you got live? How many users are going to click on it? Am I going to make enough money on this to make it worthwhile while visiting your office? Because often they’re these large enterprises, their request is, can you visit our office to pitch this certain person? And I was apprehensive. I was like, is it wasting my time?

Michael Wolf: You’re busy. You have 30 employees.

Nick Holzherr: We’re busy. And the funny thing is, of course, those conversations ended up with the M&A team suddenly getting interested. Because they’re looking at it going, ‘hang on, how many people in the market are using it? Our competitors are using it. They’re thinking, ;who’s going to end up owning this?’ They probably knew that M&A stuff was happening because the people in the industry know each other quite well. So they probably all started worrying about what happens if the other person wins it? And that’s a great place to be as a startup. It was literally the perfect time. I could probably have gotten a better price for it if I’d held on another few years. It’s impossible to price it. It’s impossible to get the right time, and it was certainly a good time and I’m happy with what worked out.

Michael Wolf: I think it was a good time, and Samsung is an interesting company. Did you have to fly out to Seoul to pitch?

Nick Holzherr: No, I had phone out to Seoul multiple times after we had a partnership with them, because we started powering loads of stuff for them, right? It became a really good partnership where we were powering way more than initially was requested. We were building, even building some new features based on their budgets and based on their requests and their needs. It was being used across lots of appliances. And I had a vision to being used by lots of other divisions as well, which is what ultimately ended up happening, of course. But that we couldn’t predict that at the time. But then I did fly a bunch to San Francisco because the acquisition team was called Samsung Next. It was an innovation arm of Samsung. And basically HQ, because it’s quite hard for the Korean team to buy stuff because of how something is structured, they asked the innovation arm, hey, can you guys take a look at this? And they did, and they did the acquisitions. So actually, our bosses, if you like, or our acquirers was the San Francisco entity of Samsung.

Michael Wolf: And so that deal comes through, you accept it. I think I remember being in Chicago at the Housewares show. I think when I interviewed you about that deal, I think is right. So there must have been around the March timeframe, it was at Housewares, it was 2018, 2019, one of those years. And it’s been an interesting ride.

Nick Holzherr: Yep.

Michael Wolf: A lot’s probably happened. So maybe talk about you get acquired by Samsung. What’s that like initially kind of absorbing you into this giant Borg, which is it’s a massive company, even though it’s like the next company like the San Francisco companies, but it’s still Samsung.

Nick Holzherr: Yeah, it is. Actually, what I would say is, what I’ve been really pleasantly surprised by is how much autonomy they’ve given us and how much they’ve let us keep parts of the culture that matter. We were always a distributed team and they’ve let us keep that. And that was a massive advantage during COVID when it was so difficult if you were not a distributed team, but it also allowed us to kind of operate, I think, quite effectively. And keep some of the culture we have, like we go on annual offsites where we fly everyone to one place in the world. Like that’s not a normal thing in an enterprise to explain to your HQ that, hey, we’re going to fly the whole team to Greece or something. And they support that. So that’s been awesome.

Michael Wolf: You go to Greece for your offsights? What the heck?

Nick Holzherr: Well, we have to fly somewhere and actually Greece ends up being quite, we actually haven’t actually, Greece is our next one. We actually haven’t been to Greece yet, but like the previous one, Cyprus, we did actually do one in Korea. That was the most expensive one we did. We did Lisbon, Madrid, Budapest. And these places are actually, if you look at them on spreadsheet, the cheapest places to fly everyone, but it is also nice. It’s also fun to actually spend a week together and meet people in person, especially if you’re working in a distributed environment. So we spend a lot of time building a distributed culture.

Michael Wolf: Nice!

Nick Holzherr: and making sure that we, people felt valued and motivated and knew what they’re doing. And Samsung let us keep that. So I’m really grateful and respect Samsung for that. What was crazy was some of the enterprise ways of managing a business, right? That definitely added a layer of complexity and that’s inevitable with any enterprise. And then I think the other thing that was crazy was scaling. So they wanted us to scale our team from 30 people to 120, and they asked me to do it.

in ASAP, I did it in nine months. So going from 30 to 120 in nine months is an experience that I’m not, maybe I’ll do it again, but it was intense. The amount of interviews you have to do, the amount of like how to integrate that at the same time as integrating your company to a large enterprise like Samsung. So all of that in one go was probably the most intensive six months of work that I’ve ever done. Massive learning curve again, hard work, but I learned a bunch and I’m grateful for the experience.

