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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

smart fridge

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.

Byte’s Smart Fridge Is Upstaging the Vending Machine. That’s Great News for Offices

It’s hard to get amped about the food options inside an office building. Unless you work for a Google-like company and get subsidized or free meals, you’re probably stuck with vending machines. And we all know Fig Newtons do not a healthy lunch make.

Byte Foods, founded in 2015 by husband-wife team Lee and Megan Mokri, is trying to introduce a new option to the office food mix. Their company supplies offices with smart fridges full of fresh, healthy food options from local producers, like coffee from Blue Bottle and falafel snack packs from Sinbad Specialty Foods.

To use the fridges, employees simply swipe a credit card and pick what they want. A receipt for each purchase is sent to their email address. Each food item has a disposable RFID tag on the bottom, which Byte supplies to their producers. Before and after the fridge door opens, Byte scans the tag to determine what the employee took, then charges them accordingly. Each fridge also features a screen with nutrition and dietary information as well as prices. “It’s basically a really high quality food court in the office,” Lee Mokri told me over the phone. A food court that knows exactly what kind of kombucha you like.

Byte’s model is full service: they provide the fridge, stock it every day, and take any unsold food away at the end of the day to donate to various shelters. All their corporate clients have to do is pay a monthly service fee. This makes things super convenient for employers who want to provide fresh, healthy food options for their workers, but puts a lot of pressure on the Byte team—if no one wants a ham sandwich, Byte ends up paying for all the leftover ones at the end of the day.

Byte fridges have a screen displaying nutrition facts and prices.

For this reason, Byte relies heavily on data to optimize what they put on offer. “We have pretty robust demand-planning algorithms deciding exactly what we want to put in the fridge every day,” said Mokri. “That’s something that sets us apart from a catering company.” This custom curation smacks of a few other stories we’ve covered on The Spoon, such as Amazon‘s predictive meal ordering and dishq’s AI-powered food recommendations.

Much like Uber, Byte uses dynamic pricing to help push food off the shelves. For example, if a batch of Blue Bottle coffees is about to expire they can discount it to encourage sales. Byte can also hand this power off to their corporate clients, giving them the power to subsidize their employees meals. For example, Tesla, a client, discounts all food in their Byte fridges by 30 percent after 6 p.m., to support their teams burning the midnight oil. Dynamic pricing is currently managed by human employees, but Mokri says they “have a very clear path” for how to automate it.

Byte has also begun licensing their fridges and technology to companies across the country. These partners have access to the Byte dashboard, but can brand the fridges however they like and even fill them with their own food products. Mokri says this is an ideal model for place like hospitals and universities, who have a lot of people to feed but already do their own food production. Basically, their clients are paying for a simplified interface as well as a tool to help track customer food preferences.

The San Rafael-based company isn’t the only one working on improving grab-and-go food options. Chicago’s Farmer’s Fridge and French Foodles are also offering turnkey fridges stocked with freshly prepared meals, and electronics giant Panasonic is even getting in on the action with an IoT-enabled food ordering ecosystem Bento @ Your Office.

This rush to shake up the office dining routine makes sense: the vending market closed 2016 with a seven-year high of $21.6 billion. That means a big opportunity for those players looking to usurp the vending machine. At the same time, there’s a growing consumer demand for healthier food options.

Byte has branched into 500 locations in the San Francisco area and has raised a total of $10 million, according to Mokri. He said that they’re adding about 50 new clients per month. So next time you go to punch in C5 and get a “healthy” snack of Sunchips, you might be able to get something that’s actually healthy, instead.

Amazon-Ring: What It Means For Home Delivery & Where Amazon Might Go Next

By now you’ve no doubt heard about the acquisition of Ring by Amazon. The $1 billion-plus acquisition is the biggest smart home deal since Google acquired Nest back in early 2014.

While most of the articles about this deal focused Amazon’s entry into the home security market, I think that was a secondary motivation for the company. Sure, monthly recurring revenue from millions of potential home security customers is a nice-to-have, but Amazon’s moves in the smart home almost always revolve around how they can strengthen their core business: selling lots of stuff to consumers.

With that in mind, here’s my analysis of what Amazon/Nest means for the company’s home delivery efforts, it’s food business and where the company might go next:

Amazon/Ring Bolsters Amazon’s Unattended Access Plans

Back in October, Amazon announced Amazon Key. With Key, Amazon utilizes a smart lock and an internal camera to enable in-home delivery of packages.  It was Amazon’s first move into unattended access, an idea first pioneered by August (now owned by Assa Abloy) and one of increasing focus for Walmart.

