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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

SKS 2024

Podcast: The Smart Kitchen Summit Recap

Last week, The Spoon and almost three hundred of our closest friends spent an eventful couple of days in Seattle, talking about how technology is transforming the consumer meal journey.

After the dust had settled, Carlos Rodela and I got together to talk about some of the highlights of SKS 2024, We talked about some of the products we saw and our favorite sessions from speakers on stage.

You can listen to the audio-only podcast, but I’d recommend watching the video below, complete with pics and videos of the action at Block41 in Seattle.

A Look Back at Smart Kitchen Summit 2024

Don’t Call It a Comeback: Take-Aways and Thank Yous For Smart Kitchen Summit 2024

Last week, we produced the first in-person Smart Kitchen Summit (SKS) since 2019.

It’s hard to believe it’s been that long. In some ways, we’ve lost all sense of time given what has happened over the past five years, including a pandemic, but still, five years is a long time.

Bringing the event back was something we wanted to do for the last couple of years, both because we missed it and because we were hearing from our community, who also wanted SKS back. However, before we did, we wanted to ensure the timing was right. For many reasons (more on that later), we finally felt it was the right time when we announced SKS 2024 last December.

When we held our last event, we didn’t know it at the time, but we were, in a sense, closing the first chapter on the smart kitchen. Many of the first attempts by appliance companies, food brands, and startups building enabling technology had either gained traction or, in many cases, had not, making it a good time to reassess.

The first wave of the smart kitchen focused heavily on leveraging smart home technologies, voice interfaces, and app platforms to digitize knowledge around cooking and food journey management. Many interesting startups born during this time had been acquired or built sustainable and interesting businesses on their own. More eventually went out of business.

That’s why, as I built the program for this first year back, I wanted to take a realistic look at our industry’s progress, take stock of the lessons learned, and understand the current state of innovation. I wanted to have some ‘real talk’ so we can be clear-eyed about what we did right and what we did wrong and better navigate the next ten years of building products for the future kitchen.

Many of those lessons were articulated during the two days. Scott Heimendinger, who has been building products that utilize technology to help us become better cooks for more than a decade, summed up much of the problem with the first wave (and warned those this time around) on the opening panel.

“There’s a temptation that’s especially prevalent in our industry, but in others as well, that when new technologies become available to the world, we want to kind of slap those on what we’re doing,” said Heimendinger.

Scott and others warned that we must avoid repeating the same mistakes, especially as the industry embraces new technologies such as generative AI.

Another key refrain we heard during the two days was how critical it is to understand how we can meet consumers where they are in the kitchen and understand their needs. We need to build products that enhance their ability to cook great meals and make their lives easier, all while understanding the changing nature of living today as we witness growing challenges of buying homes, inflation, and a warming, increasingly resource-challenged planet.

Two speakers who addressed consumer motivation were Susan Schwallie and Barb Stuckey.

“They are outfitting utilitarian and multi-purpose kitchens and require appliances that work hard for them,” Schwallie said during her presentation, Harnessing Consumer Trends to Design the Kitchen of Tomorrow. “Gone are the days of single-use tools like avocado slicers and artisanal coffee makers, which required time and technique. Multi-purpose tools like air fryers resonate.”

One crucial aspect to consider about Millennials is their hyper-awareness of the cost of life in 2024. This, combined with their aspiration for ‘adult’ kitchens, underscores the significance of durability in their purchasing decisions, according to Schwallie. They seek products that can withstand the test of time, and the fear of planned obsolescence is a genuine concern for them. Many reside in ‘forever apartments,’ where storage and countertop space are limited, “making utility and flexibility important.”

Barb Stuckey delved into the changing nature of housing and how it impacts what Millennials and Gen Z think about their kitchen purchase decisions. According to Barb, only 40% of renters expect to own a home someday, and this permanent rental mindset has translated to this tech-forward generation, which is eyeing practical and multi-function appliances that often sit on the countertop.

We also looked further into the future during SKS, exploring potential scenarios that could be unlocked through the application of new technologies. One scenario described by Mike Lee, author of Mise, during his talk, is a society in which a large segment of our population utilizes AI-powered personalized nutrition platforms to guide their every move. Mike expressed his belief in the great potential of personalized nutrition but also emphasized that we as an industry need to recognize that “something is lost when eating in a silo.”

Another conversation focused on how robotics and automation will be used in the consumer kitchen. It’s a particularly interesting time for this conversation, as we increasingly hear about companies like Apple, Tesla, and the Bot Company eyeing the home market for robotics. Moderator Wilson Rothman pressed those building high-end and pricey robots about the key needs they were solving and how they envisioned consumers getting these products into their homes. Robin Liss, who makes a countertop robot named Suvie, talked about the importance of a “constant feedback loop” of usage data to make products ever more usable and affordable.

This is only a sample of what we heard. We will examine and explore insights from the stage as we publish videos and transcripts of the sessions in the coming weeks. For now, though, I just wanted to reflect and thank those who made SKS 2024 possible.

When we had the first SKS in 2015, we were on the precipice of a new wave of innovation around cooking and food technology. Looking back, we’ve documented many of those stories here at The Spoon and have, in recent years, started to hear from others beginning their journeys building new products and platforms for the consumer kitchen. As we’ve listened over the past twelve months, it’s become evident to me there is a new wave of innovation building, where innovators are leveraging advances in AI, synthetic biology, heating, robotics, electrification, and much more to build the future companies and kitchens of tomorrow.

We hope to help document these stories on The Spoon, through podcasts, and at our events for the next decade, and we hope you come along for the ride!

***

Now for some thanks. Big thanks to the SKS sponsors Whirlpool, Current Backyard, Fresco, Schott, Chefman, Suvie, Else Labs, Pot Robotics and Cibotica, all of whom helped make SKS possible.

Big thanks to my good friend and event consigliere, Surj Patel, who did a masterful job MCing for the two days. Thanks to Sandie Markle and Louis Leboa for helping corral speakers during SKS. Thank you to my good friend Carlos Rodela and awesome videographer Luca Nilon-Volpentesta for doing interviews and capturing some great video.

Thanks to Heather Moore, a long-time friend (and fellow puppet-lover) for capturing amazing photos of all the action at SKS.

Also, thanks to other volunteers such as Hamid Ali (congratulations on a great career at Google!), Cormac Wolf, and Andrew Miller.

Thanks to Renton Technical College for feeding us. We are big supporters of RTC’s mission of educating young people and preparing them for careers in food service.