Michael Wolf: Were you in on almost every one of those interviews and decisions? You were pretty hands-on, it sounds like. That is crazy. That’s crazy. Okay, so you grow to 120, that’s impressive. And I think the company over time, I saw more and more getting integrated. And I think the culmination of that was this past CES, when I think it essentially transformed from Whisk to Samsung food. So Samsung food was a big announcement for Samsung at CES 2024 in January.

Nick Holzherr: Yeah.

Michael Wolf: But the heart of that, the beating heart of that was really the Whisk acquisition, right? It’s almost a rebranding of Whisk.

Nick Holzherr: Yeah, that’s right. And there are two sides to that, whether it was a good idea or a bad idea. So I built the Whisk brand, right? I own a bunch of Whisk. I’m drinking out of a Whisk flask right now. So like, hey, kill Whisk as a brand. And some users felt that too. But ultimately, there is a thing with any enterprise probably. If you’re trying to build an app that comes across as not from here, you’re going to struggle getting integration into the different hardware units and you’re going to struggle integrating into the Samsung ecosystem. And ultimately, if you’re building a consumer experience, you have to leverage the distribution of a platform like Samsung. Samsung has one of the most devices in the world of any company. I think it probably has the most devices of any company if you add all the different units, because it’s so broad in what it does in TVs and mobiles and kitchen appliances, watches and now rings, everything. So we had to use that distribution. And the most effective way of doing that was to call ourselves Samsung Foods. And actually that has worked, in terms of the integrations we have planned and the ones we’ve achieved, but ones we’ve now have on the table that are going to happen over the next six, 12 months. I think it’s part of what I’m actually most excited about in where we’re going. It’s especially with the health, because food and health are so closely coupled with obesity and diabetes and other things. Yet, no one has really solved that. Actually people have worked on it, but no one’s really solved it. And I think Samsung has got an important part to play because they have health and food appliances. And I think if we do that, that’s actually a really important thing in the world that we’re doing. Something I feel proud of and passionate about. And that I find awesome. So that is, Samsung food as a brand, I know people are split on the opinion. I think it’s a good name and there’s lots of advantages of the name. If you’re looking at 10 food apps or 20 food apps in your…

Michael Wolf: Yeah, you’re going to see Samsung food. Yeah.

Nick Holzherr: you’ll notice it and you’ll probably try it. Your propensity to try out the app is higher. But of course, Samsung hasn’t got a huge plethora of successful apps. So that’s part of also what we’re helping Samsung with.

Michael Wolf: I always have an 8:30 call, so I’m going to tell them to be a couple minutes late.

Michael Wolf: and late. I’m like, I wanted to go for an hour and then all of a sudden.

Nick Holzherr: We can do part two later, a different day if you want.

Michael Wolf: Yeah, I’ll edit that part out. So, I think that when I think of Samsung food or Samsung with your appliances, you have the wearables, you have what you built in Whisk. There’s a lot of different parts of the puzzle there. And I think you’re almost on a collision course with some of the other folks who are just coming at it from the precision nutrition side. Like I look at January AI, which is a pretty cool app. They do like take a photo of food and you can predict blood sugar. It seems like makes sense that ultimately that type of function would be built into what Samsung has because you guys have so many other parts of the puzzle. So I see you guys have a great foundation. A lot of it’s built on the appliance and the wearables and then that and the app side.

Nick Holzherr: Yeah, I think that’s what’s exciting about the sensors, right? If you’ve got access to sensors and distribution through the hardware and the brand, that gives you some good starting Lego bricks. It’s not the whole solution. It’s such a big problem in the world. A big proportion of the world is going to suffer from the health challenges of not eating healthily. Of course there’s going to be thousands of companies. I hope a lot of them are successful alongside us.

