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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

SKS

Join Us Today at SKS For These In-Depth Workshops

We hope you’re ready for SKS Day 2, which includes four insights-packed workshops! 

We’ll be hearing about prototyping your next big idea, managing IP and patents for a food tech startup, building a connected recipe strategy for appliance brands and an introduction to solid-state cooking.

You won’t want to miss them and you can get a day two workshops pass for only $35!

Here’s more on this morning’s lineup:

9-10 AM PT: From Napkin to Pre-Production: A Prototyping Workshop With Scott Heimendinger

Do you have the next great product idea? Turn it into a working prototype! Independent inventor Scott Heimendinger (Anova, Modernist Cuisine, Sansaire) will walk you through the process with practical tips, tools, and best practices for taking your idea from the back of a napkin to pre-production. But prototyping isn’t just for engineers. Whether you’re raising a round, headed to crowdfunding, or just kicking the tires, learn how prototyping is a critical part of your pitch deck and IP strategy before you launch. 

Presenter: Scott Heimendinger

10-11 AM PT: Solid State Microwave Cooking 101 – What’s In It for You?

The workshop will give an introduction to solid state RF technology in contrast to the legacy magnetron. Aspects like controllability, reliability, frequency ranges, and related “recipe-control” will be presented.

Presenters: Klaus Werner, John Gerling, John Mastela

11-12 PT: The Ingredients of a Connected Recipe

As we enter the age of the connected kitchen, how we write recipes has changed, maximizing the usability of appliances and simplifying the experience of home cooks. 

In conversation with Hugh Durkin, VP of Product Platform, Adam Bermingham, Head of AI, will discuss what makes the perfect recipe for connected cooking. From the amount of time spent interacting with appliances to the precise blend of ingredients, the team will share their unique insights and offer takeaways to inform your strategy.

Presenters: Hugh Durkin, Adam Bermingham

12-1 PM PT: Building A Food Tech Patent & IP Strategy

This workshop will help you understand the IP landscape in foodtech and give you a framework for developing your own IP strategy for your foodtech startup.

Speaker: Anas Alfarra

Meet These 14 Food Tech Innovators Tomorrow at SKS

Ever since 2015, we’ve been welcoming companies that build interesting technology that change how we shop, cook, and eat to our big event, SKS. This year is no different, and tomorrow we’ll hear from 14 startups showcasing their products on the big stage.

You won’t want to miss their presentations at SKS, and you can also talk to them in person during the mid-day exhibition and networking time in our custom built SKS metaverse space on Gather.

But first, check out our sneak peek of each company below in this SKS Innovator preview.

Celcy

The Spoon Interviews - Celcy

Celcy is building an autonomous cooking appliance that combines a countertop oven with a freezer that stores the meals until ready for cooking. The device can store up to four meals in a freezer. Cooking can be rescheduled via an app or on-demand via request. When it’s time to cook, the meal is shuttled from the freezer compartment on the left side into the cooking compartment side on the right. A built-in elevator lifts and deposits the frozen meal in the top upper right cooking chamber where it is cooked for consumption.

Cuisine Machine

The Spoon Interviews - Cuisine Machine

Cuisine Machine is a countertop smart appliance that uses pre-programmed electronic recipe cards to automatically add ingredients one by one during cooking, while controlling the temperature and pressure. The patented device was invented by Subina Shami.

Eatiquette

The Spoon Interviews - Eatiquette

EatQ is a Food Data Platform that empowers brands to make their product data easy to search, share and compare based on consumer preferences. The company provides a that enables comparison by ingredients, diet type, nutrition, sustainability and more.

Elo Health

Introducing Elo Health | Smart Nutrition Made For You

Elo leverages your personal biometric data to give you precisely calibrated supplement recommendations. The company’s technology analyzes a customer’s biomarkers and looks for nutrient gaps, and then creates a personalized nutrition plan. The company delivers customized supplements to the consumer’s home and offers one-on-one guidance with dieticians via the app or video call.

Evercase

The Spoon Interviews - Evercase

Evercase’s technology utilizes pulsed electric and oscillating magnetic fields to cause water molecules within food stored at sub-zero temperature to vibrate, inhibiting the formation of ice crystals. The result is food that, when pulled out of a Evercase-equipped freezer, has almost the exact look and texture of food that is fresh and not riddled with ice crystals.