Thanks to the team at Kind and Co for being awesome event ninjas and ensuring all the little (and big) things that go into producing an event got done.

Thanks to all the speakers for SKS 2024 for taking time out of their busy schedules building businesses to book flights and come to Seattle to share knowledge.

Thanks to all of our event partners, who helped spread the word about SKS, ensured we filled seats, and tapped into their networks.

Thanks to our attendees, who, through their energy and insight during the show, truly made SKS 2024 an amazing event.

Thanks to the media for coming and writing about SKS.

Thanks to the SKS Advisory Council, which helped shape my thinking about this year’s program and made connections when needed.

Finally, thanks most of all to Tiffany McClurg, who did so much to make SKS 2024 a rousing success. She not only helped make SKS so much better and kept the trains running on time during the show, but also got to step out on the first day and watch her (and my) son graduate from the University of Washington.

We’ll see you all next year!

Scenes from Smart Kitchen Summit 2024

The Smart Kitchen Summit wrapped up this week, and boy, did we have a great time discussing how new technologies will drive the next wave of cooking and kitchen innovation!

I’ll be sharing some of my thoughts next week, but I thought I’d share some of my favorite shots from the show. Thanks, as always, to Heather Moore for great work.

Above: Kicking off SKS 2024 with some great insights from Scott Heimendinger, Chris Young and Kai Shaeffner.

Above: SKS MC Surj Patel talks with Ladle Cooking’s Sumati Sharan

Above: Chef, meet Chef. Two authors connect at SKS. Chris Young (Coauthor, Modernist Cuisine) shakes hands with James Briscione (Author, The Flavor Matrix).

Above: Talking Cooking Robots. A food robotics session with Mark Oleynik (Moley Robotics), Robin Liss (Suvie) and Assaf Pashut).

Above: SKS attendees check out what’s next in cooking technology.

Above: MOTO Pizza CEO Lee Kindell shows off his t-shirt on stage.

Above: Wisely founder Rachell McCray talks about the future of food storage with Ovie’s Stacie Thompson.

Above: The sun breaks through just in time for happy hour at SKS 2024

Your Future Induction Stove May Be the Foundation for That Home Power Wall

If you’re like me, you’ve considered installing a giant home battery to help transition away from traditional grid-connected power.

And if you’re also like me, you haven’t done it because it’s expensive, and there’s a lot of housework you need to do to make it happen.

But what if you could put together a home battery power system piece by piece, starting with a big piece, such as an induction stovetop?

That’s the dream of Sam D’Amico, the CEO of Impulse Labs. Sam’s company is building a new stove with a big battery built in to help folks who aren’t wired for induction (the rule of thumb is you need a 220V outlet on a 50-amp circuit). Impulse’s induction cooktop has a built-in battery that stores up energy via a traditional circuit and draws upon it when it’s time to cook. Perhaps more importantly, it can also be the foundation of a fractionalized battery system that, when pieced together with other batteries, can store power from solar panels and power your home.

“You’re deploying a pretty large home battery system piece by piece,” Sam said in a recent episode of The Spoon podcast. “And then once that’s deployed, you’ve got something with which you can essentially make the home all electric.”

Sam says his conversations with utilities tell him they are excited about the concept of fractionalized home battery backup and that they might even be interested in subsidizing some of this transition.

“There’s definitely a lot of interest there. You can already see incentives from utilities for more efficient appliances today. That’s already a thing that’s happening.”

The push towards electric cooking is coming at the same time there’s strong demand from consumers to move towards solar, and battery prices are dropping. The end result is you might just see these trends converge towards a new home power system in which many of your big appliances (stoves, washing machines, water heaters) combine to power your cooking and more.

You can hear more about this in my full conversation with Sam by clicking play below.

MOTO Pizza Teams Up With Cibotica for Salad Bowls, Eyes Expansion into Frozen Pizza for Retail

This week, fast-growing restaurant chain MOTO Pizza announced it will soon add salads to the menu at select locations with the help of Cibotica, a startup specializing in salad and bowl food robots. According to MOTO founder Lee Kindell, the Seattle-based pizza chain will deploy its first Cibotica unit at the chain’s flagship location in the Belltown area of downtown Seattle sometime this summer.

“I went up to their shop in Vancouver and love what they’re doing,” Kindell told the Spoon. “And we’re actually developing my recipes right now for my salad. We’re looking at maybe getting it in here in the next two months.”

The partnership will span up to three years under a robotics-as-a-service operating model and is focused on producing salads for MOTO in various locations. Those future locations could include spots across Southern California. MOTO expanded to the Palm Springs area earlier this year and, according to Kindell, just locked up its first location on the Los Angeles market in the Hollywood Bowl. Kindell told The Spoon that one of the lessons learned over the past year was that a stadium or amphitheater presence (MOTO got into T-Mobile Park last year) can help serve as an expansion point into a metro area.

“What happened with the T Mobile Park is people found us there, and it gave us so much business.”

In addition to adding robot-made salads in some locations and inking more stadium deals, Kindell is exploring ways to freeze his craft pizzas and sell them through the grocery channel. The genesis for exploring the frozen food aisle as an expansion area for his business traces back to an interaction Kindell had with one of his more prolific customers at a MOTO restaurant in Seattle.

“She would order nine or ten pizzas, and I asked, ‘How big is your family?’ She said, ‘It’s just me, my husband, and my son. So I order your pizza and I freeze it.’ I said, ‘You’re kidding me. How is it?’ She said, ‘My son likes it better.'”

Whether it’s through using robots to make his pizza (and now salads), drone delivery, or exploring frozen for expansion into retail, Kindell says there’s one motivating factor behind all of it.

“Like a dog on a bone, I’ve grabbed this idea of scaling craft.”

Kindell will be speaking next week at the Smart Kitchen Summit. Grab your tickets here if you want to meet Kindell in person.

A Decade Before The ChatGPT Recipe Craze, a Cooking Show Champ Helped IBM Train Chef Watson

By now, most everyone has tried their hand at prompt engineering ChatGPT or another LLM to create a decent recipe.

But a decade and a half ago, well before the current craze of making recipes with generative AI, IBM was trying to figure out how to make Watson start cooking. The supercomputer-powered AI, which was probably the first real-world AI most of us knew by name, had just broken into the broader American consciousness after it had beaten human players Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter in a Jeopardy tournament. Now, IBM was looking for ways to showcase how the technology could help people be more creative, and they identified cooking and recipes as the next world to conquer.