Michael Wolf: I mean, I think a lot of people are just thinking, hey, now we can just take a pill and I will no longer be at risk for type two diabetes. I’ll be always 50 pounds. But I think that’s not realistic. You can’t have half the world’s population at risk for type two taking medication or a shot. I think what you guys are building could be really interesting. It’ll be a few years though, a lot of these different things need to come together. That sounds like what that’s driving you. What else is driving you as you look forward towards five years down the line, 10 years down the line in this space? What is really exciting for you?

Nick Holzherr: I think the advances in AI are exciting for everyone in the space, including us. We tried to do stuff like vision AI, use your camera to detect items, food, two, three years ago and failed. It wasn’t good enough. That was not despite having good engineers on it, it was hard to do. Yet now you come along and use an open source library by open AI and boom, it works. Sure, it needs tuning, it needs some work, it doesn’t maybe it takes a little bit of work to get it to production level, but it’s so easy. Stuff that we spent 10 years building, you can now use the OpenAI API for it and get a good way there. Which is so scary for people who’ve invested a whole bunch of time and effort into building really, really advanced technology that so much of it’s now easier than ever to do, which means it’s open to anybody. The scary part is, how do you win if everyone can do it? The fun thing from a consumer side is it’s going to be possible to build some of the stuff that we all hoped would be there five years ago. Now it will finally get to a point where it’ll be better and usable and actually add starting value. The smart kitchen, there’s always the question is how far off a truly smart kitchen that actually adds value to the user are we. When will it stop being a gimmick and when will it start being smart and useful? We’re getting closer and closer to that being true. Of course it’s true in some ways already, some devices are fantastic in adding value. But on a macro level where I can talk to my mom and say, do you want a smart kitchen? And she goes, yes, I do because it adds loads of value.

Michael Wolf: It’s not just turning things on and off with an app and making things more difficult by adding more processes in the way and kind of app friction, it’s actually making it more useful. So going from those early days where you’re buying GPUs and trying to figure out to build AI and going on TV and then ultimately to where you are today, it’s been quite a ride. It’s been fun talking to you, Nick, about hearing and hearing about all this. Thanks for spending some time with us.

Nick Holzherr: Thank you, I look forward to seeing you in Seattle.

Michael Wolf: You were seeing Seattle at Smart Kitchen Summit. Everyone who wants to see Nick in person, famous TV star, Apprentice star. I’m just embarrassing him. You can see him in Seattle. All right, Nick. Thank you, man. Don’t hang up yet. Don’t hang up yet.

Nick Holzherr: Thank you, thanks Mike, bye bye.

As More Tech Comes to the Drive-Thru, Will Consumers Agree to T&Cs Regarding Their Privacy?

Over the last couple of years, we’ve seen a flood of new technology making its way into the restaurant customer experience in everything ranging from mobile ordering apps to digital touch screens. And now, with perhaps the biggest wave of new technology yet, we’re seeing new ways in which restaurants will use tech to reinvent the customer drive-thru experience.

And, as just as we’ve seen in other areas in which new technology enters our lives, this means a growing presence of something else we’ve become all too familiar with – a screen with lots of small print asking for permission to use (i.e. monetize) information about us.

The terms and conditions (T&C) agreement has become a regular feature of modern life, something we see whenever we sign up for a new app or connected gadget. I’d even seen them in restaurants, where I’d agreed to T&Cs for a mobile ordering app or a bio-authentication payment system. But, I must admit I was surprised to see a T&C show up in a place I’d never seen one before: the drive-thru.

I didn’t see this new T&C screen in person, but in a video showcasing technology from voice tech specialist Soundhound. The video shows the Soundhound AI-powered voice assistant being used at White Castle, which is partnering with Soundhound and Samsung, the provider of the digital display screen used at the restaurant’s drive-thru.

The video, which you can see below, is impressive, but I was struck by the fact the customer in this video is asked to verbally approve the T&Cs that ask to record the customer’s voice. The request, which you can see in the video, states, “White Castle and its contractors, including without limitation Mastercard and Soundhound, will capture, collect, store, share and use an audio recording of your voice. The specific processing purposes and the length of the voice audio recording is being collected, stored, and shared is available at the below link, along with the retention schedule and guidelines for permanently destroying the audio recording.”

