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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

smart kitchen

Combustion Acquires Recipe App Crouton

Combustion, the smart thermometer startup founded by ChefSteps cofounder Chris Young, has acquired popular recipe app Crouton.

Crouton, developed by New Zealand-based software engineer Devin Davies, is a highly rated app that lets users organize all their recipes in one place. After launch, Crouton soon began gaining traction and critical attention (Apple awarded the app its 2024 Design Award for Interaction). Like many independent developers who experience success, Davies soon found himself having to manage the business side of running a startup—something he realized wasn’t aligned with his strengths.

“One thing I’ve come to realise about myself over the last wee while, is that what I care about most is designing interfaces that make it as easy as possible to get things done. User experience and what not,” wrote Davies in a blog post announcing the acquisition. “I’m not an entrepreneur or keen business leader. Stepping into full time indie and really trying to steer the ship highlighted to me just how much that jazz isn’t me. I actually really enjoy being just a part of the puzzle, not the whole puzzle.”

Davies had discovered Combustion’s open-source developer tools and had integrated the thermometer with Crouton. That work caught the attention of Young and the Combustion team.

“A year or so earlier, I had added support to Crouton to quickly set up the thermometer and also display its information as a Live Activity alongside your recipe. I jumped at the opportunity to collaborate and spent a few weeks working with Combustion to bring Live Activity support to their app like I had with Crouton.”

Before long, Young and Davies realized it made sense to join forces.

For Young, it’s clear that moves he’s made since starting Combustion – including acquiring Crouton – are based on insights he learned the hard way after building ChefSteps. At his previous company, Young spent millions of dollars creating expensive media-rich recipes for the ChefSteps website and the Joule sous vide app, only to eventually realize most consumers preferred finding recipes on the open web. With Crouton now in the fold, Young’s is now letting organic consumer usage behavior guide his product rather than trying to force behavior change on the consumer.

Young also learned his lesson with the ChefSteps Joule, where any software integration required resource-draining custom work. From the get-go with Combustion, he opened up access to the device’s real-time Bluetooth, which allowed developers, like Davies, to build cool software experiences around the Combustion thermometer.

Post-acquisition, Crouton will remain a standalone site, and Davies will lead both the development of Crouton and the Combustion app. For Davies, it seems like the perfect fit.

“So what is changing? Well, kind of nothing. I’m still very dedicated to Crouton and its future just got a lot brighter! I’ll still be the lead developer but now Crouton is backed by a whole team. A team with a deep knowledge of cooking and technology, that will help Crouton do even more! “

Smart Tea Infuser Teforia Comes Back From the Dead Seven Years After Shutting Down

When it comes to zombies, you never know when they’ll spring back to life.

As we learned this past month, the same goes for zombie products. Teforia, the eponymous smart tea infuser that vanished when the company abruptly shut down in the fall of 2017, is back after nearly a decade. A New Jersey-based tea company named Adagio Teas has apparently acquired the assets and is now selling Teforia tea infusers on its website.

In its announcement, Adagio referenced the financial problems that led to Teforia’s closure but mistakenly got the timeline wrong. The release states that Teforia originally launched in 2018, when it actually shut down the year before:

“Originally launched in 2018 to widespread acclaim, Teforia was discontinued due to financial constraints, leaving a devoted community of tea drinkers longing for its return. Now, Adagio Teas is bringing this beloved innovation back, combining cutting-edge technology with the artistry of fine tea.”

“We recognized the deep passion that tea drinkers had for Teforia and its ability to elevate the tea experience,” said Michael Cramer, CEO of Adagio Teas. “As a company dedicated to providing the highest-quality loose-leaf teas, we saw an incredible opportunity to bring Teforia back and reintroduce a smarter, more intuitive way to enjoy tea.”

At the time of its original release, Teforia attracted attention because its creators claimed it could personalize each brew with precise amounts of caffeine, antioxidants, and other elements. Additionally, the hardware had a distinctive and appealing design that stood out in the tea world.