Around this time, the Watson team teamed up with the Institute of Culinary Education (ICE) to help train Watson. James Briscione, who had won Chopped season 2 a couple of years before and was the ICE’s director of culinary research, remembers those early days when IBM computer scientists filed into his kitchen.

“The first day we set up, the Watson team came to the kitchens at ICE, walked in with a laptop, flipped it open, logged into an interface that IBM was hosting, and we started parsing datasets.”

This meant going through and looking at ingredient combinations based on cuisine style, dish type, and flavor profiles of different dishes, as well as breaking down each type of ingredient into the various flavor and aromatic compounds into building blocks, which allowed Watson to then process millions of flavor combinations and recommend them to ICE chefs. During the process, the Watson team made sure the human chefs remained as ana integral and necessary part of the AI feedback loop.

“For the majority of the project, it did not give us recipes, it gave us ingredient combinations,” said Briscione. “And then I did the work then to translate that into the recipe.”

Briscione said taking Watson’s combination suggestions and combining them into a recipe helped unlock the creativity of him and the other chefs.

“As a sort of a thought experiment, it was even more interesting because then we could take an ingredient output, I would take it and interpret that ingredient output one way. Another chef could take that exact same ingredient output and interpret it completely differently. So in inspiring creativity, it was really, really powerful.”

Nowadays, Briscione is applying what he’s learned to build a new company that helps train large language models to better understand food. He will discuss this new company at the Smart Kitchen Summit next week.

You can watch the entire interview and see the transcript below. .

The Chef Who Helped Build Chef Watson: A Conversation With James Briscione

Transcript

Michael Wolf: I’m excited to have James Briscione who is a chef I’ve been following for a while. James, you do so many things. You’re an author. You’re a Food Network personality. And you’re one of those rare chefs that have been dabbling with AI longer than pretty much most people even working with AI at all. So it’s exciting to have you. Thanks for coming.

James Briscione Yeah, Michael. Excited to chat here excited about SKS coming up in June. This will be a great event and can’t wait to get there.

Michael Wolf Yeah, we’re going to hear you on stage talking about your experiences and what you’re looking forward to with the integration of AI. But for those who don’t know you, tell us a little bit about your background and what you’ve done over your career.

James Briscione As you said, I’m a chef first. I started as a dishwasher at the age of 16, worked my way up to some of the top kitchens in the country. James Beard award winning kitchens that I was at the helm of. Four Star Fine Dining in New York City. Kind of did it all. With that really elevated fine dining background, I moved into education at the Institute of Culinary Education in Manhattan and really was in the right place at the right time when IBM came knocking and said, ‘we’ve got this crazy idea. We’ve got this thing called Watson, that just conquered Jeopardy. And now we want to see if it can help people. We know it can answer questions. We want to see if it can help people be more creative.’

And they thought about music, they thought about visual arts, but you know, felt those were too subjective and culinary arts was a very objective area for this. So when they came to meet with us, they met with all the instructors, kind of talked about the process of development and creating dishes, and how you work as a chef. Having just been the first two-time champion on the show Chopped on the Food Network, the way I sort of process and put together flavors and ingredients was exactly what they were trying to build with Watson. So that started about a four-year relationship working with the core team there at IBM to develop Chef Watson, which I now know was recipe generative AI. Almost 11 years ago, before we started building it, I had no idea what those words even meant. And AI was only something you saw in Will Smith movies.

Michael Wolf So those early days, you’re helping with Watson. Are they bringing you into a kitchen at IBM headquarters? What does that exactly mean? Are they monitoring you with cameras, or are you saying, ‘hey, these are what flavors are trying to tell a computer what a flavor is?’

James Briscione First, as we talked about it, I was still in that Chopped competition mode. So I was like, ‘if I’m going to cook against this computer, I’m going to kick its ass. I’m actually going to prove that this thing can’t do it better than a human. The first day we set up, they came to the kitchens at ICE (the Institute of Culinary Education), walked in with a laptop, flipped it open, logged into an interface that IBM was, was hosting, and we started parsing datasets and going through and generating ingredient combinations based on a number of different factors based on cuisine style. so original cuisine, a type of dish and, and, and a core ingredient to inform, the flavor profile of, of the dish. So we’d say Italian grilled lobster. And then it would generate trillions of possible ingredient combinations that could be used to create a dish that were typical Italian ingredients that kind of fit in with what it knew about a grilled lobster recipe or a grilling recipe and a lobster recipe overlay. And then use that lobster to as kind of the core flavor profile to then build sort of that flavor tree off of that core ingredient, which that process, that’s how I tend to think about creating a dish, but getting down to the molecular level, understanding all of the aromatic compounds in the food, how those flavors relate to one another, why they go well together. I never looked at information that way or understood it in that form. And it was mind blowing to process tens of thousands of aromatic compounds in every dish, just like that.

Michael Wolf So it was essentially building, I don’t know if the right word is ontology, but kind of trying to dissect food at a more atomic level and then understanding what the commonalities are. You know, saying ‘lobster often goes in these types of dishes’ or ‘Hey, maybe it works with these types of dishes.’ So really trying to create the data building blocks so Watson can then say, hey, here’s a unique flavor idea, recipe idea you may not have thought of with your small human brain.

James Briscione Exactly. And, you know, for the majority of the project, it did not give us recipes. It gave us ingredient combinations. And then like, you know, it was kind of, I did the work then to translate that into the recipe. But as sort of a thought experiment, it was even more interesting because then we could take an ingredient output, I would take it, and interpret that ingredient output one way. Another chef could take that exact same ingredient output and interpret it completely differently. So in inspiring creativity, it was really, really powerful. And actually, there were some cool examples of where we would take the same generation, go to separate sides of the kitchen, and come back in the middle with our finished dish. You couldn’t even tell that they started at the same place.

Michael Wolf You’ve watched over the past decade, this expansion of folks trying to use technology to understand the way we cook better. Those early days of watching Watson were pretty seminal and informative, and that was the first time I remember seeing articles, maybe in the New York Times, saying ‘Watson beat Jeopardy, now it’s trying to cook’. So as you’ve watched this evolve over the past decade, what have you been thinking about? And what have you learned maybe about AI and its intersection with food? Is it something now you’re more excited about than ever?

James Briscione 100% more excited than ever. I think the potential here to simplify, to streamline, which to me is kind of the ultimate promise of AI, to make our lives better, to organize and streamline. I think where obviously it gets tricky, is one, it’s new. So there’s going to be some inherent distrust of it. One bad recipe, one recipe that doesn’t work and people are going to bail on it as well.