Below the small print is a call to action that says, “To agree and proceed, say ‘ok, I’m ready.'”

It really shouldn’t be surprising that White Castle and others decided to ask for permission from the consumer, particularly given the bad press and legal problems companies like Samsung have come under fire for with products like smart TVs. If they didn’t, there’s no doubt at some point, some organization would out them and probably file a class action lawsuit. It’s also somewhat refreshing for a company to ask for permission from the get-go, especially as more and more technology like cameras and sensors are coming into retail and food service as a way for operators to monitor, market, and enable commerce with their consumers.

All that said, however, I must admit it’s a bit of a jolt for anyone who’s used to going through a drive-thru their whole lives to be asked to agree to share their personal data, including the sound of their voice, when ordering a burger and fries. And if someone like me, someone who’s been following the evolution of the drive-thru voice ordering technology, finds it a bit weird to be presented with a T&C screen at the drive-thru, I have to wonder what everyday drive-thru customers think of being asked to record their voice and use it in some mysterious way?

There’s a good chance many will be ok with it. After all, many of us – maybe the majority -quickly scroll down to the bottom of the T&Cs when signing up for a new product to get to the experience of using it. And most of us, even if we wanted to read through all the legalese, probably can’t quite precisely decipher the terms of what we’re agreeing to. But I think some will find this new request to use our personal info disturbing and say “No way” instead of “It’s ok.”

For those types, my guess is White Castle and others in this space will have an order tree path that enables users to connect with a live person to take their order.

It’s hard to say how exactly new technology will change restaurants in the future. Still, one thing we can probably be sure of is that we’re going to have to get used to that mainstay of modern digital life, the T&C screen, becoming a fixture at the drive-thru of the future.

Food Tech News: Samsung Heads Into the Kitchen, Robot Meets Artisan Pizza

The Spoon is back for another week of food tech news, and this week Michael Wolf and Allen Weiner talk about what’s going on in the smart kitchen, alt protein, CRISPR and more.

Here are the stories we talk about:

  • Samsung and LG play nice in the kitchen, and Samsung launches food app. 
  • MOTO Pizza, where you wait a month for your pizza order, is crazy about Picnic’s pizza robot
  • Pairwise reups partnership with Bayer for CRISPR-based innovation
  • GFI says plant-based meat sales were up in 2022
  • DoorDash is bringing AI to their apps and call centers

As always, you can just hit play below to listen to the podcast, head to Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or listen on your favorite podcast app.

As mentioned in the show, the Spoon is once again leading the charge for food tech at CES, the world’s biggest tech show. If you are interested in showcasing your future food or food tech innovation, head over to The Spoon’s CES page for more info.

Also, on October 25th, we’ll be bringing leaders at the intersection of food and AI together for a day of conversation. Please use the discount code PODCAST for 15% off tickets to the Food AI Summit.

With the Launch of Samsung Food, Samsung Hypes AI & Consolidates Food Features Acquired Over the Years

Over the years, Samsung has acquired and launched several products in an effort to become the king of the tech-powered kitchen.

First, there was the launch of the Family Hub refrigerator, the company’s attempt to create a smart fridge built around the company’s own operating system and packed with technology like fridge cams to identify food and help you with your shopping.

Then, there was the acquisition of Whisk, an intelligent food and shopping app that helped pioneer the shoppable recipe space. Whisk had not only amassed an extensive food database, which would ultimately become a foundation for some of Family Hub’s (now Bespoke Family Hub) shopping and recipe capabilities, but it also served up the foundational ‘Food AI’ that is now being pushed to the forefront by Samsung.

Then, there were various attempts to use AI through automation in the kitchen, as the company announced (and never released commercially) different cooking and kitchen-task robots at CES.

And we can’t forget that Samsung also took some of the smart home technology from its SmartThings smart home group (another Samsung acquisition) and paired it with Whisk’s recipe intelligence to create SmartThings Cooking, a guided cooking app.

