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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

smart cooking

Ztove Starts Shipping Smart Cooking System In Europe

Back in 2016, I received a short message from an inventor in Denmark asking if he could make me pancakes.

While it’s not every day someone reaches out and asks to make pancakes, it wasn’t all that surprising given the inventor, Peter Favrholdt, had created a prototype for a smart cooking system and I was one of the few people writing about the technology at the time.

Ztove founder and me in 2016

As it turned out, Favrholdt had learned we were holding a meetup in San Francisco and decided to travel from Denmark to attend the event.  While I didn’t get to taste Favrholdt’s pancakes on that trip, I got a chance to hear his story and encouraged him to apply for the Smart Kitchen Summit’s startup showcase.

Long story short: he did, and he won. His system, which features a Bluetooth connected pan, an induction cooktop, and an app to orchestrate the cooking process was picked by a panel of experts and Favrholdt and Ztove were crowned the winner of the 2016 Startup Showcase alongside 3D food printer nufood (in 2016 we had a tie).

Longer story short? A week ago I saw on Linkedin that Ztove had started shipping its smart cooking system to customers.

When I asked Favrholdt for more details, he told me the Ztove was now available in Denmark through the company’s website and would soon be available in physical retail.  He also told me they’d managed to create a product line that included two intelligent pans and a large saucepan, as well as three different cooktops.

“On the smart cooktop side we offer a table top dual burner called “DUO,” which sells as a bundle including a frying pan and a saucepan (USD 1599),” said Favrholdt in an email.

More intriguing is that two of the cooktops are built-ins.

“For home use, most people want built-in smart induction cooktops,” he wrote. “Ztove currently has two models – a “normal” 24 inches (USD 1049) and a “wide” 31 inches model (USD 1599) both with four cooking zones but having different width and arrangement of the burners.”

When I asked Favrholdt about how he was able to fund development of the product, he pointed to winning the Startup Showcase at SKS.

“Bringing home the SKS trophy also had a significance,” he said. “Ztove won a couple of grants in Denmark, and in 2017 we were enrolled in the Odense Robotics Startup Hub – an accelerator program for early startups in the field of robotics. In 2018 we got a small investment allowing us to increase the pace and building the company bringing the Ztove products to market.”

With their funding, they were able to find manufacturers for the components of the Ztove systems and start a small factory in Denmark where the final units are assembled by hand.

Favrholdt and the Hestan Cue team at SKS 2016

By finally shipping, Ztove joins Hestan as one of the few companies delivering smart cooking systems that focus on surface cooking, including intelligent cookware, cooktops, and an app. But that’s not the only connection between these two companies; As it turns out, Favrholdt connected with the Hestan team back on that 2016 trip to San Francisco.

“I brought Ztove’s first prototype and was thrilled to get to meet the Hestan Cue team,” said Favrholdt. “It was terrific talking to someone as passionate about smart cooking as myself.”

Hestan Cue System Adds Chef’s Pot To Cookware Arsenal

The Hestan Cue, a connected cooking system that features an induction burner and – up til now – a single choice of cookware in a Bluetooth-enabled pan, just added a new cookware option: the Chef’s Pot.

Announced today, the Chef’s Pot is similar to the Hestan Cue pan in that is features a smart Bluetooth module and syncs with the smart induction burner that comes with the Hestan Cue system. Like the pan, the Chef’s Pot can also be used with the Hestan Cue app, the three of which (cookware, burner, app) orchestrate a guided cooking experience with synchronized video tutorials that communicate with the pan and induction burner system.

Adding a pot also makes sense since even if you’re new to the kitchen, you’ll eventually need more than one piece of cookware. With the Chef’s Pot, owners of the Hestan Cue can now make soup, braise a chicken or slow cook some pork. To accommodate the new culinary directions enabled by a pot the Hestan Cue app has also added new recipes.

Like the Hestan Cue itself, the Chef’s Pot isn’t cheap. The new connected cookware runs $299, which is a pretty penny since you can pick up an entire cookware set for about two hundred bucks.

Long term, you have to wonder whether the Hestan Cue technology will find its way into more Meyer cookware. Meyer, Hestan Smart Cooking’s parent company, is one of the world’s largest cookware companies, it’s growth fueled in the 80s in part by Stanley Cheng’s innovations in non-stick cooking surfaces. Thirty years later, it’s possible the company’s next wave growth will center around intelligent cookware.

Hestan Cue Looks To Sell The Concept of Guided Cooking

It was at last year’s Housewares show in Chicago I first noticed a trend which I call ‘guided cooking’. Guided cooking, also called ‘smart cooking’ by some, employs a combination of sensor-enabled cookware, precision heating and software to create a cooking system that both educates the consumer and orchestrates a cooking experience.