Unfortunately, the product never gained widespread popularity, likely due to its initial $1,500 price tag. While the newly re-released version is significantly more affordable at $500, many potential buyers might still question why they would invest in what remains a premium-priced tea brewer, especially when established brands like Breville offer comparable “smart” tea brewers for roughly half that price.

I’m curious to see if Teforia can succeed on its second attempt. The tea and technology landscape in 2025 is vastly different from a decade ago, with many tech-powered tea infusers available. However, backed by a reputable tea company, perhaps Teforia stands a better chance this time around.

Sous Vide Specialist Anova Informs Community Its App Is Going Subscription, and It’s Not Going Well

Last week, Anova CEO Steve Svajian announced that the company will begin charging a subscription fee for new users of its sous vide circulator app starting August 21st, 2024. However, existing users who have downloaded the app and created an account before this date will not be impacted by the change. These users will be grandfathered into free access to the app’s full features.

Svajian explained that the decision to introduce a subscription fee stems from the fact that “each connected cook costs us money,” a cost that has become significant as the number of connected cooks now numbers in the “hundreds of millions.” The new Anova Sous Vide Subscription will be priced at $1.99 per month or $9.99 per year.

As Digital Trends noted, this announcement comes on the heels of Anova’s decision to sunset app connectivity for older Wi-Fi and Bluetooth sous vide circulators.

Unsurprisingly, the news has sparked discontent among Anova users. There are currently 195 comments on the Anova post announcing the new subscription, the majority of which express dissatisfaction, with many users stating, “I’m done with Anova.”

For instance, one user commented:

“I liked the product and bought it for friends and family as a gift. I will no longer be using this product and regret ever supporting this company.”

Another user remarked:

“You must have watched Sonos app troubles and thought, ‘Hold my beer.’ Charging your customers for your inability to innovate is a doozy!”

As a long-time Sonos user, I can relate to the frustration expressed in the Sonos comment, having witnessed how the music streaming hardware pioneer damaged its reputation with a glitchy app. While the Anova app may not be as central to the user experience as the Sonos app (I personally prefer using the on-device controls for the Anova), it highlights how upset customers become when a company alters or disrupts a previously satisfactory experience.

However, it’s important to recognize that smartphones have taught us that connected devices have a limited shelf life. Over time, products age, and companies like Apple, Samsung, and now Sonos and Anova, have made it clear that they can’t support old hardware indefinitely, particularly when maintaining apps incurs ongoing costs related to development, web services, and customer support.

The challenge for companies like Sonos and Anova is that consumers don’t perceive all connected electronics the same way, especially those that were initially free to use and expected to have a long lifespan. We’ve become accustomed to paying substantial sums for our phones and their associated monthly service fees, and despite this investment, most of us have accepted the forced obsolescence model that the smartphone industry has ingrained in us.

In contrast, when it comes to other devices, like connected cooking appliances, we tend to expect them to work indefinitely without additional costs. We assume that this new experience—connected cooking—will continue without requiring us to pay for the same level of service we previously enjoyed for free.

Considering the broader trajectory of Anova and its parent company, Electrolux, this news is not entirely surprising. Electrolux, like many appliance companies, has faced challenges in recent years, including laying off three thousand employees last fall. Despite these difficulties, they have continued to operate Anova as a relatively independent entity. Unlike other major brands that have shuttered their smart kitchen acquisitions, Electrolux appears to be making a concerted effort to keep Anova going in a tough economic environment.

It remains to be seen how this move will affect the brand. The backlash is predictable, but I wonder if the outrage is primarily coming from a vocal minority. I suspect that the “100 million connected cooks” figure is somewhat exaggerated, as Anova claims to have powered over 100 million cooks on its website. I also believe that many of these cooks, like me, are from users who simply plug in the device and use it directly without relying on the app.

Don’t Call It a Comeback: Take-Aways and Thank Yous For Smart Kitchen Summit 2024

Last week, we produced the first in-person Smart Kitchen Summit (SKS) since 2019.