Fresh Portal

The Spoon Interviews - Fresh Portal

Fresh Portal makes a food and package delivery locker that is built into the side of a home. It has temperature control zones for either hot or cold food and would be accessible both from the outside and inside. It would be managed by an app and integrated with third-party delivery service providers like UberEats or Amazon Fresh so they can access the outside of the locker and insert a delivery.

Gardyn

The Spoon Interviews - Gardyn

Gardyn makes an indoor growing system that can grow up to 8 pounds of produce per month. The system utilizes AI to monitor the produce while you are away. The app automates the watering and lights, and plants are ready to harvest within 4-5 weeks.

Growing Justice

The Spoon Interviews - Impact Justice

Growing Justice is a new program that utilizes precision indoor agriculture to expand access to fresh food in prison communities and provide skills training to incarcerated and formerly incarcerated populations.

Here Here Market

The Spoon Interviews - Here Here Market

Here Here Market is an online marketplace for food enthusiasts to discover and buy specialty products from chefprenuers, small batch artisans and local product makers. Here Here provides culinary creators a springboard to launch new products, build community and to run operations, shipping nationwide.

KOKO Networks

KOKO Fresh Solution

Distributing Fresh Milk is a big challenge in the developing world, where plastic packaging is expensive and adds to mountains of waste. Koko has launched a smart Milk distribution solution in Kenya that uses bladders, insulated crates, and IoT-enabled Milk ATMs to make nutritious, affordable & packaging-free milk available to everyone.

Perks99

Perks99 is a sustainable lunch subscription service for the workplace that reduces take-out waste by using reusable bamboo bento plates, cutlery, and retro bags for delivery and pick-up meals. The company will use drop-off, temperature controlled food portals on-premise, where customers can then return their dishes when they are finished.

Remy Robotics

The Spoon Interviews - Remy Robotics

Remy creates custom-built robotic kitchens tailored for the food delivery industry. For the past year, the company has been operating two dark kitchens, one in Barcelona and one in Paris. The company creates food utilizing robot-optimized recipes, and has its own in-house virtual brands which is delivered through third party service providers like Deliveroo and UberEats.

Trendi

Trendi uses robotics to help the farm and food industry rescue and upcycle food waste into food products. The rescued food goes through Trendi’s BioTrim unit, where it is turned into bioflakes and powders which are shelf stable food ingredients that can feed those that are food insecure.

Versaware

The Spoon Interviews - Versaware

VersaWare builds a personalized recipe and nutrition AI platform optimized for dietary or nutrition needs harnessed inside an all-in-one kitchen appliance.

Join us tomorrow at SKS to see each of these innovators pitch their companies. You can also join our 90-minute exhibition and networking block for free in the custom-built metaverse exhibition space on Gather here at noon Pacific tomorrow October 12th.

For Restaurant Robots to Succeed, Remy Robotics Believes They Need to Be at The Center of The Kitchen

Ask Yegor Traiman about whether robots or humans are better at making food, and he’ll side with his fellow carbon-based lifeforms.

“What might be super easy for humans is very difficult for robots,” Traiman told The Spoon.

But this doesn’t mean the CEO of food robotics startup Remy Robotics thinks humans should prepare all our food. In fact, he thinks robots should an integral part of the kitchen. The answer, Traiman explains, lies in creating a world in which the robots can succeed. In other words, we need to build kitchens around the robot rather than force-fitting a robot into human-centered kitchens.

“To really reach mass market adoption and really solve the labor shortage, you need to put the robot at the center.”

For Traiman, that means having culinary engineers build systems with the robots in mind from the start.

“It’s not about a fancy Michelin star chef,” said Traiman. “It’s really about engineers from the culinary side which invent the new cooking methods, frameworks and techniques for the robots to make them as efficient as they can.”

As for the robots, Traimain believes they need to highly flexible, a far cry from what he sees from most of today’s food robotics startups.

“Most of the food robot startups end up automating just a single process like flipping burgers,” said Traiman. “But can you gain mass market adoption with a single process automation?”

According to Traiman, his company also started down that path and tried to automate high-volume processes like burger assembly and pizza cutting, but realized they needed to focus less on high-volume mechanical solutions and instead build systems with software-defined intelligence and flexibility.

“We quickly realized, it’s a short time to market, but it’s not scalable. We immediately switched to more complicated deep tech based on AI, a true smart robotics application.”