Michael Wolf Right, right. We’ve all done those bad recipes with ChatGPT. Like that just sounds awful.

James Briscione Yeah, and you know, I mean, it’s going to be interesting to watch this landscape too now because the majority of what’s out there are just some, you know, some basic GPT wrappers. And if any of these copyright lawsuits get through, a lot of these datasets, these sources, start to dry up or become more restricted. So one thing I’m starting to work into is building a new dedicated model for recipe generation with nutrition and flavor inputs that really can optimize your food specifically for you. If you want to get down as far as the genome, I think that’s some functionality that is off in the future, but generally, as an active 44-year-old male who lives in a hot climate, AI can tell me exactly what I should be eating on a day-to-day basis to optimize me for what I do.

Michael Wolf That’s interesting. And I think the startup you’re working on is called CulinAI. And so that’s exactly it. And so is this something you’re building your own large language model or you’re building something that can integrate with maybe some of the other large language models? Tell us a little bit about it.

James Briscione Yeah, so, and I’m actually working with the original developer of Chef Watson. It’s kind of a hybrid model where we are going to be employing some large language models, but also some kind of dedicated pieces that would be unique to this model, particularly the flavor science and the nutrition data input. And then, really, kind of the secret sauce is in the selection because, again, we know that the large language models can generate lots of great things that look like good recipes, but training it to then go back through those and select out the ones that are actually right is where it all comes together.

Michael Wolf Well, I’m excited to hear more about that at Smart Kitchen Summit. You are someone who works in a professional kitchen. You’ve been on TV, won awards, you have your own restaurant. But there’s also the consumer, right? Someone who, like me, doesn’t know what they’re doing. And one of the reasons I got interested in the Smart Kitchen in the early days is because I thought that maybe technology can help me become a better cook. How do you think average everyday consumers who aren’t like you can use technology tools like AI to help them cook better?

James Briscione We talked about kind of one of the biggest benefits AI is to make our lives better, to simplify processes and personalization, right? And I think that’s really where it comes in to find the right information. Even just how to get your ingredients organized at the beginning of the week to set up for, hey, ‘here’s what I’m going to, here’s what I’m going to cook for the week’, building out a meal plan that utilizes all of the ingredients that you have so that you don’t, at the end of the week, have half a pint of cherry tomatoes, three quarters of a head of celery, two onions, and half a butternut squash. It’s all just sitting there because you bought it all because you had to have it for that recipe, and now it all is just kind of like laying to waste, and you leave it there until it’s time to finally throw it away. And I think some of those, I think a lot of those things are what discourage people or kind of keep people from cooking. So, AI tools that can teach you to approach that process the way I do as a chef of not just looking at, okay, here’s what I’m gonna do for dinner for Tuesday night, but okay, as I’m doing dinner for Tuesday night, here’s how we get lunch for Wednesday ready.

Michael Wolf Right, right.

James Briscione And another chunk of dinner for Thursday, all kind of set up and set aside so that that’s easier too. And I think a lot of those tools are some of the things we’re looking at building into CulinAI, and I think those are the pieces that I’m excited about.

Michael Wolf Well, I’m excited to hear you in Seattle in June at Smart Kitchen Summit. James, where can people find out more about you?

James Briscione Most social media platforms at James Briscione. That’s probably the best way to find me, LinkedIn, all of the typical places, just right under my name, I’m there. There’s not many Brisciones around, so.

Michael Wolf All right, man, we’ll see you in a bit. Yeah, there aren’t. That’s a great, unique name. All right, James, we’ll see you soon.

James Briscione All right.

Tovala’s Keeley Kabala: Success in Smart Kitchen Requires Listening to Your Customers

Back in 2016, an early-stage startup called Tovala appeared in just the second Smart Kitchen Summit Startup Showcase. Company CEO David Rabie showed off the first-gen oven and discussed the vision for a combination of a hardware appliance and a food subscription service.

Fast forward eight years later, and Tovala has become one of the true success stories in the smart kitchen, amassing a large and enthusiastic user base for its oven and an extremely high lock-in rate for its meal delivery service.

I caught up recently with Tovala’s COO, Keeley Kabala, to talk about Tovala’s business in 2024 and where he sees his company and food delivery going over the next decade.

One of the key takeaways for me was that Tovala still focuses heavily on adding value for its customers through its oven, even if that means enabling users to take advantage of the multi-function cooking automation that is one of the key differentiators for the Tovala. The company sells two models of oven today – a five-in-one and a six-in-one – and as of today they have over one thousand CPG products in the database that they can run scan-to-cook where the oven will have an optimised set of cooking instructions that can bring the different forms of heat (and steam) into the cooking process.

According to Kabala, many of those CPG products are available at Costco.

“Right now we have dozens of Kirkland products that can scan to cook right from the beginning,” said Kabala. “So people many times are leaving the store with scannable items that have cook cycles already programmed in for their oven to use.”

Not only does Tovala have scan-to-cook for Costco’s Kirkland brand items, but it is also selling its oven in select Costco, which Kabala believes will give them more exposure to different customer types, which will give them new data points around which to build product around customer preferences.

It’s this listening to customers, says Kabala, the is critical for their future success.

“If we’re willing to listen to our customers, they’ll give you a chance to iterate.” said Kabala. “If you don’t listen, you might not be around forever. It’s been great to see just how vocal people are, too. They really care. So they don’t hold back on their feedback. We just have to make sure we keep listening.”

You can watch the interview below as well as read the transcript of the full conversation.

If you’d like to connect with Keeley in person, he will be at the Smart Kitchen Summit next week. You can get your tickets at the SKS website.

A Conversation with Tovala's Keeley Kabala

Michael Wolf: All right, I’m here with Keely Kabala, not Keely Tovala, because it sounds like some people get that mixed up because the name sounds so familiar.

Keeley Kabala: Yeah, it’s got the same last few letters, but yes, it was named before I got here. I didn’t choose the name of the company, but it’s led to confusion and many jokes along the way.

Michael Wolf: And I imagine one of those jokers is David Rabie, the cofounder and CEO of the company I’ve spoken with. He’s been at Smart Kitchen Summit to some of it, but we’re excited to have you come out to Seattle in June to talk about what you guys are doing at Tovala. Tovala is a really interesting company because they are one of the real success stories in this idea of like bringing new technology into the kitchen. And also you have this interesting pairing with a food delivery service. You guys have really been a shining star in that space, combining a food delivery service with the hardware. We’ll talk about that in a little bit, but before we jump into like what’s going on with Tovala, tell us a little bit about your background and how you got where you are.

