Close Ad

The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

smart fridge

Fighting Consumer Food Waste at Home Means Rethinking the Refrigerator

What’s the most effective way to fight food waste in the home? Take a look at your fridge.

Most consumers at this point are aware of the world’s multibillion food waste problem. A great many more now understand that, at least in North America and Europe, the bulk of that waste happens at consumer-facing stages of the food journey, including our own homes. What we’re less certain of is how to curb that excess.

Researching solutions for “The Consumer Food Waste Innovation Report,” which you can read on Spoon Plus, I came across a number of different methods for reducing food waste in the home. But after sifting through the many storage and preservation options out there, the meal-planning and meal-sharing apps, I’m left wondering if the trick to reducing at-home food waste isn’t just re-envisioning the refrigerator itself.

The appliance hasn’t changed much over the last several decades. But in 2020, the pandemic is keeping more folks at home, we have more information about how much food we’re actually wasting (it’s a ton), and more investment in the food tech sector in general. The convergence of those factors makes now an ideal time to change that point and introduce more innovation into the world of refrigerators. Here are a few ideas:

Smarter Features That Are Actually Affordable

By now, many consumers are at least aware of high-tech refrigerators that can track items placed in the fridge, alert owners when those items are running low, and scan and identify foods to help consumers plan meals and find recipes. LG’s ThinQ and the Samsung Family Hub are two appliances that lead the smart fridge market.

They also cost thousands of dollars, making them out of reach for most consumers. True, having cameras and image-recognition technology inside the fridge is a relatively new concept, so a higher price point is to be expected. But in order for the new applications of those technologies to be most effective, they’ll need to get cheaper. By that I mean, we’ll need to see options for them build into most fridges.

Another option is add-on tech for the fridge. As we note in the report, Smarter makes a device can be retrofitted for any fridge and recognize the items inside. Fridge Eye has a similar device.

Smaller Fridge, Bigger Freezer

“Everyone loses something in the back of the fridge,” food waste expert Dana Gunders told us when interviewed for the report. Her point is that the sheer size of most modern refrigerators means older items will get pushed out of view and forgotten as newer ones are placed in the fridge.

High-tech fixes like the ones mentioned above can help, but the fridge design itself seems ripe for an upgrade. Or downgrade, as it were, since a smaller fridge compartment with a bigger freezer might be a surefire way to reduce food waste. Much of our food, even items like milk and bread, can be frozen until we need to use them. And research shows that things like frozen fruits and vegetables maintain more or less the same nutrients as their fresh counterparts. 

Better Storage to Accompany the Fridge

Back in the 1930s, when the electric refrigerator was just starting to get popular, General Electric sold fridges by promoting the then-newish concept of leftovers to consumers. Along with tips and cookbooks, the appliance-maker sold food storage containers designed to stack up in the fridge and hold leftovers. 

Maybe to curb food waste, we need a kind of rebirth of that concept, this time geared towards curbing food waste and with a high-tech twist. Major appliance manufacturers could team up with startups like Mimica, BlakBear, or Silo to sell smarter storage options — think smart labels and temperature sensors — alongside their appliances. They could also find ways to integrate some of those new technologies into fridge doors, drawers, and other compartments.

For more thoughts on the reinvention of the refrigerator as well as how else we can fight food waste at home, check out the full “Consumer Food Waste Innovation” report at Spoon Plus.

Byte Adds Dynamic Pricing to Its Smart Vending Fridges

Byte Technology added dynamic pricing to its smart fridges this week, giving its clients the ability change prices of stocked items on the fly.

Through a combination of RFID and IoT, Byte makes smart vending refrigerators that allow shoppers to swipe their credit card, take what they want from that fridge and get charged automatically. The company licenses its technology platform to retail operations like supermarkets or restaurants, which brand the fridge to sell their packaged food (or anything really).