It’s hard to believe it’s been that long. In some ways, we’ve lost all sense of time given what has happened over the past five years, including a pandemic, but still, five years is a long time.

Bringing the event back was something we wanted to do for the last couple of years, both because we missed it and because we were hearing from our community, who also wanted SKS back. However, before we did, we wanted to ensure the timing was right. For many reasons (more on that later), we finally felt it was the right time when we announced SKS 2024 last December.

When we held our last event, we didn’t know it at the time, but we were, in a sense, closing the first chapter on the smart kitchen. Many of the first attempts by appliance companies, food brands, and startups building enabling technology had either gained traction or, in many cases, had not, making it a good time to reassess.

The first wave of the smart kitchen focused heavily on leveraging smart home technologies, voice interfaces, and app platforms to digitize knowledge around cooking and food journey management. Many interesting startups born during this time had been acquired or built sustainable and interesting businesses on their own. More eventually went out of business.

That’s why, as I built the program for this first year back, I wanted to take a realistic look at our industry’s progress, take stock of the lessons learned, and understand the current state of innovation. I wanted to have some ‘real talk’ so we can be clear-eyed about what we did right and what we did wrong and better navigate the next ten years of building products for the future kitchen.

Many of those lessons were articulated during the two days. Scott Heimendinger, who has been building products that utilize technology to help us become better cooks for more than a decade, summed up much of the problem with the first wave (and warned those this time around) on the opening panel.

“There’s a temptation that’s especially prevalent in our industry, but in others as well, that when new technologies become available to the world, we want to kind of slap those on what we’re doing,” said Heimendinger.

Scott and others warned that we must avoid repeating the same mistakes, especially as the industry embraces new technologies such as generative AI.

Another key refrain we heard during the two days was how critical it is to understand how we can meet consumers where they are in the kitchen and understand their needs. We need to build products that enhance their ability to cook great meals and make their lives easier, all while understanding the changing nature of living today as we witness growing challenges of buying homes, inflation, and a warming, increasingly resource-challenged planet.

Two speakers who addressed consumer motivation were Susan Schwallie and Barb Stuckey.

“They are outfitting utilitarian and multi-purpose kitchens and require appliances that work hard for them,” Schwallie said during her presentation, Harnessing Consumer Trends to Design the Kitchen of Tomorrow. “Gone are the days of single-use tools like avocado slicers and artisanal coffee makers, which required time and technique. Multi-purpose tools like air fryers resonate.”

One crucial aspect to consider about Millennials is their hyper-awareness of the cost of life in 2024. This, combined with their aspiration for ‘adult’ kitchens, underscores the significance of durability in their purchasing decisions, according to Schwallie. They seek products that can withstand the test of time, and the fear of planned obsolescence is a genuine concern for them. Many reside in ‘forever apartments,’ where storage and countertop space are limited, “making utility and flexibility important.”

Barb Stuckey delved into the changing nature of housing and how it impacts what Millennials and Gen Z think about their kitchen purchase decisions. According to Barb, only 40% of renters expect to own a home someday, and this permanent rental mindset has translated to this tech-forward generation, which is eyeing practical and multi-function appliances that often sit on the countertop.

We also looked further into the future during SKS, exploring potential scenarios that could be unlocked through the application of new technologies. One scenario described by Mike Lee, author of Mise, during his talk, is a society in which a large segment of our population utilizes AI-powered personalized nutrition platforms to guide their every move. Mike expressed his belief in the great potential of personalized nutrition but also emphasized that we as an industry need to recognize that “something is lost when eating in a silo.”

Another conversation focused on how robotics and automation will be used in the consumer kitchen. It’s a particularly interesting time for this conversation, as we increasingly hear about companies like Apple, Tesla, and the Bot Company eyeing the home market for robotics. Moderator Wilson Rothman pressed those building high-end and pricey robots about the key needs they were solving and how they envisioned consumers getting these products into their homes. Robin Liss, who makes a countertop robot named Suvie, talked about the importance of a “constant feedback loop” of usage data to make products ever more usable and affordable.