Keeley Kabala: Sure. My whole professional career has kind of been in the consumer appliance space. Did my very first internships at Whirlpool and Fellows, making appliances and paper shredders. I went over to Whirlpool full-time and had a variety of different interesting and challenging assignments all over the world. I got to live in Europe for a year, in China for a year, launched products and dishwashers, refrigerators. And interestingly enough, David and Brian, the other co-founder of Tovala, asked me to be their first employee in 2015. I didn’t understand the concept of Tovala and turned them down. And they asked me again a few months later and again a few months later. And finally, after they launched the Kickstarter and it became a little bit more real, I ended up joining the team as the VP of Hardware Engineering. And so, at that time, they had the Gen 1 oven, which had a lot of pros but also had a lot of cons. And my job was to work with the team to create what was our second gen oven. And it’s kind of the base for the two SKUs that we have right now. So we developed that in 2017, 2018, and it launched November 2018 and kind of has been our bread and butter on the hardware side ever since. And then on the ops side, I joined the food ops team kind of in a support role in early 2019. We were trying to figure out, we had just opened our own food facility on the South side of Chicago. And I kind of came over just a little advisement type role for our COO at the time on cost and quality and kind of just took over OPS along the way. And then, you know, we really started to explode in the back half of 2019. And it’s been a wild ride throughout the pandemic and opening food facilities along the way. But yeah, that’s been my Tovala journey. Originally, I came for the hardware side, and now I spend most of my time on the food side, but both teams report to me.

Michael Wolf: And you have that engineering mindset, obviously, build products throughout your career. And I would imagine that an engineering mindset really helps as you try to optimize the food delivery side and the operation side.

Keeley Kabala: Yeah, yeah, I think we have a good team of engineers that bridge both the oven and the food side. I think that’s probably one of our competitive advantages compared to just maybe a meal kit company that doesn’t have the engineering firepower that we have, whether it’s on the hardware side, the ops engineering side or the software side. You know, some of our engineers have developed very sophisticated thermal modeling to make sure our food is safe. And also the packaging is as light as possible for customers, based on zip codes, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And getting to work with them has been a good challenge. I think there’s, you know, one of our unique advantages is having the control of the food because we produce the food, ship the food, and then have the kill step and the quality control in actually the customer’s house because we’re using our, you know, chef curated cook cycles to cook the food. So it’s a good engineering systems problem to solve.

Michael Wolf: The current hardware, which like you said, is the foundation of what you helped build. One of the core ideas that I’ve always found with Tovala is it has steam, which I think obviously makes the food a lot better. You know, steam ovens haven’t really become widely deployed in consumer kitchens in the US but I think it really does make food better. So talk about, you know, the feature set within the oven and why it works so well with the food you guys deliver.

Keeley Kabala: Yeah, we have a five-in-one and a six-in-one. The five in one has the bake, the broil, the air fry functionality, as well as toast and reheat. And then, on our six-in-one, we’ve added steam. So steam is just another cooking mode that allows to preserve moisture inside of some of the more delicate food items to reduce browning for other delicate food items. And actually in many ways can help accelerate the cook because you’re getting the cooking from the steam surface and the heat transfer going through the food. So, you know, we’ve gone into air frying. We were kind of, I think, a little late to getting into air frying. We were debating that for a long time on the differences between it and, you know, just bake, convection bake. But we launched the air fry model that has the two feet speed fan. It gets really great performance. And then, you know, our six-in-one has the steam functionality that does really great on some of the bread items. case ideas. It comes out really great. The salmon turns out perfect when it’s with steam and then hit with the broil at the end. I think the true advantage is the multi-step cooking where you’re able to change modes and temperatures. And that’s what most of our, you know, Tovala cycles do, whether it’s the scan to cook groceries or the Tovala meals, or some of our customers who really enjoy cooking at home, they create sophisticated cycles on their own. Some people just like to hit bake 400, 15 minutes all the time. Others get a little bit more creative. They have a ramp up with an air fry to get the high velocity airflow in the oven, hit it with bake, and then the broil at the end to get caramelization or whatever the case may be. But yeah, I think our true advantage is the multi-step cooking.

Michael Wolf: And that pairing of your food or even CPGs with the scan to cook with the ability to switch to different modes makes it fairly unique. I think most people just buy something at Costco, put it in the microwave, or put it in their air fryer, and hit go. But you have all these five to six different elements that you can combine. So each food has its own essentially recipe around the cook. Apply a certain amount of heat, you’re gonna finish with this, add some steam, and that’s optimized for each food that you deliver to the consumer.

Keeley Kabala: Yeah, exactly. And it’s also from a food safety standpoint. So it’s a balancing act that our food safety team and our culinary team constantly are trading off on. It’s a unique spot for us to have that, one, that additional kill step in the home. But actually, quality control is something that we actually have. How the food turns out when you cook it, we control that in the person’s house. Most other meal delivery companies, your end result is determined based on how good of a chef you are. And we extend one layer further where our oven is cooking the cook cycles the way our chefs intend at the test kitchen here at HQ. And they’ve gone through several rounds of testing. And the important thing is pairing the protein with the side. And so you can cook chicken a bunch of different ways, but whether it’s paired with mashed potatoes or a rice pilaf or green beans, how it gets to that food safe temperature is going to be different. And so our chefs have to balance that out. And so that’s why each recipe has a unique cook site.

Michael Wolf: And you do work with stuff that people can buy at the grocery store because you have scan to cook. That to me is really helpful. And I think that would be something that consumers more broadly would like if, hey, I could buy something at the store and my cooking device can be optimized around what the optimal cook mode is for that. Maybe that’s a combination of like the food brand working with the appliance maker, but that isn’t really available today beyond like what you guys are doing. Is this something you think maybe more widely available in a 10 year time frame. Maybe that’s with a Tovala or another appliance where essentially the cook and the different elements of the cook can be applied in a more precise manner based on what consumers are putting into their cooking box.