Because of the RFID tags and connectivity, a Byte fridge knows exactly what’s in its inventory as well as what items sold, when and to whom. With the addition of dynamic pricing, Byte fridge operators can now automatically discount items for just about any reason.

For example, if a fridge is stocked with fresh sandwiches, the operator can create a 25 percent discount on any of them set to expire. Because the fridge already knows everything about its inventory, it automatically knows which sandwiches this discount would apply to, so the operator doesn’t have to set a specific date or create a new rule each time. It could also run promotions on particular drinks, such as half-off carrot juice after 5p.m. on weekdays, or broader discounts like discounts on cobb salads every Monday.

By giving operators the ability to offer dynamic pricing, Byte hopes to reduce the amount of spoilage and food waste created through its platform. This type of dynamic pricing already exists in grocery stores through solutions like Wasteless, which algorithmically discounts food price based on factors like expiration date. And the Karma app teamed up with Electrolux to create special fridges in grocery stores that sell almost expired food for at least half off.

As I wrote about in my recent The Great Vending Reinvention: The Spoon’s Smart Vending Machine Market Report, the COVID-19 pandemic is forcing retailers to examine new, contactless ways of selling. Vending services like Byte’s offer the ability to sell products without human-to-human interaction. And though the pandemic has shut down offices, which were a main line of business for Byte’s machines, Byte Founde, Lee Mokri told me by phone this week that it is seeing increased interest from places like residential buildings.

Come to think of it though, having a smart vending machine in the lobby of an apartment building that can automatically discount a pint of ice after midnight might not be the greatest thing in the world.

Bevi Will Socially Distance Its Smart Water Coolers With Touchless Tech

As restaurants reopen and (some) employees go back to the office, ensuring sanitary, socially distanced public spaces is a major topic of discussion, and contactless is fast becoming a requirement for everything from restaurant menus to grocery deliveries to lunch.

Your office water cooler can join that list now, too. Today, Bevi, a tech company that makes smart water coolers for office and commercial spaces, announced a new touchless dispensing feature meant to make it machines feel more sanitized and socially distanced to users.

The Bevi machine dispenses both still and sparkling water in a variety of flavors. The system involves an internet-connected dispenser that hooks up to a tap water source. Up to now, users could set flavors, carbonation levels, and other preferences using a touchscreen built into the machine. But come July 13, both new and existing Bevi machines will offer touchless dispensing that utilizes an individual’s mobile phone, according to a press release sent to The Spoon.

Come July 13, Bevi will send an on-screen animation to all its machines that includes instructions on how to use touchless dispensing. To enable the animation, companies just have to run a simple software update. From there, users can scan a QR code, which will replicate Bevi’s dispensing menu on their own personal screen. The same options for drink customization (carbonation levels, flavor, etc.) will appear on the user’s phone just as they would have on the machine’s touchscreen.

On the surface, the update seems a small one, but actually, these micro innovations from the tech world play an important role in making the world, or at least your office or local restaurant, a more sanitary place. While the scale of germophobism varies from one individual to the next, the pandemic has definitely called into question our use of these screens in public settings.

Various efforts are in place to address those concerns. Restaurants across the world are being urged to adopt contactless menus. My colleague Chris Albrecht makes a good argument for gesture control on kiosks and smart dispensers. Others are releasing facial recognition technology on their machines, so that a user need only have their face scanned to access the customer profiles and past orders. 

But facial recognition systems are expensive and come with a double side of privacy concerns. In lots of cases, it may be that a simple QR code is more feasible for a business to implement, especially if it’s for something simple like dispensing a lime-flavored water.

That seems to be Bevi’s thinking behind its new feature update. Doubtless we’ll see many other device-makers rolling out their own touchless functionality in the near future.

New Smart Fridges Should Help Us Organize Our Food Better

If you’re like, well, practically everyone, the inside of your fridge is probably a dystopian nightmare: half-used bottles of condiments jammed into the doors, leftover boxes stacked precariously atop one another, limp broccoli tucked away in vegetable bins.