That flexibility allows Remy Robotics to cook a wide variety of food types, which is crucial to the bigger vision of the company. Today the company operates its own robot-powered dark kitchens in Barcelona and Paris and creates food under the company’s own in-house virtual brands which is delivered through third party service providers like Deliveroo and UberEats. Longer term, however, Traiman sees his company as a B2B platform for any restaurant operator who wants to leverage automation in a scalable way to use Remy as a kitchen-as-a-service.

“Even though there is hype, no one in this business has found a sustainable business model yet,” said Traiman. “Delivery service providers are struggling. Virtual restaurants are also kind of struggling. Without the help of disruptive technology, there is no way out and I really believe robotics can make it better, cheaper and more reliable.”

You can see Remy Robotics and connect with Traimain at the Smart Kitchen Summit next week (get your ticket here). You can watch our full interview with Traiman below.

The Spoon Interviews - Remy Robotics

Fresh Portal Is a Tech-Powered Take on the Old-Timey Milk Door

When I first saw the Fresh Portal at CES, I thought it made a whole lotta sense. After all, what food-ordering families wouldn’t appreciate the ability to keep groceries or restaurant-delivered food cold or warm until they arrive home from work?

But the idea behind the Fresh Portal isn’t exactly new. In fact, you can go back as far as the early 1900s to find a predecessor in the milk door. Milk doors were built into homes when the milkman was as common as the mailman, an early version of a storage locker where that weekly delivery of milk could be stored until ready for pickup. Like the Fresh Portal, the milk door was actually two doors, one on both the outside and inside with the storage cavity in between.

Milk doors were built into homes to receive delivery of fresh milk

Fresh Portal founder Jeremy High is aware of the history of home delivery storage lockers. In a recent interview with The Spoon, he said his product is a modern, high-tech take on the old-timey milk locker.

“Fresh Portal is a modern twist on that,” High said. “It has Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. It receives deliveries of the food you’re getting delivered by DoorDash or Instacart, groceries, and even packages.”

Because the Fresh Portal is designed for the modern era of food delivery, it also keeps food hot or cold and has an app that sends notifications to the customer.

“Deliveries stay at the right temperature until you’re ready to get home and deal with them. Fresh Portal is developing a whole new way to interact with the things that you need to live your life.”

High sees the Fresh Portal going into higher-end homes to begin with, not too surprising given High is a home developer. But, over time, he also sees them going into a wide variety of housing types, including condos and apartments.

“We have a multifamily capability as well. If you think about that lobby space where you get deliveries, there’s usually a security door and a second door that’s leading from the lobby to where the residents are. We have a capability that can combine those two.”

While High has taken inspiration from the old-school milkman, he envisions a future world where a more modern version of delivery worker will interact with his product.

“Fresh Portal is going to work with robots and drones,” said High. “As that future is is unfolding, we see that as kind of a future where costs of delivering items to your home will come down because of some new robotic delivery capabilities, and we plan to be on the delivery side of that.”

You can see our full interview with High below. If you’d like to talk to him about Fresh Portal and his ideas for the future of delivery, you can meet him at SKS in just a few weeks. Make sure to get your ticket here.

The Spoon Interviews - Fresh Portal

Here Here Market Wants to Connect Chefs and Food Artisans Directly With Consumers

During the pandemic, chefs cut off from serving dine-in customers needed to find a way to pay the bills. One obvious way was through third-party food delivery, but that often meant high delivery fees and cold food.

So some Chefs started selling packaged foods, but that often meant creating their own website, heading to a farmer’s market, or somehow finding a retailer to sell their goods.

In other words, a lot of work.

“We realized there’s actually a lot of resources that exist right now for somebody to get access to a shared commercial kitchen space and to produce a good,” Nicholas Florek, cofounder of Here Here Market, told The Spoon in a recent interview. “But then they’re on their own to market it and sell it.”

In short, there weren’t a lot of resources for chefs and artisan food makers to get their packaged food products in the hands of consumers.

“They’re on their own to set up their own website or show up to a farmers market once a week. So that’s the problem we’re really solving.”

According to Florek, the typical Here Here Market customer is often a foodie or fan of the chef who is looking for specialty ingredients or maybe just something to snack on not typically found in the grocery aisle.

Most of their customers “aren’t doing core grocery shopping,” Florek said. “We’re playing in the area where you want to try something new, you want to elevate your cooking game, you want to host something and impress your friends.”

According to Florek, it’s not just those creating products who want a way for their products to make it to consumers, but the consumers themselves who are hungry for ways to support independent creators.

You can watch the full interview below with Florek. You can also meet him and hear more about the company when Florek and his cofounder Disha Gulati talk about the company at SKS 2022 on October 12th.