Keeley Kabala: I think for certain customers, that’s definitely the case and definitely a benefit, like not having to check, not having to preheat. I think that’s the other thing that’s like one of our main advantages is anything we’ve scanned to cook in a Tovala, whether it’s a Tovala meal or a CPG type item where you scan the UPC, you set and forget it, you cook it from ambient heat. And so we’ve calculated the preheat and how the oven warms up into the cook cycle. And so I do think that’s another thing. It brings the convenience factor. If you had to always preheat your oven, then remember to come back 10 minutes later, put it in. It’s just one more step that I don’t think customers need or want to do. It’s really a non-value step to them. So we try to eliminate those. And then not every item is going to work. Not every oven item is ovenable. It can’t be cooked with the heaters. Some companies have very delicate packaging. And we don’t want them to melt, so that’s why we don’t pick everything that can be from CPG or from the frozen aisle. But there’s a lot. There’s over 1,000 items at this point in our database. We continue to add to them based on customer’s demand. There’s definitely times of days where this functionality is used quite often. And certain items, whether it’s snacks or breakfasts, are very prevalent use cases for these.

Michael Wolf: So looking forward, I imagine you think a bit about what the Tovala cooking side could look like in a long-term time horizon. Do you guys think you’ll continue to evolve the cooking appliance? Maybe in 10 years, will it be whether it be more automation or different modes of heating? Or do you think consumers just want a basic what you have today and just a little bit of change over time?

Keeley Kabala: I think, I mean, the biggest thing for us right now is, you know, for the history of our company, we’ve always been direct to consumer. And so people are coming to us more with a food need first. And very recently we started in retail. We’re in Costco now with our oven. And so I think we’re getting feedback from our customers on different things they want. So I think it’s like, based on where the starting point of the customer comes in, they’re going to want different functionalities, different capabilities, similar to when we went from the gen one to the gen two oven. You know, the gen one oven didn’t have a bake button on the front of it. We thought everyone wanted the super smart appliance, only app usage, and we very quickly got feedback that we needed to make some tweaks. And so we brought the functionality still in the app, but also to the front of the oven. You know, the gen one had a larger footprint. We needed to change the footprint size. The kitchen counters are so valuable in everyone’s home. We needed to make sure we were optimizing every square inch. And so going into retail now, we’re getting feedback. We’re very early into it. Only been a few months with Costco, but we’re seeing that there’s different functionalities, different features, different use cases. And so I think there will definitely be some tweaks in the hardware and the overall experience in general.

Michael Wolf: That Costco relationship is really interesting to me because when I think of Costco, they obviously sell appliances, but I go there mainly for food. I usually get the same things. You guys combine the oven with a kind of consumable. Once people buy the oven through a Costco, can they then pick up the Tovala food at Costco or would only be delivered to you guys, to them?

Keeley Kabala: So right now we haven’t started any food in retail. That’s on a roadmap of things to consider. Right now we have dozens of Kirkland products that can scan to cook right from the beginning. So people many times are leaving the store with scannable items that have cook cycles already programmed in for their oven to use. But right now we only sell ovens at Costco. But I think once again, this is our advantage we have is we have the opportunity to go into the other side of the store and start getting some of our products there for quicker trials for customers who aren’t familiar yet as much with Tovala as a food product and only are learning about us first time more on the appliance side.

Michael Wolf: And that’s interesting that you guys have worked with Costco. So some of the food items available at Costco, you can scan to cook. So they’re probably excited about that.

Keeley Kabala: Yeah, they’re super excited about that. I mean, not only are they getting to move our ovens through their store, but it’ll help them move some of their other products as well. And it just kind of brings some from newness and kind of a tech advantage that Costco didn’t have previously on the food side.

Michael Wolf: What are you most excited about when you think about the Consumer Kitchen five years down the road, 10 years down the road? What excites you about that space?

Keeley Kabala: I mean, I think in general, a way to reduce waste. So whether it’s personalization and understanding what people want to eat so they make sure they don’t buy or order the wrong stuff that ends up being wasted or better understanding of inventory management. But I think in general, both food and energy waste are still major opportunities in the kitchen space. And so whether it’s how people get their food, how much food they get, when they get their food, what food they get, I think are all still major opportunities across our business and other businesses. And then, you know, I have a large oven in my home. I worked for a company that made very nice large ovens. I only use the large oven now on Thanksgiving. Like there’s a lot less energy usage by having the right appliance for the right job. And I think for what I need normally, you know, Tovala answers that. I think there’s a lot of other really smart, compact kitchen appliances. And so I think adoption is, I think, been interesting to see, not just us, but other companies as well, you know, gain adoption. And the one thing I’ve always shocked by is how willing people are to try new things in the kitchen and are willing to take on early stage innovation because they are really trying to optimize the food that they eat, their time, and their space in their kitchen. And so that’s why companies like us and many others have existed and continue to get a chance to iterate. If we’re willing to listen to our customers, they’ll give you a chance to iterate. If you don’t listen, you might not be around forever, but it’s been great to see just how vocal people are, too. They really care. So they don’t hold back on their feedback. We just got to make sure we keep listening.

Michael Wolf: Great closing words, Keely Kabala with Tovala. Thank you so much for spending time with me today.

Keeley Kabala: Yeah, have a great day.

Meet the SKS 2024 Startup Showcase Finalists

Ever since we launched the Smart Kitchen Summit {SKS} in 2015, one of the most popular parts of the conference is the Startup Showcase, where attendees get a glimpse at early-stage companies making innovative inroads into food and kitchen tech.

The Showcase is back this year, and we’re excited to announce the nine startups building products that are rethinking the future of food and cooking. These nine were chosen from over 100 applicants who applied to pitch their product on stage in Seattle.

You can meet the founders behind these companies, hear them pitch and visit their table at the Smart Kitchen Summit on June 4th and 5th in Seattle! Get your ticket today!

Nymble

How does Posha work? | Posha Kitchen Robot | Nymble is now Posha

Nymble makes a countertop cooking robot that automates everyday cooking.

Celcy

Meet Celcy - The Only Fully Autonomous Cooking Appliance

The Celcy is an autonomous cooking appliance that combines a countertop oven with a freezer that stores the meals until ready for cooking.

TasteGAGE from MAMAY Technologies Ltd

Taste GAGE is “the world’s first universal Taste, Odor & Feel simulator for foods and beverages. The GAGE simulator analyzes the chemical and physical properties of a product’s ingredients at the molecular level, combining that data with their taste and odor attributes.

Hefes

The Hefes’ Self-Cleaning Juicer uses steam to automatically clean its internal components after each use.

MashDaddy

MashDaddy has reimagined the world’s oldest kitchen tool, the mortar and pestle.