Earlier this month, The Wirecutter ran a fun piece on how to Marie Kondo your fridge. It’s packed with great advice on how to get rid of stuff and organize your food in a way that makes sense.

As I read through The Wirecutter’s tips, I started thinking about the new wave of smart fridges with cameras built into them. Both LG and Samsung showed off these camera-equipped fridges this month at CES, touting the image recognition’s ability to help you with grocery shopping, meal planning and recipe discovery.

Seems like these all-seeing, AI-powered fridges could also help out with food organization. At first, this may seem like a silly add-on. I mean, anyone can place a carton of milk in the fridge. But as The Wirecutter points out, not all zones inside a fridge are created equal. Some parts are colder than others (the back, bottom self), some slots are better suited for condiments (door shelf), and there are even food safety considerations (don’t place raw chicken on the top shelf).

So a smart fridge could suggest where to place an item inside the fridge based on what that item is. Or it could suggest arrangements based on expiration date so you’ll know which food is going bad first. And if you are using the embedded meal planning function, it could suggest grouping items together that will all be used in a specific recipe.

Again, I don’t think this needs to be a priority for appliance manufacturers. But it is a small step that could bolster the new features like meal planning they want to be adopted, and in a small way, could perhaps save us from our own dystopian levels of food waste.

CES 2020: Bosch and Chefling Introduce Inventory Management Tech to Their At-Home Smart Kitchen System

Appliance-maker Bosch, part of the BSH Home Appliances family, and AI-powered kitchen assistant Chefling will show off the latest features of their connected kitchen system at CES this week. At the center of those features is inventory management technology that uses in-refrigerator image recognition to identify items that are added or removed from the fridge and automatically update inventory lists, according to a press release from Chefling.

Chefling’s AI-powered kitchen assistant aids the consumer meal journey in the home kitchen by helping users manage food inventory, create shopping lists, and send digital recipes to their connected kitchen appliances. As part of this package, the Chefling app can recommend recipes based on what’s in a user’s connected fridge or pantry — a feature that could potentially save consumers lots of time and money since it helps them utilize what food is already at home rather than sending them to the store. To do that, however, the system needs the most up-to-date inventory of what’s actually in the fridge when it’s time to cook.

That’s where the new inventory management technology comes in. Previously, users had to scan a barcode or take a picture of their receipt in order for Chefling to keep track of what was in the fridge. With the new technology, users can simply put groceries into a Bosch-connected fridge (or take them out) and their at-home food inventory automatically updates within the Chefling app. The system can be used with any camera-equipped fridge that is equipped with BSH’s Home Connect system. New recipes based on the updated inventory will be available from the Chefling app.

As our awareness of the food waste problem increases and companies work to find solutions to fight the issue, technology that can help manage at-home food inventory is poised to become more commonplace in the average consumer’s kitchen. Connecting the fridge to systems that keep track of food already in the home is one way to do so, and Bosch/Chefling aren’t alone in highlighting new technology for this at CES. Both LG and Samsung are also showing off high-tech refrigerators that can recognize the food inside and suggest recipes based on those items. LG, in particular, uses a computer vision system to keep a real-time inventory of what’s inside the fridge.

BSH invested in Chefling in May of 2019, acquiring one third of the latter’s shares as part of the terms of the deal (other details were not disclosed). Since the deal, Chefling has increased both the number of users on its platform and the system’s ability to self learn, which is vital to keeping track of inventory in real time.

Bosch and Chefling will be showing off the system at the Bosch booth this week at CES.

LG and Samsung to Show Off New Food Identifying Smart Fridges at CES Next Week

The Consumer Electronics Show (CES) happens in Las Vegas next week, so of course two of the largest appliance manufacturers in the world will be showing off their new smart refrigerators.

Both LG and Samsung today announced the latest iterations in their high-tech fridge lineup, both of which feature built-in artificial intelligence to automatically recognize the food inside to help you discover recipes, grocery shop, and plan meals accordingly.