With Ring, Key likely just got a lot better. Amazon will now own the dominant video doorbell company, giving it the ability to see who is at the door of potentially millions of home. They’ll also now have access to the Ring home security technology, which gives them a suite of sensors to understand better what’s going on in the home.

In short, the company now has a complete platform to accelerate in-home delivery of all kinds of products, starting with…

Grocery Delivery Just Got A Boost

While Amazon Key’s early focus has been on packages, much of the focus in the future will be on groceries.  Amazon has been integrating Amazon Fresh with its Whole Food operations and this month they’ve launched home delivery from Whole Foods in select markets. As home grocery delivery business becomes a bigger focus for the company, the Ring platform will help reduce friction around front door access and entry and could help enable true store-to-fridge delivery.

Restaurant Food On The Table Before You Even Know It

While grocery is an obvious one, there’s a good chance this news could impact how Amazon’s Restaurant delivery service works.  Earlier this week I wrote about a new patent Amazon has been awarded for predictive restaurant ordering, a technology that could enable Amazon to order food and have it to your door right about the time you’re getting hungry.

And so if Amazon is bold enough to order your food for you, why wouldn’t they just bring it into the home? With predictive restaurant ordering, it’s not hard to imagine coming home and having Thai food or pizza from your local restaurant sitting on the dinner table.

In short, the technical underpinnings are in place for Amazon to create a “meal when you get home” service for customers that combines restaurant delivery, groceries and more.

Could A Fridge Cam Acquisition Be Next?

In just the last couple months, Amazon’s acquired two connected camera companies. In December they bought Blink, a connected doorbell company, and now Ring.

These deals follow the launch of multiple connected camera products in 2017, including a fashion cam, the Key cam, as well as the embedded cam on the Echo Show.

So where will Amazon go next? My guess is inside the fridge. Which leads me to believe the company will likely launch their own or acquire a company like Smarter which has a connected fridge cam product.

While this is pure speculation, I think such a deal makes lots of sense. Amazon has shown a clear interest in what’s going on inside the fridge, applying for patents to detect produce freshness.

Why wouldn’t they want to monitor the inside using a connected camera as well?

In many ways, Jamie Siminoff reminds me of Jeff Bezos; extremely aggressive, win-at-all-costs. You can listen to my conversation with Jamie for an episode of the Smart Home Show below. 

Is Amazon Considering Making A Smart Fridge? Probably Not (But Maybe)

Is Amazon working on a refrigerator?

Maybe.

Recent patent applications suggest the company is researching advanced refrigerator technology around spoilage detection while they also expand efforts to help you order groceries and have them delivered inside your home. Taken together with their investment in smart home tech and growing interest in the kitchen, one scenario could have the company creating a smart fridge.

Skeptical? You should be. It probably won’t happen. But there are signals it is at least a remote possibility, so let’s analyze them and speculate about the possibility of an Amazon Smart Fridge.

First the patent applications.

Amazon Files Fridge Patents

In September, Amazon filed two related patent applications that centered around spoiled food detection in refrigerators.  The first patent application, filed on September 14th of this year, is called “Image-Based Spoilage Sensing Refrigerator” and centers around utilizing internal cameras to detect spoiled food. The system would use both infrared and visible spectrum cameras to detect spoilage of food and then send an alert to a mobile device.

This patent application was designed to work in concert with a scent-based sensing system defined in another patent application (also filed on September 14th) called “Scent-Based Spoilage Sensing Refrigerator” that utilizes a variety of sensors to detect gasses emitted from spoiled food and then sends an alert to a mobile device.

Here is a mockup drawing of the fridge included in both of the patent applications that show where gas-based spoilage sensors would be placed in the fridge:

Both patent applications go into a lot of detail about how exactly the systems would work, but the essence of these concepts is that Amazon wants to put digital eyes and a nose into your refrigerator to automatically detect when food is spoiled and let you know.

As with any patent applications, you need to take them with a grain of salt. Amazon files a whole lot of patents these days and more often these do not turn into granted patents. But the very fact Amazon is researching spoilage detection is interesting in itself, even if it’s not enough.

Amazon Investment in Kitchen Commerce

For the last few years, Amazon has invested in kitchen replenishment and ordering platforms. First, there’s Amazon Dash Replenishment Service, the integrated automated ordering system that today is largely about replenishing non-spoilables like coffee filters or printer ink. However, there’s no reason why the same technology couldn’t work in a fridge.