Wisely

Wisely is a smart food storage container that uses hardware, software, and sensors to track the conditions with which perishable foods are stored and connect to a consumer smartphone app.

Bridge Appliances

Introducing OMM, Automated Egg Cooker

Bridge Appliances makes OMM, a robot designed to automate the preparation of eggs for breakfast sandwiches.

Kitchenery

The Spoon Catches up With Akshay Bhuva of Kitchenery

Kitchenery makes wireless power transfer technology for the kitchen appliance industry. Its products include the Quantum Energy Pad and cordless appliances such as the Cordless Kettle and Silent Blender, which together enable consumers to use appliances without cords.

Ladle Cooking

Ladle helps users cook at home by personalizing recipes from their favorite creators to their individual preferences.

Once again, make sure to get your ticket today to SKS 2024 to check out these products and meet the founders behind them on June 4th and 5th in Seattle!

SKS 2024 Preview: Clayton Wood Talks The Current State of Food Robotics

We’re just one month away from the Smart Kitchen Summit, so we’re going to be checking and hearing from some of our speakers.

First up is Clayton Wood, a long-time entrepreneur who has been navigating the food robotics market for the last five years, first as the CEO of Picnic (which debuted its robot at SKS 2019), talking about the challenges and opportunities he sees in this market. You can watch the full interview by clicking play below or read some of the highlights in the transcript below.

The Spoon Talks to Food Robotics Entrepreneur Clayton Wood.

Michael Wolf: I imagine that a lot of startups in the food robotics space are probably wanting to get your advice because you ran one of the early pretty successful food robotics companies with Picnic. Talk about some of the conversations you’re having and maybe some of the, are there early stage entrepreneurs in the space that are coming to you say, hey, we have an idea.

Clayton Wood: Absolutely. I started getting inbound interest in being an advisor as soon as I left Picnic, a little over a year ago. I’ve talked to a large number of companies in the space. Many of them are at the same spot, which, given market conditions, isn’t too surprising, which is they’ve got an idea. They’ve probably got a product or a prototype, having trouble raising their first round, having trouble finding product market fit. And just trying to make that leap into kind of being a more mature company. It’s a tough spot under any circumstances, but in market conditions, the last few years have made it especially difficult.

Michael Wolf: One of the things about food robotics is it’s a long path to getting into market. It’s a lot of capital. And with the venture capital winter that is seemingly lasting forever, it seems like a tough time for food robotics companies.

Clayton Wood: It very much is. I know at Picnic, we started in what I finally refer to as the free money era, where you raised one round just to get to the next round, and raising money wasn’t really that much of a question. Now it’s a huge problem. The challenge that food robotics companies have specifically is that as the market tightened up, it became very conservative, and conservative investors don’t like hardware in general.

Food tech is seen as a challenging category of hardware. So if you’re looking at, you know, show me when you’re cashflow positive, show me when you’re profitable. It’s very, very difficult as a food hardware company to show that because it’s such a new field. Product market fit is elusive and being able to say when that those financial metrics will turn right side up is really challenging. It’s just a really tough time for all startups, but I think food robotics, food hardware is especially a challenging category, and has been for the last two or three years.

Michael Wolf: One of the things about Picnic was I felt like it was a next-generation pizza food robotics company and that it was purpose-built around building pizzas. It wasn’t one of these where someone got a general-purpose robotic arm and would just move things around within a confined space. And you’re still seeing those sometimes. What are some of the if you’re giving advice to a food robotics company in terms of building out a system and thinking it through what ultimately may succeed in the market, what would you tell them?

Clayton Wood: Yes.I think it’s one of those signs, you’re absolutely right about the arms and the big footprints. It’s one of those signs of a new, immature market. People haven’t seen food robotics, they don’t know what to think about it. We had people at trade shows looking at the Picnic robot and they’re in the pizza business, and they’re watching it make a pizza and they’re going, ‘does it make the pizza?’ It’s really hard to just wrap their head around it.

I think the challenge, it’s common to a lot of technology companies, but especially true in food robotics, you’ve got to start with the customer. What’s the customer’s pain point, and what can they actually use? And unfortunately, not uncommonly, people start with ‘what can my product do?’ and ‘how can I make it do it in a real fancy, impressive way and how fast can it do it or that sort of thing?’

Those numbers are nice and you get people excited, but it’s not really what the customer needs. And ultimately, the real challenge in food robotics is integration. How will your device get integrated into a commercial kitchen so that the kitchen can continue to operate, do what it needs to do, and do it without disrupting the process? And until there are new concepts that are really built around automation and those are starting to emerge. I used to say no one who has a kitchen has a pizza robot sized hole in their kitchen that they’re just waiting to plug it in.

Michael Wolf: You know, there are a couple of founders out there on the smaller side that I think are innovating. They’re not a big chain. So you see like Andrew Simmons, which I think you talk a lot with. You see Lee Kindell up here in Seattle with Moto. And I imagine there are others that are showing how you can be a smaller operator and almost build your new restaurant concept around utilizing kind of off-the-shelf robotics. It’s not like a Zume, where they raised hundreds of millions of dollars from Softbank and say, ‘Hey, we’re going to build our own robot, do this custom thing.’ These smaller operators are taking a system like Picnic’s and saying, ‘Hey, we’re going to build a new concept that is essentially centered around automation and kind of move forward.’ I feel like they’re pioneering in a sense. Do you think that’s going to be what we’re going to see in the future, more people pioneering concepts that are leveraging automation because they think that can help them scale better?

Clayton Wood: I love to see that. I think Andrew and Lee are brilliant, and I’d say, you know, they’re unfortunately they’re at the far end of the open-minded innovator scale. They’re both kind of willing to move things around and try things, and they’re not just open to innovation, but they embrace it and they seek it out. I don’t think that’s really the persona that I’d use to describe most people in the restaurant business.

If you have that kind of open -minded approach, there’s all kinds of things you could do and you can adapt. If you don’t want to adapt, you say, this is the way I do things. Can you help me? That’s where you run into an integration challenge. But I think what I love about what Lee is doing at Moto and what Andrew is doing with Mama Ramona’s Pizza Roboto is they’re showing how it can work. They’re sharing real world experiences.

Andrew is doing his whole build -in public diary on LinkedIn, which I think is brilliant and super useful because he’s sharing the wins and the losses. But it shows that it can work, you’ve just got to adapt. And I think that’s a lot of the product market fit in these early days is about adapting on both sides. The customer has to be willing to adapt a little bit and the product companies have to go in realizing that regardless of what they may think, they haven’t built a perfect machine and they need to be willing to tweak and change and reconfigure to make the best fit.