LG will be showing off its new InstaView ThinQ refrigerator, which features a large, connected touchscreen that also goes transparent so you can peek inside the fridge without opening the door (a feature we at The Spoon love). The new LG fridge also uses computer vision and AI for real-time inventory of what’s inside. Based on that inventory, the LG fridge will make meal suggestions and alert homeowners when they are running low on particular items.

New Samsung Family Hub Smart Fridge

Not to be outdone, Samsung will also be showing off the newest edition of its Family Hub smart fridge. It too sports a connected touchscreen, and will use cameras and AI to identify food inside the fridge. Based off of that information it can suggest meals, or even a week’s worth of meals, through Whisk, which Samsung NEXT acquired earlier this year.

Pricing and availability details were not provided in either press release.

What corporate press releases can’t fully express is how well each of their computer vision and image recognition systems will work. Being able to identify a carton of milk isn’t that hard, but how will it handle bunches of grapes? Or a bag of carrots? We’ll see if we can get a hands-on demo while we’re at CES and see how well these new fridges can see.

Fresco Fridge Brings its Smart Fridges to Offices in the U.S.

The most facile way to describe Fresco Fridge is to say that they are like the Italian version of Byte Technology. That’s not entirely fair to Fresco Fridge, which has built up its own business halfway round the world and this month entered the U.S. with a new Manhattan location, but the comparison is kinda the quickest and easiest way to set the stage.

Fresco Fridge makes a smart refrigerator platform for offices and other high-traffic buildings. It’s a vending machine that uses RFID tags on the items inside so someone can open the fridge with their smartphone, grab what they want, then get automatically charged for it.

See? It sounds a lot like what Byte has been doing in the Bay Area.

Unlike Byte, which started out in the food biz but has since moved on to become more of an open platform, Fresco has never stocked the fridges with its own food. Instead, Fresco has since day one been a vehicle for selling some other vendor’s food.

One of the alluring aspects of a smart fridge like Fresco’s is that it allows offices to provide fresh food for its employees without having to take on the expense of catering meals. Companies can subsidize food in the fridge as little or as much as they want to give their workers more eating options on premises.

Fresco provides its fridges for free to a location and makes its money by charging a monthly fee and collecting a rev share with the food vendor. So if Sandwich Shop X stocks the fridge with food, Sandwich Shop X pays the fee and splits the sales. Vendors also get access to inventory management software, marketing opportunities (special offer notifications) and sales data and analytics as part of the package.

Fresco Fridge launched in September of 2018 and has raised €2 million in funding from a mix of European angel and venture investors. So far the company has 100 fridges in the field in Europe and a new one just recently installed in Manhattan. Fresco has also announced a partnership Proper Foods to sell that company’s assortment of healthy snacks and dishes. The company also has a partnership with an undisclosed commercial real estate company that has buildings across the U.S. and Europe.

Despite any similarities to its competitors, the potential market for Fresco and other smart vending services is pretty massive when you consider all of the office buildings, residential buildings, hospitals, etc. that could offer more food options on-site. As Fresco continues to expand throughout the U.S. next year, a lot more people could be saying “Ciao!” to the smart fridge.

Fridge Eye is a Cheap Connected Camera to Smarten Up Your Fridge or Cupboard

While we cover smart appliances extensively here on The Spoon, we’re pretty hesitant about getting a smart fridge. They are pretty expensive, and since they are basically connected computers that also keep your food cold, there’s a greater chance that they will become obsolete. My “dumb” fridge may not have many bells and whistles, but a software upgrade will never brick it.

With its Fridge Eye, Munich-based brezzl.GmbH is looking to bring at least one feature of modern smart fridges to the one you already have — a connected camera. The Fridge Eye can be attached to the inside of a fridge, freezer or cupboard, and it takes a photo of whatever’s inside every time the door is closed. That image is beamed over WiFi to an app the Fridge Eye app on your mobile phone, so when you’re out grocery shopping, you know what you already have and don’t waste money or food with redundant purchases.