Then there’s the Amazon Echo and Alexa. Over half of all Amazon Echos are ending up in the kitchen, and Amazon continues to build out the capabilities of their Alexa-powered voice assistants to act as virtual grocery shoppers.

We’ve also seen Amazon continuing to invest in their own mobile app to enable new commerce possibilities. Just this week the company announced it had added augmented reality capabilities to its mobile app. One could easily imagine the mobile app getting alerts from a smart fridge to tee up a new set of groceries.

Amazon’s Recipe-Driven Commerce Patent

Amazon’s fridge patent applications are no doubt intriguing, but things get even more interesting when considering Amazon IP such as its patent for recipe-driven commerce. Amazon was issued a patent in 2015 to enable for recipe-driven commerce that breaks down a recipe and inserts ingredients into a virtual shopping cart.

Here’s an image from the patent filing showing a recipe with a commerce/shopping cart component:

The patent application was originally filed in 2011, which shows you how long Amazon has been thinking about food and automated ordering.

Amazon Is Investing in Unattended Delivery

Last week, Amazon revealed Amazon Key, a new initiative centered around unattended delivery. The idea here is an Amazon delivery person would be able to enter your home to deliver a product while you aren’t there. The system utilizes an Amazon smart video doorbell and works with smart lock partners to enable access.

While Amazon Key could be used for pretty much anything Amazon delivers, unattended delivery makes lots of sense for groceries given fresh food needs to be put into a fridge at some point. Of course, an Amazon fridge isn’t necessary to make this all happen, but as long as Amazon is moving down the path of automated ordering, it could be one of many potential scenarios.

Amazon’s Partnership With Kenmore

A couple of months ago, Kenmore made news by announcing it would start selling its appliances via Amazon. It was a big deal since this was the first time in the brand’s century-plus history that it would sell outside of a Sears’ sales channel.

As I wrote here, the deal was a big win for Amazon, while Sears/Kenmore will also benefit from Amazon’s e-commerce capabilities. At the same time, Sears continues to struggle and, long-term, this deal could the first step towards new business models where Kenmore works with other players to help develop partner products. Who’s to say that at some point Amazon doesn’t consider working with Kenmore to make a refrigerator or – as they did with Whole Foods – just buy the company?

Amazon Loves Food

This one might seem obvious, but Amazon loves the food business. If the surprising acquisition of Whole Foods wasn’t enough to convince you, certainly their decade-long investment in grocery delivery, experimentation with new store formats, their drive-through pick up concept, Fresh subscriptions and various other initiatives are signs of how excited Amazon is about the food market. And why not? They know along with Walmart that food is the biggest portion of consumer wallet spend outside of housing and transportation (roughly 13% of consumer household budgets go towards food).

Much how Amazon eventually invested in hardware for entertainment because they saw a huge opportunity for new business models as the living room became digitized, who’s to say they won’t think the same thing about food as the kitchen goes through the same digital transformation?

The Fridge Is The Heart Of The Kitchen

In some ways, one could argue the fridge is the heart of the kitchen. Samsung certainly thinks so, doubling down on a strategy around their Family Hub refrigerator this year and likely continuing to bet on the smart fridge. Rumors have been floating for the last couple years that Amazon was making a kitchen computer – which eventually turned into was the Echo Show – but who’s to say Amazon wouldn’t just consider moving the technology for the Show into the fridge itself alongside all the other tech they are have developed for the kitchen?

All The Reasons They Won’t Make a Fridge

As I said, there are lots of reasons not to make a fridge. One is the company usually invests in smaller, low-cost hardware products in new categories. Another is there’s a good chance that if Amazon wanted inside our fridge, they would simply consider making a retrofit solution similar to the Smarter fridge cam.  And if they wanted to make a home storage device, why not just make a front-door locker system, something akin to an Amazon locker for the front door?

But still…

Conclusion: Gene Munster, My Apologies

The Amazon fridge question reminds me of a few years ago when folks speculated whether Apple would make a TV. One analyst in particular, Gene Munster, seemed to bet his whole career on the idea before eventually admitting he’d been wrong.

Part of the reason Munster speculated for years about an Apple TV was there were lots of signals.  Patent filings, investment in digital entertainment platforms and the recurring pattern of Apple coming up with a new hero consumer product every couple years fed into Munster’s thinking.