Get your ticket for SKS to see this presentation and hear from other food tech innovators today!

The Spoon Interviews - Here Here Market

Do You Have The Next Big Idea in Cooking Technology?

Here at The Spoon, we think a lot about cooking. Sure, a big part of why is because we love to eat, but it’s also because we’re obsessed with cooking technology.

And to be honest, there’s been a shortage of exciting new technology to make food and drink over the past couple of years. While we’ve seen some exciting advances like new smart ovens, crazy food robots, and even a drink replicator, the reality is there’s a lot more room for innovation.

Which is why we’ve asked those building new things in the world of cooking technology to show us what you’ve got. Whether it’s a new food-making robot, a new kitchen system or something we’ve yet to even conceive of, we want to hear about it!

The best ideas will become finalists for the core cooking category at Smart Kitchen Summit INVENT on October 16th and showcase their innovation. Finalists will also be invited to a dinner at CES 2023, where The Spoon is partnering with the Consumer Technology Association to bring food tech to Vegas.

So if you are building the next big idea in kitchen tech, what are you waiting for? Apply today!

Announcing The Spoon Fall Event Series

We are very excited to be announcing The Spoon’s slate of events for 2022 (and January 2023).

The Spoon’s event series in 2022 includes the new innovator and startup-focused SKS Invent, our first in-person event exclusively for leaders & changemakers called The Spoon Food Tech Leader’s Forum, and finally, the CES’s Food Tech Conference & Exhibition powered by the Spoon in January 2023.

With this new series, we are focused on discovering and celebrating innovation across the series, which is interconnected from beginning to end.

Read below to find out about each and how the series interconnects.

Smart Kitchen Summit Invent

Over the past decade, there has been great innovation in food and cooking. We saw the arrival of precision heating and modernist cuisine cooking techniques. Smart connectivity and audio assistants enabled us to interact with our appliances in new ways. Robotics and AI were layered onto cooking. New combination cooking appliances that use steam or precision RF heating made their way into the kitchen.

But there is so much more that can be done and we want to help accelerate progress towards this future. In particular, we think there are five areas of innovation in which we’d love to see more innovation: Core Culinary, Sustainability, Delivery & Commerce, and Places & Spaces.

We’ll be writing more about SKS Invent and our call to action for the future of food and cooking innovators in the coming days, but you can learn more about each and apply to showcase your innovation at SKS Invent here. You can also inquire about sponsorship and purchase early bird tickets.

The Spoon’s Food Tech Leader’s Forum

One of the things that excite me most about events is the energy and creativity that comes from bringing together leaders from diverse but related industry backgrounds together. New ideas and collaborations always follow these exciting events that spark conversation, learning, and laughter when new perspectives and approaches collide.

The Food Tech Leader’s Forum will feature an exclusive event bringing together visionaries, inventors, entrepreneurs, and executives to map the future of food tech. It will include discussions about some of the industry’s most pressing topics, strategy whiteboard workshops, curated networking opportunities, and product demos and tastings designed to show you what the future of food will look like.

The event will also feature the finalists from the SKS Invent to showcase their vision and demo their products live and in-person.

If you would like to learn more about how to apply for a ticket, become an FTLF patron or more, you can do so here.

Food Tech at CES 2023

Food tech is heading back to the big stage at CES 2023!

Last January The Spoon powered the first-ever dedicated food tech conference and exhibition at the world’s biggest tech conference, and in 2023 we’ll be teaming up with the Consumer Technology Association to bring food tech back in a big way.

We’ll be programming an all-new conference full of exciting topics and working hand in hand with the CTA to find the most interesting companies to showcase what they’re building on the show floor. We are also planning a special Spoon evening event to highlight the winners of the SKS Invent innovation awards.

If you would like to sponsor The Food Tech conference at CES or exhibit in the designated Food Tech Exhibition at CES, you can head to this page and fill out the contact form and we will be in touch!

As you can see, all of these events are interconnect and there is a throughline that brings together new innovators, groundbreaking concepts and more as we journey from online to Seattle to Vegas in January 2023.

I look forward to seeing you on this year’s food tech journey!

Mezli, a Maker of Robot Restaurants, Wins the Smart Kitchen Summit 2021 Startup Showcase

Mezli, a maker of robotized container restaurants, has won the 2021 Smart Kitchen Summit Startup Showcase.