The camera battery is rechargeable, and brezzl. says that it is working on image recognition and recipe suggestion based on what you have in future releases.

Brezzl. is currently in the midst of a Fridge Eye crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo, where it hopes to raise $25,000 to bring its product to market. Interested backers can get a Fridge Eye for $79. The apps are already available for download on iOS, iPadOS and Android and have shopping list creation and sharing features.

Fridge Eye comes at the same time that Smarter has announced its FridgeCam PLUS, launched in partnership with AEG/Electrolux. As we wrote last month, this upgraded FridgeCam features:

“…wider and higher-resolution image, as well as SmarterAssist, so it can recognize items in your fridge. The accompanying app, which is new, gives users an inventory of their fridge, an expiration date tracker, shopping lists and automated links for item re-stocking through Tesco and Amazon Fresh in the UK.”

Smarter didn’t release pricing information for the new Fridge Cam PLUS, but the previous version sells for £149.99.

As with any crowdfunded hardware campaign — buyer beware. History has shown that making hardware is hard and many products don’t make it to market (just ask the backers of Rite Press). But if you are looking for a smart fridge solution without spending thousands of dollars on a whole new appliance, getting a connected camera may not be a dumb idea.

Beko Unveils New Fridge Tech That Supposedly Makes Your Produce Healthier

Electronics brand and appliance maker Beko claims it has found a way to keep fruits and vegetables fresher and their nutrients intact when you store them in the fridge. The company today unveiled its HarvestFresh three-color technology at IFA 2019, Europe’s largest consumer electronics show.

Developed to go into Beko fridges, the technology recreates the 24-hour sun cycle in your refrigerator using combinations of blue, red, and green lights to mimic natural sunlight as well as “times of darkness,” according to a press release. The company says that doing so preserves Vitamin A and C levels in the produce, making them more nutritious when it comes time for eating: “By utilizing the power of varying light combination, fruits and vegetables are exposed to a natural way of preserving the vitamin, encouraging a healthier diet.”

A few details about the technology remain unclear, including whether consumers can program the light “recipe” themselves and if the light combo can adjust (with or without the consumer’s help) based on the types of produce in the fridge. According to the Beko press release, product testing and certification company Intertek tested the HarvestFresh tech in a lab on tomatoes and green peppers over a seven-day period. With such a limited timeframe and sampling of produce, it’s hard to say how effective this technology would be if used around the clock for months on end on a wide range of household produce.

Still, the idea of using light combinations to preserve and optimize produce — which is also a core element of vertical farming — is worth watching for the role it could potentially play not just in maintaining more nutrients in produce but also in preserving food for longer and in doing so cutting back on food waste in the home.

HarvestFresh technology will be available in select Beko fridges in 2020.

Single? Samsung Launches Matchmaking Service Based Off What’s In Your Fridge

You know how they say that the best way to a man’s (or woman’s) heart is through their stomach? Well, Samsung is hoping that it’s actually through your fridge.

Just in time for Valentine’s Day, the technology giant is launching an online dating service called… wait for it… Refrigerdating. Users can upload a photo of their fridge (presumably after throwing away their moldy leftovers and Single Girl margarita mix) for free to the Refrigerdating website. After adding a short bio and a way to get in touch (phone number (!!!), email, etc), they’ll be given a string of other fridge shots and can either select “Not to My Taste” or “Let’s Get Cooking.” Matches will appear on the site and either party can reach out to connect to the human owner of the appliance that caught their eye. And who said romance is dead?

The app is meant to work in tandem with the Samsung Family Hub Refrigerator, which is outfitted with an Amazon Dash Button-enabled touchscreen on the door and an interior camera meant to let you track your fridge’s contents (and their expiration dates) from anywhere. But never fear: even those with plain old regular ‘fridges can still find love through Refrigerdating. As of now, there’s no mobile version of the app; it’s only accessible through a web browser.