This is only a sample of what we heard. We will examine and explore insights from the stage as we publish videos and transcripts of the sessions in the coming weeks. For now, though, I just wanted to reflect and thank those who made SKS 2024 possible.

When we had the first SKS in 2015, we were on the precipice of a new wave of innovation around cooking and food technology. Looking back, we’ve documented many of those stories here at The Spoon and have, in recent years, started to hear from others beginning their journeys building new products and platforms for the consumer kitchen. As we’ve listened over the past twelve months, it’s become evident to me there is a new wave of innovation building, where innovators are leveraging advances in AI, synthetic biology, heating, robotics, electrification, and much more to build the future companies and kitchens of tomorrow.

We hope to help document these stories on The Spoon, through podcasts, and at our events for the next decade, and we hope you come along for the ride!

***

Now for some thanks. Big thanks to the SKS sponsors Whirlpool, Current Backyard, Fresco, Schott, Chefman, Suvie, Else Labs, Pot Robotics and Cibotica, all of whom helped make SKS possible.

Big thanks to my good friend and event consigliere, Surj Patel, who did a masterful job MCing for the two days. Thanks to Sandie Markle and Louis Leboa for helping corral speakers during SKS. Thank you to my good friend Carlos Rodela and awesome videographer Luca Nilon-Volpentesta for doing interviews and capturing some great video.

Thanks to Heather Moore, a long-time friend (and fellow puppet-lover) for capturing amazing photos of all the action at SKS.

Also, thanks to other volunteers such as Hamid Ali (congratulations on a great career at Google!), Cormac Wolf, and Andrew Miller.

Thanks to Renton Technical College for feeding us. We are big supporters of RTC’s mission of educating young people and preparing them for careers in food service.

Thanks to the team at Kind and Co for being awesome event ninjas and ensuring all the little (and big) things that go into producing an event got done.

Thanks to all the speakers for SKS 2024 for taking time out of their busy schedules building businesses to book flights and come to Seattle to share knowledge.

Thanks to all of our event partners, who helped spread the word about SKS, ensured we filled seats, and tapped into their networks.

Thanks to our attendees, who, through their energy and insight during the show, truly made SKS 2024 an amazing event.

Thanks to the media for coming and writing about SKS.

Thanks to the SKS Advisory Council, which helped shape my thinking about this year’s program and made connections when needed.

Finally, thanks most of all to Tiffany McClurg, who did so much to make SKS 2024 a rousing success. She not only helped make SKS so much better and kept the trains running on time during the show, but also got to step out on the first day and watch her (and my) son graduate from the University of Washington.

We’ll see you all next year!

Scenes from Smart Kitchen Summit 2024

The Smart Kitchen Summit wrapped up this week, and boy, did we have a great time discussing how new technologies will drive the next wave of cooking and kitchen innovation!

I’ll be sharing some of my thoughts next week, but I thought I’d share some of my favorite shots from the show. Thanks, as always, to Heather Moore for great work.

Above: Kicking off SKS 2024 with some great insights from Scott Heimendinger, Chris Young and Kai Shaeffner.

Above: SKS MC Surj Patel talks with Ladle Cooking’s Sumati Sharan

Above: Chef, meet Chef. Two authors connect at SKS. Chris Young (Coauthor, Modernist Cuisine) shakes hands with James Briscione (Author, The Flavor Matrix).

Above: Talking Cooking Robots. A food robotics session with Mark Oleynik (Moley Robotics), Robin Liss (Suvie) and Assaf Pashut).

Above: SKS attendees check out what’s next in cooking technology.

Above: MOTO Pizza CEO Lee Kindell shows off his t-shirt on stage.

Above: Wisely founder Rachell McCray talks about the future of food storage with Ovie’s Stacie Thompson.

