Hestan Smart Cooking will publicly announce the availability of its guided cooking system for appliance manufacturers at the Smart Kitchen Summit (SKS) in Seattle next week.
Until this year, using the Hestan Cue guided cooking system required a standalone induction burner with accompanying sensor-embedded smart pans. With this move, Hestan Cue’s smart cooking technology to be built directly into cooktops from other companies.
Christoph Milz, Managing Director of Hestan Smart Cooking said during an interview with The Spoon that the Hestan Cue smart cooking system requires appliance makers to integrate a smart board into their cooktop, and will require the consumer to use Hestan Cue smart cookware as well as the accompanying app. At first, Hestan Cue’s technology will work with induction cooktops, with other modalities (gas, etc.) available later on.
The Hestan Cue system’s three parts work in harmony to help guide cooks through the cooking process. For example, if you want to cook salmon with a nice sear on the outside, but medium rare on the inside, the pan “talks” to the cooktop to say when it reaches the right temperature, and as the person goes through each step of the recipe, the app “tells” the smart board to adjust the heat accordingly, and so on.
Earlier this year, Hestan’s sister company (Hestan Residential), debuted a Cue-powered smart cooktop at the Kitchen and Bath Show in Miami. Hestan Smart Cooking has also signed on GE Appliances in the U.S. and Oranier in Germany as Cue cooktop partners. Hestan’s smart cooking technology will be available in GE’s Cafe line of appliances and will ship before the end of the year. Oranier’s Cue-enabled cooktops will ship in Germany in 2019.
Strategically, this is a smart move for parent company, Hestan Smart Cooking and its Cue platform. If the company can make its technology easy enough to implement without coming at too much of a price premium, Hestan sets itself up as a full-stack guided cooking solution. Because it will be in both the appliance and the cookware, it can offer more precise guidance than competitors offering integration into just the appliance side.
In addition to the cooktop news, Milz said that Hestan Smart Cooking would also be API integrations for smart ovens and be releasing oven recipes this fall.
If you want to see a Hestan Cue-powered cooktop in person, grab your ticket for our Smart Kicthen Summit, which is mere days away.