So, while I don’t intend to become the Gene Munster of the Amazon fridge and wage a multiyear speculation battle about why its the right thing to do, I figured I’d at least play Munster for a day and ask the question: will Amazon make a smart fridge?

Probably not.

Buy maybe.

The IFA 2017 Smart Refrigerator Roundup

Fridges are sexy again.

Ok, so maybe they weren’t ever sexy in the first place, but if you were at IFA this past week, you would have seen a host of fridges with interactive touchscreens, image recognition software, internal cams and even the ability to move around the home and deliver a frosty one.

If this year’s CES and IFA are any indications, the fridge is fast becoming the focal point for many appliance makers, who are jumping at the opportunity to remake their product with advanced hardware and software that transform their fridges into the smart kitchen – and smart home – hubs.

Let’s take a quick look at some of the fridges that were on display at IFA:

Haier Link Cook Series

Haier showed off their Link Cook series of smart refrigerators, a new line of products that looks similar in feature set to the Samsung Family Hub refrigerator.

Haier smart fridge "Link Cook" @IFA 2017

The Link Cook series of fridges is part of a broader lineup from Haier. According to Ashlee Clark Thompson at CNET, the Link Cook is part of “Haier’s U+ Smart Home Platform, which connects the Link Cook Series to a Haier oven and range hood. According to Haier, you’ll be able to select a recipe on the refrigerator, automatically send the heating instructions to the oven and view the recipe on a small screen on the range hood.”

At this point, Haier is vague on timing and pricing. It will be interesting to see is if Haier’s new fridge eventually enters the US market under the GE brand.

Samsung’s Family Hub

Samsung tends to make its biggest news at CES, but it had a nice update on some new features and partner integrations for its flagship smart fridge at IFA.

While the company has had voice commands (both Alexa and its voice assistant, Bixby), they announced expanded voice command features at IFA. From the press release: “Family Hub’s voice capabilities provide a new way to interact with the refrigerator. Users can ask for the time and weather updates, search the internet, read news articles, play music and radio, add items to their shopping list, and even view inside of the refrigerator without opening the door.”

It also became more evident that Samsung sees their Family Hub as the central command center for the smart home. They teased this at CES and at the Smart Kitchen event at Samsung’s NYC location in June, but now users can use the Samsung Connect smart home features from the fridge. Samsung Connect, based on the SmartThings platform (which Samsung acquired a few years ago), is now built into the fridge.

Panasonic’s Mobile Fridge

Panasonic turned in one of the most intriguing showings of IFA as far as future kitchen tech is concerned, showing off an AI-powered kitchen assistant and a combo microwave-steam oven, but the show stealer was their moveable fridge named “Cool.”  Cool utilizes similar technology employed by any number of robot vacuums in that it has internal sensors that measure the distance between itself and obstacles in its way like, say, a kitchen island, and continuously develops a map and improves its understanding of the overall home layout as moves around.

Cool, which is about the size of a dormitory fridge, does not currently have a price or ship date.

Smarter/Liebherr

The smart fridge showing at IFA wasn’t all touch screens and robot fridges. Smarter, the smart kitchen appliance startup from the UK founded by Dragon Den wunderkind Christian Lane and his wife Isabella, showed off production models of the smart fridge cam is debuted last year at IFA and also had a major partner announcement. The company announced that their FridgeCam smart fridge camera would ship with every smart refrigerator from German industrial conglomerate Liebherr, the biggest privately held manufacturer of refrigerators in the EU (and also the inventor of the tower crane).  The deal is a good one for Smarter. While the announcement did not break out what percentage of total volume from the German manufacturer is smart, the company ships an estimated 2 million fridges per year.

The Rise of the Smart Fridge

In many ways, this focus on the fridge by big appliance manufacturer makes sense. In many homes, the fridge is the central focal point of the kitchen, where pictures, school assignments, and shopping lists go. Why not digitize that?

The fridge is also where the bulk of our fresh food is stored, all of which have a limited lifespan. Smarter fridges could help us manage this inventory and make sure we waste less (and keep us from buying redundant food that will inevitably be wasted).

Lastly, no platform really dominates the kitchen screen, but with the rise of guided cooking, the growing popularity of food and cooking content, and more and smarter appliances to manage, the front of the fridge makes sense for that big attractive touchscreen.

And of course, there are those of us there are who have long dreamed of a day when a robot assistant could bring us a beer. Just who could have predicted that robot would also be a fridge?