According to CNET, the idea for Refrigerdating originated in Sweden, where there are apparently lots of single people and sexy fridges. Currently, the vast majority of users are in the Nordic region, but anyone in the world can try out the app. The release is clearly timed for Valentine’s Day, but there’s no word from Samsung on how long the service will last.

For Samsung, there’s an obvious payoff: getting a literal glimpse into your fridge, collecting data on what you’re buying and how you’re storing. From a romantic perspective, though, the idea may seem laughable at first (the cheesy name doesn’t help). But the more I thought about it, the more I decided there may actually be something to choosing your potential mate based on what they eat every day. After all, food is a huge part of life and can give good insight into individual values, lifestyle, and tastes — literally and figuratively.

If you know that someone likes organic yogurt, grass-fed beef, and natural wine, you’ll have a very different picture than if you know they subsist off of Gatorade and single-serve microwaveable meals. Of course, that’s assuming that no one tries to Refrigerdate catfish by hiding their Kraft singles behind their artisanal cheddar, the equivalent of posting a photo on a dating app of yourself ten years prior (when you still had hair).

In the end, selecting someone based off of the contents of their fridge makes just about as much sense as selecting based off of a few photos and a one-sentence bio. So if you’re hungry for love this Valentine’s season, maybe it’s worth putting yourself — and your fridge — out there.

Electrolux and Karma Team up for Smart Grocery Fridge to Reduce Food Waste

Electrolux announced today that is has partnered with startup (and fellow Swedes) Karma to create a new smart refrigerator that helps grocery stores fight food waste.

As my colleague Catherine Lamb wrote this past summer, “Karma is a mobile app that helps retailers sell excess food to consumers at super-reduced prices. The only rules are that the food can’t be past its legal sell-by date and that retailers must list it for at least 50 percent less than its original price.”

Electrolux is also an investor in Karma, and as part of that investment, the two companies agreed to partner up to find ways to fight food waste. One of those ways is this new smart refrigerator, which launched its beta today at the ICA Kvantum Liljeholmen grocery store in Stockholm, Sweden.

The fridge acts as a locker/waystation where unsold food that would otherwise be thrown away is held. Karma users can purchase that food through the Karma app, then pick it up from the new smart fridge in the store. The user unlocks the fridge by displaying a QR code and shows the product at checkout to complete the transaction.

While we haven’t used it, this actually seems like a really smart marriage of hardware and software to fight the food waste problem. It gives Karma shoppers a more streamlined user experience when purchasing food. It gives Karma some in-store advertising. And it provides stores an elegant means of keeping food that would otherwise be thrown out while weaving that experience into broader shopping trips.

Karma says their app has been downloaded 400,000 times (though didn’t mention usage). The startup works with 1,500 food-sellers (grocery stores, cafés, bakeries, etc.) and is also expanding outside of Sweden into the U.K. Electrolux already cranks out refrigerators, so if this new solution catches on with consumers, it’s not hard to see these fridges popping up in more stores and chains across Sweden and Europe.

And while it’s weird to put something as noble as fighting food waste in competitive terms, this appliance partnership with a big brand like Electrolux could give Karma an edge over rival food waste company Too Good To Go, which currently has a much bigger reach across Europe.

As noted, this is the first partnership between Electrolux and Karma. Now we’ll see if they expand the relationship into other appliances and perhaps even shoppable recipes.

Seltzer? Sous Vide? Smart Apps? What Cool Things do you Want in a Fridge?

For those old enough to remember, there is an episode from season two of The Simpsons where Homer designs a car for the average American. The result, as you can imagine was a hodge-podge monstrosity that featured bubble domes, three horns, shag carpeting and cost $82,000.