This leads us to this week, in which Samsung announced what amounts to packaging up this collected knowledge and technology – save for (at least for now) the robotics – into a newly expanded app and platform called Samsung Food. Samsung Food, which the company describes as “a personalized, AI-powered food and recipe platform,” looks like a significant step forward for the company’s efforts to build a centralized digital food management app. It also is a logical move to consolidate much of the collected efforts under the Samsung brand after the company had collected a variety of platforms that served as a foundation for what we see today.

Let’s take a look at precisely what the company unveiled. In the announcement, Samsung detailed four primary areas of activity for Samsung Food: Recipe Exploration and Personalization, AI-Enhanced Meal Planning, Kitchen Connectivity, and Social Sharing.

For recipe exploration, Samsung looks like it’s essentially using what was an already somewhat evolved feature set in Whisk. Samsung says that it can save recipes to a user’s digital recipe box anytime and from anywhere, create shopping lists based on their ingredients, and is accessible via Family Hub. In addition to mobile devices, users can access Samsung Food with their Bespoke Family Hub fridges, which will provide recipe recommendations based on a list of available food items managed by the user and shoppable recipe capabilities.

With the Personalize Recipe function, Samsung Food looks like it builds on the personalization engine created by Whisk and plans to take it further through integration with Samsung Health. According to the announcement, by the end of this year, Samsung plans to integrate with Samsung Health to power suggestions for diet management. This integration will factor in info such as a user’s body mass index (BMI), body composition, and calorie consumption in pursuit of their health goals and efforts to maintain a balanced diet.

The AI-Enhanced meal planning feature looks like a longer-view planning feature that consolidates personalized recipe recommendations, and it will no doubt similarly benefit from the integration of Samsung Health.

With Connected Cooking, Samsung has rebranded and extended the features of the SmartThings Cooking app, adding new devices like the BeSpoke oven and incorporating some of the same guided cooking features.

And, of course, a consolidated food-related platform from Samsung wouldn’t be complete without a social media component. My guess is the Social Sharing feature – which will allow users to share with their community – is the least necessary addition to the app and will ultimately not be all that successful, as consumers will continue to use mainline social apps (TikTok, Instagram, Facebook) for their food-related social sharing.

The company also teased expanded computer vision capabilities in 2024 in the announcement. The company’s Vision AI technology “will enable Samsung Food to recognize food items and meals photographed through the camera and provide details about them, including nutrition information.”

Overall, I’m impressed with the overall cohesiveness and trajectory of what I see in Samsung Food. I think it’s a sign that Samsung – despite having the occasional misstep and strategic vagueness around their food vision – looks like they remain committed to becoming the leader of the future kitchen, something that they started way back in 2016 with the launch of the Family Hub line.

Samsung Wants You to Put Generative Art on Your Refrigerator

Today Samsung launched a new line of custom refrigerator art produced by generative AI. According to Samsung, the new collection was created by Matt Jacobson, an artist who “uses computer code as his paintbrush.” Jacobson used computer algorithms to create 100 generative art prints designed for Bespoke refrigerators.

Generative art – art created using an algorithm or, more recently, with artificial intelligence – has generated lots of buzz lately as new tools like OpenAI’s DALL-E have people creating visually stunning artwork with a few lines of text. While we’ve seen many artists and companies jumping on the AI-powered art bandwagon, Samsung is definitely the first appliance brand to tap into the generative art zeitgeist.

For Samsung, the move is an interesting – if on-brand – way to tap into the latest technology trends. The Bespoke line allows customers to create custom refrigerator designs using mix-and-match panels, whether with off-the-shelf designs or personalized designs with a customer’s artwork or photos. The Bespoke line has been getting lots of promotional love from Samsung over the past year-plus, while the company has let its tech-forward Family Hub line recede into the background. The release of the new generative art collection seems to be another tacit admission by the company that while cutting-edge technology may be a fine way to enhance its design-forward lineup, making it the central focus of a refrigerator’s feature set wasn’t a winning proposition.

The collection is available for a limited time and free to download from today until February 13, 2023.