Above: The sun breaks through just in time for happy hour at SKS 2024

Fresco Locks Up Deal To Bring Kitchen OS to Middleby Consumer Kitchen Brands

This week, smart kitchen startup Fresco announced it had struck a deal with Middleby to integrate the Fresco Kitchen OS platform across the cooking equipment giant’s residential portfolio, starting with high-end kitchen appliance brand Viking.

The first Middleby product line to incorporate the Fresco Kitchen OS platform will be the Viking RVL Collection. The RVL line, a new collection introduced this week that is more modern and tech-forward than traditional Viking lines, will incorporate the Fresco OS via a firmware agent residing on an integrated system-on-chip. In addition to the built-in Fresco firmware, which will power the connectivity to other Viking and non-Viking brands that use Fresco technology, the smart kitchen startup is also providing the appliance brand with a white-labeled Viking app. According to Fresco, they will also work on a smart recipe app for another Middleby brand in AGA(Middleby acquired AGA in 2015 and acquired Viking in 2012).

The move is a nice win for Fresco, in part because it is a validation of its revamped kitchen OS, which the company announced a year ago. The deal also adds a premium built-in appliance brand in Viking to its growing list of customers. The Irish/US startup, which got its start a decade ago with the launch of its connected kitchen scale, has been steadily chalking up wins over the past few years, including with Japanese microwave maker Panasonic and the once white-hot Instant Brands.

Middleby is interesting because it represents many other potential product lineups for integration. Not only are there other built-in appliance brands like AGA, La Cornue, and Rangemaster for Fresco to expand to, but the company also has a couple of outdoor grills as well as a countertop cooking brand in Brava. For its part, Brava was not mentioned as an initial target for the Fresco technology, but my guess is that has as much to do with the complex and fairly unique commands associated with the Brava light-cooking technology as anything.

I asked Fresco CEO Ben Harris how his company has continued to grow its partner list in the connected kitchen space, and he pointed towards the system-on-chip in his hand, which featured an Espressif ESP 32 DSP. According to Harris, Fresco’s hardware engineering and silicon understanding, born almost a decade ago when the company introduced the Drop scale, has helped them win customers looking to take advantage of their technology and their knowledge in this space.

Harris said that having on-chip, on-board integration of a kitchen tech stack via their kitchen OS SoC module is not only a good way to on-board a customer like Viking, it also results in a faster system. Harris said that in the early days, when they went from building cloud-to-cloud integration between smart kitchen equipment from different manufacturers to integrating their own SoC with built-in firmware, the quickly saw how much more responsive and fast the system performed.

“It was like that, in an instant,” said Harris in an interview with The Spoon at KBIS. “It definitely feels like it’s an extension of the appliance, and it makes a big difference in the engagement of the user.”

In addition to partnering up for a product integration, the two companies also announced that Middleby will become an investor in Fresco. In this sense, the deal is somewhat reminiscent of the Instant Brands partnership, which had the pressure cooker maker investing in Fresco at the time of the deal.

You can watch my interview with Harris at KBIS below:

Interview With Fresco's Ben Harris on Connected Kitchen Technology at KBIS 2024

Podcast: Overcoming Obstacles To Build Kitchen Tech Hardware With Ovie’s Ty Thompson

Ty Thompson and the rest of the Ovie team recently passed a major milestone: They shipped their first hardware product.

The product, a consumer food waste management system, was over half a decade in the making. Along the way to market, the founding team faced numerous challenges around funding, finalizing the product concept and design, building prototypes for manufacturing, and finding the right manufacturer to work with.

Ty talks about all of these challenges and the lessons learned, including:

  • Battling mission creep around the product’s vision
  • How to find the right minimum viable product to get it into production
  • What you need to do (and what you shouldn’t do) when looking to find the right manufacturing partner
  • How to balance your life and your day job while hustling to build a startup

And much more!