The company, which currently operates a prototype restaurant in San Mateo’s KitchenTown, was started after two of the company’s cofounders, Alex Kolchinski and Alex Gruebele, met while studying at Stanford. Like most college students, the two were always on the hunt for food to fuel their studies but usually found the options lacking.

“Both of us had this problem that we’re trying to solve that it was really expensive to eat good food out,” said Kolchinski from the Smart Kitchen Summit virtual mainstage. “We were pretty busy as Ph.D. students, we can cook all the time. But if we wanted to eat out, it was kind of a choice between going to McDonald’s, which didn’t make us feel great if we ate it every day, or going places like the Stanford dining halls.”

So alongside a third cofounder, Max Perham, they got to work on building a robot restaurant. Unlike many robotic restaurants or kiosk concepts, the trio decided to create a completely customized robot purpose-fit for the job.

“We’ve got kind of a lot of opinions on how to do things in a way that makes the most sense for the problem we’re solving, which is making good with meals on-site that tastes great that are good for you and we do it efficiently,” said Kolchinski. “We’re not using any robotic arms. We’re using custom hardware, some of which we’ve designed in-house and filed some patents on. And some of which we’re adopting from off-the-shelf things. We’ve done some pretty hacky things in here. And I think we’re going to continue to take this kind of hybrid approach in the future too.”

And what does that future entail?

“We’re building up to where we have a whole fleet of these across the country, even across the world, where these are all over the place because they’re cheaper and smaller than restaurants, you can put them in more places.”

According to Kolchinski, Mezli plans on building thousands of containerized restaurants, starting with their current Mediterranean bowl concept and experimenting with other ideas along the way.

“We are building the robotics in a way that can do a lot of different stuff. Basically, anything that goes in a bowl of soup, salads, you name it, curry bowls.”

Mezli joins a series of other innovators participating in the industry’s longest-running food tech startup showcase. In its seventh year, the Smart Kitchen Summit Startup Showcase has been a launching pad for a variety of food tech startups such as Tovala, SAVRPak, Bostrista, Cultured Decadance, Millo and Freshstix.

You can watch Alex Kolchinski’s full interview below.

Mezli Wins 2021 Smart Kitchen Summit Startup Showcase

SKS 2021: Meet Blix, A No-Cleanup Smart Food Maker

We’re just five days away from SKS 2021, which means it’s time to preview another Startup Showcase finalist.

Today’s featured startup is Blix, a company which makes a no-prep, no-cleanup smart food maker. The Blix food maker uses a patent-protected smart lid which incorporates an integrated blade and RFID tag to enable the user to make a variety of instant meals. The user just adds liquid into the mixing cup, pours in pre-prepared ingredients from a Blix meal pouch and the Blix machine prepares the food in minutes.

Watch The Spoon’s Carlos Rodela discuss the Blix story with company founder Ariel Sterngold. If you’d like to connect with Ariel at Smart Kitchen Summit, get your ticket today!

The Spoon Interviews - Blix

SKS 2021: Meet Castiron, a Turnkey Commerce and Community Platform For Artisanal Food Entrepreneurs

It’s time to meet Castiron, one of the Smart Kitchen Summit Startup Showcase finalists.

So who is Castiron? Castiron is building a turnkey commerce platform for independent food entrepreneurs. The company’s solution gives food makers everything they need to run an online business, including website creation, product management, invoicing, inventory management, and marketing, as well as other access to discounted insurance and other business benefits.

You can hear from company CEO Mark Josephson in the video below. Josephson, who is the former CEO of Bitly, talks with The Spoon’s Carlos Rodela about the importance of the artisanal creator to the broader economy and what pain points Castiron solves for them.

If you’d like to connect with Mark at the Smart Kitchen Summit, head over to Hopin where we are hosting our virtual event, and pick up your ticket today!

The Spoon Interviews - Castiron [a Shopify for Artisanal Food Entrepreneurs]

SKS 2021: Meet Clew, a Startup Making a Home Food Waste Recycling Appliance

We’re heads down in preparation for Smart Kitchen Summit 2021, but we couldn’t be more excited to showcase some of food tech’s more innovative startups as part of the 2021 Startup Showcase.

To whet your appetite, The Spoon team is going to be rolling out almost-daily video interviews with the leaders of these startups over the next two weeks.

First up is Clew. Clew makes a countertop appliance that grinds, heats, and dries all residential food waste (including animal bones, fruit pits, and coffee filters) in under 2 hours into a shelf stable and consistent output that is over 80% mass-reduced. The output can then be easily-refined into compost, gifted to a local garden, or put into an appropriate organics recycling stream for further processing.