I started thinking about that Homermobile a lot when I read about the new fridge from Sharp that has a built-in vacuum sealer for sous-vide cooking. Well, technically, this could be used to keep food fresher longer, but still, I hadn’t ever thought about combining the vacuum sealer and the fridge. Do I want that?

Maybe?

Companies are already pushing the notion of modern fridges doing much more than keeping our food cold. Equipped with smart screens, they are being turned into literal Family Hubs, have voice assistant capabilities built-in, talk with other appliances, have internal cameras to help us keep inventory, and even guide us through cooking.

We also learned last week that Mitte was in talks with appliance manufacturers to have its mineral water dispensing tech built into fridges, and Spoon founder, Mike Wolf, openly opined that he wants to have a SodaStream built into his fridge. Which honestly, doesn’t seem that far-fetched given the rise in seltzer consumption. How much bigger (or smaller on the inside) does a fridge need to get to accommodate still water, ice, mineral water, seltzer water and why not throw regular soda in there as well?

Further afield, both Amazon and Facebook (yes, Facebook) both have patents around smart technology for your fridge. Amazon’s version of the smart fridge would smell your contents for early spoilage detection, while Facebook’s (yes, Facebook) is more about accessing your fridge camera for meal recommendations and, of course, targeted advertising.

The fridge, ironically, seems like it’s heating up as a convergence zone for new kitchen tech. Which is why I think it’s good to think about what you want in your next one. I’m still a couple of years out from needing a new one (knock on wood), but as someone who writes about this stuff for a living, I’m already going through the features that I’ll want.

Mostly, I’m still going to treat my fridge like a fridge. I want it to keep food cold. I don’t need a constant connection so I can check in on the internal temperature, I just need it to be the workhorse of my kitchen, especially for the thousands of dollars that fridges cost.

Having said that, I really like the LG screen that goes transparent when you knock-knock on it. First of all, it’s neat, but it also saves me money by letting me peer into the fridge without letting all the cold air out.

Built-in screens, as a whole though, make me nervous. A screen in the kitchen is actually useful and lots of companies are vying for your eyeballs while you cook. But I don’t want to be locked into a particular ecosystem, I want to use all of my existing apps easily, and I don’t want an update to an operating system or app to suddenly brick my fridge. A better bet seems like just mounting a cheap tablet to the front of the fridge, which has the added benefit of being more portable, should I need to look at a recipe or watch the news while I cook.

Having my appliances talk to one another is kind of cool, but that requires its own lock-in (brands only talk with same brands), and I’d rather be able to pick the best oven, cooktop, induction burner, fridge or dishwasher independent of one another. Rather than focusing on a proprietary communication channel between their own appliances, I’d rather see appliance manufacturers work on integrating a wide variety of voice assistants (or, well, you know, the two main ones: Alexa and Google). That way users can just as easily control appliances using their voice, and they have more control over when each appliance goes on and to what temperature.

On the hardware side, I do think Mike is on to something with the seltzer tap built in. I like the idea of reducing waste (there are so many cans in my recycle bin), but I’d want to make sure that I could adjust the carbonation to make it as crisp as I like. Also, I’d like a decent enough-sized IoT -enabled CO2 cannister that automatically ordered a replacement and didn’t have to be replaced that often. I don’t think I’d go for any other type of drink like mineral water on tap from the fridge, and I wouldn’t want sticky flavor syrups gumming up the works in there either.

And as insane as it sounds, I am also intrigued by the Amazon smell-o-fridge. Fighting food waste is a big deal, and if my fridge is smart enough to tell me something is safe to eat, I’m all in. If built-in cameras and complex image recognition systems help with that as well, more power to ’em.

But I’m never letting Facebook into my fridge, though.

The bigger point is that we are entering an age where your fridge could get overloaded with features that could quickly become frivolous. You should spend your money smartly, and that may not mean buying a smart fridge. If you’re Homer Simpson, for instance, it’s probably smarter to skip the connected fridge and focus one that holds 64 slices of American cheese.