You can hear Jacobsen describe the project in the video below:

Samsung Bespoke - Generative Art by Matt Jacobson

Samsung to Debut Bespoke AI Oven at CES as Family Hub Fades Into Supporting Role

Every year, Samsung takes up more square footage on the exhibition floor than perhaps any other company at CES. Among all that booth space, the Korean consumer electronics giant usually allocates some footage to their kitchen products and, for much of the past decade, a good chunk of its kitchen product focus was on the company’s Family Hub smart fridge line.

But over the past year, Samsung has been pushing its Bespoke family into the limelight while quietly pulling back the Family Hub into more of a supporting rule. And this week at CES 2023 in Las Vegas, Bespoke is not only getting top billing again, but it will also include some product categories beyond the fridge such as its new AI-enabled smart oven.

Starting Thursday, Samsung will showcase the Bespoke AI Oven, a built-in wall oven features a ‘Sense Inside’ feature that uses AI-powered image recognition to recognize up 80 different dishes and ingredients and help avoid overcooking. Samsung claims the new feature is the first food recognition and burn detection AI algorithm to receive an AI cooking appliance verification by UL Solutions. The AI Oven also works with SmartThings Cooking and Samsung Health, which allows it to recommend meal ideas based on the user’s workout stats, diet goals, and the ingredients they have on hand.

As for why Samsung is starting to emphasize the Bespoke brand over Family Hub, my guess is they’ve had more success selling the design-forward Bespoke lineup over the tech-heavy marketing lift required for when Family Hub got top billing. While certainly open to new technology in the kitchen, a consumer’s primary focus with kitchen design and significant appliance purchases is to build an attractive and functional space. Bepoke’s mix and match design concept serves those needs well.

As for Family Hub’s future, signs are pointing to the platform following the same path as the Samsung SmartThings platform, which transitioned over time from a discrete product line to an enabling feature integrated into other products.

Did you know The Spoon is producing CES’s Food Tech Conference? Find out more here.

Forget Smart. Samsung’s Latest Fridge Focus is Creating Giant Custom Photo Walls

Who needs fridge magnets when you can create a giant photo wall with a picture of your kids, furbaby, or dream vacation getaway instead?

That’s exactly what you can do if you own a Bespoke fridge from Samsung. According to a release sent to The Spoon, owners of Bespoke fridges can now create custom fridge panels featuring a photo or artwork. The new feature can be added to a new Bespoke fridge or swapped out with a panel on an existing unit.

To create a Bespoke custom printed panel, users go to the Mybespoke website, upload a picture or artwork, edit the layout, and submit the panel for print. Each custom printed panel will set you back $250. The new custom-designed panels feature will be available later this year.

Okay, so pictures printed on your fridge isn’t exactly high-tech, but it is definitely a sign of where Samsung’s head is nowadays when it comes to their fridge lineup. It’s not like Samsung has forgotten about its Family Hub fridge line exactly, at least not yet. After all, they did announce some fairly modest improvements at CES, and you can get a Family Hub version of the Bespoke line. But it’s clear, at this point, that their primary focus seems to be their design-forward lineup with Bespoke.

All of which speaks to the state of the smart fridge market. No one has really cracked the code on figuring out how to leverage smarts to make food management truly easy. Sure, big screens are nice, as it using Alexa and auto-replenishment of grocery staples. But none of them, in our view, is doing a great job of helping us take inventory or reduce food waste without a whole lot of work on the part of the user.

We’re still waiting for that and hope someone will come up with that game-changing innovation soon. If you’ve got a big idea about that, why don’t you let us know and show it off at SKS Invent in October.

Three Ways Self-Ordering Technology is Revolutionizing Top QSRs (Sponsored Post)

The labor shortage, a facet of the post-pandemic economy, hurt the restaurant industry across verticals as more businesses were forced to close their doors to account for the lack of employees. However, restaurants that embraced self-ordering technology fared better throughout the pandemic, as self-ordering technology positively impacted revenue, franchising, and restaurant design.