You can watch our interview with Clew’s Chief Experience Officer Spencer Martin below.

If you’d like to connect with Clew or any of the other startups pitching at SKS 2021, get your ticket today!

The Spoon Interview With Clew, Maker of a Smart Home Food Waste Recycling Appliance

Meet the Innovators Selected as Finalists for the 2021 SKS Startup Showcase

Every year, we put out a call for innovators who are using tech to disrupt and ultimately improve the way we eat, prep and interact with food. We receive Startup Showcase applications from all corners of the global food system and get to learn about the ideas that will spark change and help shape the future of food and the kitchen. In the end, our editorial team selects 10 or so finalists who represent the most unique and transformative ideas in food tech.

In its 8th year, the SKS Startup Showcase has served as a launching pad for some of today’s most interesting food tech startups. With companies as diverse as smart stove and food delivery startup Tovala, food delivery packaging startup SavrPak, and upcoming Shark Tank contestant IncrEDIBLE Eats, alumni of the Showcase are making an impact across the food innovation landscape.

Each finalist will get a chance to pitch on stage at the 2021 Smart Kitchen Summit, happening virtually in just a few weeks on November 9th and 10th.

If you want to see the finalists pitch and have a chance to network with some of the top leaders and newest startups in food and kitchen tech, grab your ticket to SKS here.

Let’s meet the 2021 Startup Showcase Finalists.

  • AIGecko is powering a touchless checkout kiosk with their AI-powered food recognition API. Customers can select food and place their selection at the kiosk and using artificial intelligence that drives both facial and food recognition at the kiosk. Guests can also get the nutritional information of their dish and get connected to a nutrition expert through the connected app.
  • Blix is a smart food maker that promises to eliminate both the preparation and the cleanup of cooking a meal from scratch. Blix includes a smart lid with an integrated blade and RFID tag to ensure consistent results each time a dish is made.
  • Castiron is a central hub and platform for independent kitchen-based chefs to sell their creations direct to customers. It also includes resources and creator community to support and grow their business. Castiron says their customers include bakers, juicers, jammers and similar culinary artisans to market and sell their goods.
  • Chocomake is a smart home chocolate maker and ingredient kit developed by a female-led startup launching in 2022. The appliance allows users to create custom varieties of chocolate in different shapes, composition and texture. Chocomake can help with allergies and dietary restrictions and can produce vegan, non-GMO and sugar-free chocolate with easy prep and cleanup.
  • Clew is a countertop appliance that grinds, heats and dries home food waste in two hours and transforms it into shelf-stable material that can be refined into compost or place into a recycling stream for further processing. After processing through the Clew appliance, the amount of waste material is reduced by mass by over 80%. Clew is working to produce an early prototype.
  • Mezli is building containerized robot restaurants called “auto-kitchens.” The “restaurant-in-a-box” business leverages automation and shipping containers to power a fully autonomous kitchen able to cook, plate and pack each dish. Mezli founder and CEO told The Spoon that their auto-kitchens can go 48 hours or make 300 meals (whichever comes first) before requiring servicing by a non-robotic worker.
  • Natufia is an integrated and automated indoor smart hydroponic kitchen garden created for at-home food growing. The smart kitchen garden can grow up to 32 simultaneously with automatic watering and lighting and gives users of 40 seedpods. Natufia customers can grow everything from leafy and microgreens to vegetables and flowers.
  • Ottonomy creates autonomous robots that enable contactless deliveries of food and retail products. Ottonomy robots require zero human supervision for navigation and can operate in both indoor and outdoor environments. The company’s proprietary software claims to allow for fully autonomous operation in crowded and unpredictable environments including in airports, malls and office buildings.
  • Culineer is a platform where farms can educate and communicate with consumers looking for locally produced foods. While consumers often don’t know how to cook everything they may purchase direct from farms, farmers don’t have resources and time to provide food level education. Culineer fills that gap with recipes, harvest updates, education and peer support; this gives farms increased customer satisfaction and retention.
  • WSVC is an appliance company that has invented a new type of multi-purpose microwave oven that features traditional microwave cooking as well as Waterless Sous Vide Cooking (WSVC). WSVC cooks food with low consistent heat similar to sous vide but without the water bath and vacuum seal. WSVC will debut for the first time at the 2021 Smart Kitchen Summit.