Michael Wolf: Okay, you’ve been in this business for half a decade now, you’re advising companies. What are you excited about in terms of food robotics? And are there spaces you think you’d like to see more entrepreneurs or inventors go in terms of building automation around food?

Clayton Wood: I’ve seen some in the home space as well as the restaurant space who are starting out with products that already solve some of the challenges that we’ve seen really block some of the earlier companies. Building devices that are drop-in replacements for a make line, for instance. Acknowledging the fact that if you have the way a restaurant operates, workers are seldom just dedicated to a station standing there all day. The automation needs to work even if the person is only giving intermittent attention. You need to see things like a holding station where if you’re making 10 salads a minute, well, if there’s nobody there to catch the 10 salads, they need to be suitably caught and retained and held there.

And it needs to work around the way the workflow goes in the kitchen, which is multitasking, short staff, and it needs to solve real problems. And the nice thing is you can solve different problems and make it work. I’ve heard people say that, well, the automation didn’t really save me any labor because I only had one person working there anyway. I still need one person working the automation, but the consistency means the cook goes well. The pizzas cook really well because they’re all consistent.

Food waste is another area where food waste is a huge problem, especially in the pizza category, but I think it’s also a problem in other categories as well. If you can eliminate food waste, just food waste alone can pay for the system. So I think if you’re an automation company or product developer, thinking about all the different ways you can add value, but it can only do that if it works with that particular operator.

So you’re going to find the customer who is doing something the way that your machine is designed to do it. If you can make 200 dishes an hour, that’s brilliant and that sounds really impressive, but how many restaurants are making 200 of the same thing every hour? Not that many. And so you may not really have a big market if that’s your claim to fame and that’s really the reason you want somebody to buy it and that’s how your economics work. If people are making 20 an hour, is it still economical? Does it still pay for itself?

Michael Wolf: You mentioned home and you’re seeing some things that are exciting you. And you don’t have to necessarily name names, but home has been really tough to crack for food robotics. And you’re seeing some interesting ones that broke over some of the barriers that were challenging in the past. What are you seeing there that’s exciting?

Clayton Wood: Home is tricky because it’s gotta be, it’s gotta be small. It’s gotta be versatile. Um, it can’t lock you into, you can only do, you can only use it if you buy our packet of pre -packaged food. Um, so I’ve seen one or two players in there who are, who are solving that, who are offering pre -packaged food or recipes, but you can also customize and add your own ingredients, but making a pretty versatile device. So I think that’s a category that has promise, but it’s especially tricky because even if you’ve got something that works brilliantly, you’ve got the whole, it’s a consumer market, and how do you break into consumer markets? You know, got to build a brand and get everybody’s attention. And that’s just, that’s a world that I’m less familiar with. And it’s a pretty daunting challenge to break into that consumer market.

Michael Wolf: All right, well, we’ll be talking about both the restaurant, robotic space, as well as the consumer space at the Smart Kitchen Summit. Lee Kindell will be there. Clayton, you’re going to be there as well, June 4th and 5th in Seattle. And I’m excited to see you there, man.

Clayton Wood: Looking forward to it.

You can hear Clayton at Smart Kitchen Summit on June 4-5th in Seattle. Get your ticket today!

Smart Kitchen Summit Returns to Seattle in 2024

The Smart Kitchen Summit, the pioneering executive summit focused on the digital transformation of the consumer meal journey, is excited to announce its return in 2024. In 2024, SKS will return to its birthplace, Seattle, Washington, scheduled for June 4-5th.

“I’m thrilled that SKS is making its return to Seattle next year, where our journey began,” said Michael Wolf, SKS founder and Spoon publisher. “While we had over ten thousand of the SKS community join us for virtual events during the pandemic, there’s nothing like seeing, touching, and tasting innovation. I look forward to connecting with those helping rethink how we do things in the world of food and cooking in person.”

Themes For 2024

SKS 2024 will focus on some of the most important themes around the innovation-driven transformation of how we shop, cook, consume, and convene around food. Some of the key themes and questions that will be explored during the two full days at SKS include:

AI’s Impact on Food: Exploring how AI is transforming every part of the food value chain, including how consumers find, purchase, and prepare food. How can food companies, appliance brands, retailers, and more harness the power of this incredible technology?

Food Waste and Sustainability: How can innovation-powered changes can we make to reduce food waste along the consumer meal journey?

Food and Nutrition Personalization: The technology and tools exist to create personalized food and nutrition plans that lead to better health outcomes. How can the food industry adapt in a world in which GLP-1-based drugs are creating a murky outlook for traditional food brands?

Automation & Cooking: Automation is becoming critical in the commercial kitchen. How will it fit in the consumer kitchen and our food lives?

On-Demand, Decentralized Food Manufacturing: The packaged-goods food ecosystem is wasteful. Can new forms of on-demand, decentralized food production technologies like 3D printing reduce the packaging and waste of traditional CPG models, and how will these systems scale in commercial and consumer settings?

Food Discovery & Meal Planning: We’re more likely nowadays to find a new recipe on TikTok than in a cookbook. As food retailers & CPGs lock into these new discovery channels to enable purchase journeys, will the consumer of the future join them?

Kitchen Electrification: Induction cooking systems are both more efficient and better for the environment, but consumers are hesitant to adopt them. When will the electrification of the consumer kitchen happen, if ever?

Startup Showcase

In addition to two full days of TED-style presentations, panels, workshops, and networking, SKS is bringing back our pioneering Startup Showcase. Launched in 2015, the SKS Startup Showcase has been instrumental in connecting startups with investors, corporate partners, and even opportunities like appearing on Shark Tank. Startups who are building the next great technology that they believe will change how we shop, cook, store, or consume food in the home are encouraged to apply today.

Location Details

SKS 2024 will be held at the beautiful Block41 event center in the heart of Seattle. Block41 has two full floors of event and exhibition space, two full kitchens, and an outdoor space for our celebration and happy hour on June 4th.

Join Us

Mark your calendars and save the date for June 4-5th in Seattle. If you are interested in speaking at SKS, submit a speaker application today. If you’d like to bring your company’s product to Seattle and share it with the SKS and Spoon community, please fill out our sponsor form. And if you’d like to purchase a ticket, you can get our Super Early Bird pricing between now and February 29th, 2024.

We look forward to welcoming you in 2024!