This is evidenced by top QSRs that meet consumers where they want to order– be it online, at a kiosk, or using a tableside QR code. Franchises are increasingly relying on technology to automate operations and drive business success in their restaurants. Incorporating technology, such as the Samsung kiosk powered by GRUBBRR, digital menu boards, and online ordering into your restaurant design can have numerous long-term benefits.

Bhavin Asher, founder and CTO of GRUBBRR, a leading self-ordering technologies company, explained, “the pandemic made it clear that the restaurants with automation are most poised to stay open because they meet consumers where they want to order. With demand for omnichannel dining increasing, the restaurants that integrate their physical and digital channels will perform best.”

Increase Earnings

Based on an analysis of several restaurant brands’ Q4 earnings reports, it is clear that automation is the key to long-term success. Chipotle’s Q4 earnings and 2021 results demonstrate this point. The results for the full year 2021 show that digital sales grew 24.7% to $3.4 billion and represented 45.6% of total sales.

In other words, about half of all orders at Chipotle were from order ahead digital transactions, and as such the brand has focused their efforts on growing this segment of the business. This showcases that the industry shift towards digitization directly results in increased sales and revenue. QSR’s like Chipotle are benefitting from new technologies and digitization, and this trend is not new within the restaurant industry.

Chipotle Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Brian Niccol credits the use of automation for his company’s success. “Moving forward, we believe expanding access and convenience through our digital ecosystem, accelerating unit growth, and continuing to develop and support our restaurant employees, will put us in a much stronger competitive position,” Niccol said.

Chipotle has also changed its business model to focus more on drive-thrus. It estimates that greater than 80% of new restaurants will have a “Chipotlane,” including their 3,000th restaurant in Phoenix, Arizona. Chipotlanes offer higher revenue margins than a traditional Chipotle make-line and dining room. Consumers spend on average 12%-20% more when they order with their eyes and with touch from a self-ordering device than when ordering from a cashier.

Strengthen Franchising

For franchisors looking to expand, technology presents a unique opportunity to entice franchisees and strengthen the brand image. One of the first and most obvious benefits of implementing technology, such as the Samsung kiosk powered by GRUBBRR, for franchisors is strengthening the restaurant brand. In a world that is becoming increasingly digital, consumers are likely to experience your brand through digital touchpoints before setting foot in a physical location. And, when they do experience your brand at a physical location, it is imperative that the experience is similar to that of your digital brand.

Consistency is key to developing the brand and building a customer base when establishing a restaurant. Your loyal customers trust your brand and expect a high level of consistency and customer experience no matter which location they visit. By introducing new Samsung kiosk technology at one franchise location, you’re implicitly promising that they can enjoy it at every location.

The Samsung kiosk powered by GRUBBRR allows restaurants to streamline efficiency, leading to a reduction in average transaction time. By rolling out this technology across locations, franchisees are set up for success, as self-ordering technology is proven to increase revenue, decrease operating costs (including labor spending), and improve the customer experience.

For instance, the average cost of a cashier at a quick service restaurant that is open 15 hours per day. With all  associated carrying costs, this position will cost more than $6,000 per month. On the other hand, the Samsung kiosk powered by GRUBBRR is a fraction of that price. In addition, kiosks always show up, don’t call in sick, and are ready to work 24/7.

Improve Restaurant Design

Like many chains, Shake Shack’s Q4 earnings success demonstrated an opening of the digital funnel. Shake Shack’s willingness to abandon its traditional business model and embrace technology, including multi-channel delivery, enhanced digital pre-ordering, and expanding fulfillment capabilities, enabled digital sales to grow at a rapid rate.

Shake Shack’s latest innovation, “Shack Track,” is a tech-forward restaurant that centers on pick-up shelves, windows, and curbside. “The need to enhance and alter the physical restaurant to meet the needs of digital is so important to Shake Shack that today, nearly all new restaurants we open have some aspect of Shack Track,” said CFO Katie Fogertey.

For Shake Shack, the results of embracing technology are astounding. In one example, Shake Shack units with self-ordering kiosks saw 75% of sales come through that channel as well as digital. “We have had to be and will continue to be strategic with our investments, but most importantly, we will continue to invest in digital initiatives to help welcome more guests into our omnichannel,” Fogertey said.