Here’s how I described ‘guided cooking’ in my piece:

It was this combination of the pan, burner and app and the guidance system they had built that really led me to see the possibilities around this new category. I am not a great cook by any stretch of the imagination, but I cooked one of the tastiest pieces of salmon I’ve ever had in about 20 minutes. The experience was enabled through technology, but the technology didn’t take me out of the experience of cooking. Further, I can see as I gain more confidence using a system like this, I can choose to “dial down” the guidance needed from the system to the point I am largely doing most of the cooking by myself (though I don’t know if I’d ever get rid of the automated temperature control, mostly because I’m lazy and it gives me instant “chef intuition).

The product I describe here is an early version of the Hestan Cue, a guided cooking system developed by Hestan Smart Cooking, a division of cookware giant Meyer. The Hestan Cue caught my attention that day because of its ability to have the different elements of cooking – pan, heat source and the education/recipe information from the app – all work in concert together well to actually make me cook better.

Since last year, more companies have begun to embrace the concept of guided cooking. However,  I don’t think I’ve seen as compelling a combination of the these elements as I’ve seen with the Hestan Cue, so now, a year later, I’m am watching with significant interest as the company looks to bring the product to market through partners such as Williams-Sonoma

Williams-Sonoma has created a video showing consumers talking about the product:

Can a Machine Really Teach You How to Cook?

Will it succeed? While it’s too soon to tell – mostly because it’s really hard to predict the exact mix of utility, pricing and presentation that will capture the imagination of the consumer in a short term time horizon – I am fairly confident that the combination of automation and software guidance is an irreversible long-term trend we’ll see more of in coming years.

The Williams-Sonoma video starts by asking the question, “Can a machine really teach you how to cook?” I like that approach because my first thought using the device was I could learn from the Hestan Cue, that it could be my “cooking buddy” to help me figure out new meals and recipes. This messaging also taps into the growing appetite among millennials to learn more about cooking. Beyond the explosion of online video tutorials, increased interest in things such as cooking classes and teaching kitchens has shown people are hungry to learn cooking skills, and the Hestan Cue and products like it offer a new approach.

However, I also think it’s important to emphasize the ease of use and utility of Hestan Cue. If you’re like me, once you learn to cook a meal, you want to eventually cook it again. This means over time you will want to deemphasize the teaching aspects and transition to lighter cues and guidance around the cooking of a meal. My first impression of the Hestan Cue is that it could do this, that it does have significant convenience utility, and so I think it will be important for the company and its retail partners to emphasize this aspect over time.

Long term, the products should also be interoperable with built-in cooking appliances. The Hestan Cue comes with its own small induction burner pad, which makes it great as a starter cooking appliance or for someone who wants to try out induction heating. However, many if not most people will want to work with their own cooktops.

My sense is the company will continue to iterate on the concept of guided cooking beyond this first product. Meyer founder Stanley Cheng, who as an early innovator in non-stick cooking surfaces helped make Meyer one of the world’s biggest cookware companies, is personally invested and excited about the concept of smart cooking. Having helped usher in the modern world of cookware, I can imagine he sees the Hestan Cue as a starting point for the next generation of cookware.

If you want to see the Hestan Cue as demonstrated by one of its creators, Jon (JJ) Jenkins, you can watch my video interview taken at the Housewares show below:

A Walk Through Of The Hestan Cue from The Spoon on Vimeo.

Want to meet the leaders defining the future of food, cooking and the kitchen? Get your tickets for the Smart Kitchen Summit today.

Smart Cooking Startup SmartyPans To Appear on CBS Innovation Nation

Think smart kitchen isn’t hot yet?

Think again. SmartyPans, coufounded by the sister-brother team of Prachi and Rahul Baxi, will appear on Innovation Nation on Saturday, February 25th, on most CBS affiliates across the US. The show, hosted by Mo Rocca, is described by CBS as a series that “showcases present-day change-makers from all over the world who are creating solutions to real needs.”

The showing on Innovation Nation continues the momentum in what been a good year so far for the smart cooking startup. The company, which appeared at the first Smart Kitchen Summit in November 2015, was on stage at CES with Techcrunch and also appeared at the AI+ show in Santa Clara in January. They’ve also been nominated as a smart home finalist for the Innovation World Cup at Mobile World Congress.

However, those were just warmups for their first national TV show debut tomorrow on CBS. While Innovation Nation probably doesn’t give the same intense sales burst an appearance on Shark Tank might, it will be a nice sales opportunity nonethess and SmartyPans is ready: Their site is already offering a $40 discount for viewers of the show.