Restaurants that embraced self-ordering technology fared better throughout the pandemic, as self-ordering technology positively impacted revenue, franchising, and restaurant design.

“Technology, and specifically self-automated technology that meets the customers at the point of sale, has been a major boon for many restaurants since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic,” said Asher. “Now, we see the positive effects of technology reflected in new restaurant prototype designs, with many incorporating kiosks, online ordering, and tableside. That is why GRUBBRR partners with tech-forward companies like Samsung to help restaurants to create a customer experience design of the future.”

This post is sponsored by GRUBBRR. To learn more about Samsung’s self-ordering kiosks powered by GRUBBRR, click here.

The Kitchen 2030: How Food & Cooking Will Change in the Future (Video)

If you’ve been following The Spoon since the early days of 2015, you might remember that our flagship event that started it all was the Smart Kitchen Summit. Dedicated to the quiet revolution that was happening in the consumer kitchen, SKS became the event to examine the tech disruption upending business models and changing the way we source, cook and eat our food forever.

So it was fitting that our opening panel at the first CES Food Tech Conference was “The Kitchen 2030: How Food & Cooking Will Change in the Future,” featuring some of the leading companies in the kitchen and appliance industries. The panel discussion was hosted by Michael Wolf, CEO and founder of The Spoon and included Khalid Aboujassoum, Founder & CEO of Else Labs, Dochul Choi, Senior Vice President at Samsung, Robin Liss, CEO at Suvie and Kai Schaeffner, executive at Vorwerk (Thermomix).

The panel talked about where and how cooking, storing and even shopping for foods has shifted in the last several years; with more transparency and information about the foods we eat, the digitization of the recipe, guided cooking features and a whole new wave of kitchen appliances that may change the entire layout and function of the consumer kitchen.

“The Kitchen 2030” panel can be viewed in its entirety below — leave a comment with your predictions for the next decade of innovation in the connected kitchen.

Samsung Debuts the 6th Generation of its Family Hub Smart Fridge

Looking for a new smart fridge? Samsung’s got you covered and this time they’re bring Alexa with them.

Today the company announced the sixth generation of their flagship smart fridge, the Family Hub. The first of the big changes with the latest version of Family Hub is the addition of Amazon’s voice assistant Alexa. Samsung, which has long pushed its own voice assistant in Bixby, looks like it’s finally recognizing that the dust has settled in the voice assistant battle and Alexa is the dominant platform. That said, it looks like the company hasn’t given up on Bixby just yet, as it is giving users the choice of using Alexa or Bixby.

The other addition of what they are calling the SmartThings Cooking service. Many of the meal-planning features in the cooking service had been made available in the previous versions of the Family Hub, but in January at virtual CES the company had announced an expanded set of capabilities such as guided cooking and the ability to send cooking instructions to synced cooking appliances like the company’s Slide-In range. With the new upgrade, users of the Family Hub will be able to access all of these features from the Family Hub screen. The SmartThings Cooking service is powered by the Whisk platform.

If you’re a chicken lover, we’ve also got some good news in the Family Hub’s newest food shopping partner: Perdue Farms. In the announcement Samsung said they have added the chicken and premium meats-by-mail provider to their integration partner list.

You got to give Samsung credit: Despite early reviews mocking what some called a Frankenfridge, the company has stuck to its vision of building a smart fridge platform and updating it every year. Six generations in, one would assume that the Family Hub line of fridges is selling well, but the reality is we don’t know since the company doesn’t make sales numbers available. We can make some assumptions, though, based on looking at the number of reviews for SKUs like the 27″ French door edition, which is garnering enough reviews at Home Depot (1664 reviews) and Best Buy (433 reviews) that make it look as if it’s selling as well as other Samsung top models.

Owners of previous generation Family Hubs may be wondering if they will be able to get in on the Alexa and upgraded Smart Things cooking capabilities. According to a Samsung spokesperson, any Samsung Family Hub with generation 2 software or higher can be upgraded to generation 6 software.

The announcement didn’t say when the models will be in stores, but if the past rollouts of the Smart Hub are any indication, I’d expect them in stores this fall.