You can listen to the full episode by clicking play below or you can find it in the usual podcast spaces such as Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

Fresco Deal With Panasonic Brings Device Control & AI-Powered Planning to HomeCHEF Multi-Oven Lineup

At CES 2024, Panasonic announced that it had struck a deal with smart kitchen OS startup Fresco to integrate the Fresch kitchen OS platform with the Japanese brand’s multi-oven countertop cooking appliances.

The deal covers the US market and will see Fresco’s technology bring a new set of connected features to Panasonic’s multi-oven products, the first being the HomeCHEF 4-in-1 multi-oven. According to the announcement, the Fresco AI assistant will reside within the Panasonic app, allowing users to tailor recipes according to their dietary needs, substitute ingredients based on pantry availability, and change serving sizes and cooking preferences. Users can control cooking modalities, enabling steam cooking, air frying, and more through the app and get alerts about cooking status.

The deal marks a significant win for Fresco with one of the leading microwave manufacturers in the world, one that has been relatively aggressive about adding new cooking capabilities through its HomeCHEF multi-oven line. The partnership is interesting because it’s one of the first partnerships by a major microwave company to bring device control and AI-assisted cooking to their lineup.

According to Fresco, the HomeChef 4-in-1 will first be released in the US market in late 2024.

GE Appliances Partners With Kroger for Shoppable Recipes on Wi-Fi Connected Ovens

This week, GE Appliances (GEA) announced it has released a new software update that enables customers with GEA’s Wi-Fi-connected stoves to add items to their Kroger shopping carts through featured shoppable recipes on their wall ovens and slide-in ranges.

According to the announcement, the new partnership, which was distributed via an over-the-air update to what GEA says is 150 thousand appliances (which is, interestingly, a smaller number given to us when the company announced its ‘turkey mode’ software update in 2021), will enable customers to find a select set of curated recipes (13 recipes at release) from Kroger and select CPG brands (including King Arthur Baking). Once a customer chooses a recipe, the recipes will suggest what GEA calls precision cooking modes, which track cooking progress, modify temperatures and adjust cook times.

In addition to the guided cooking features built into the recipes. they also allow for some clickable commerce. GE Appliance users can click to view the list of ingredients and instructions within the recipe and, with an additional click, add all the recipe’s ingredients to their Kroger cart. GEA says customers can connect their GE appliance app to their Kroger account via a QR code scan setup.

This announcement from GE Appliances comes after the company announced an integration with Google Cloud’s Vertex generative AI integration with their cooking app earlier this year, which the company calls Flavorly. According to GE Appliances spokesperson Shawn Stover, the Flavorly AI integration enables customers to input items in their refrigerator, and the app will generate three suggested recipes to build around the ingredients.

Food Tech News: Samsung Heads Into the Kitchen, Robot Meets Artisan Pizza

The Spoon is back for another week of food tech news, and this week Michael Wolf and Allen Weiner talk about what’s going on in the smart kitchen, alt protein, CRISPR and more.

Here are the stories we talk about:

  • Samsung and LG play nice in the kitchen, and Samsung launches food app. 
  • MOTO Pizza, where you wait a month for your pizza order, is crazy about Picnic’s pizza robot
  • Pairwise reups partnership with Bayer for CRISPR-based innovation
  • GFI says plant-based meat sales were up in 2022
  • DoorDash is bringing AI to their apps and call centers

As always, you can just hit play below to listen to the podcast, head to Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or listen on your favorite podcast app.

As mentioned in the show, the Spoon is once again leading the charge for food tech at CES, the world’s biggest tech show. If you are interested in showcasing your future food or food tech innovation, head over to The Spoon’s CES page for more info.

Also, on October 25th, we’ll be bringing leaders at the intersection of food and AI together for a day of conversation. Please use the discount code PODCAST for 15% off tickets to the Food AI Summit.

With the Launch of Samsung Food, Samsung Hypes AI & Consolidates Food Features Acquired Over the Years

Over the years, Samsung has acquired and launched several products in an effort to become the king of the tech-powered kitchen.

First, there was the launch of the Family Hub refrigerator, the company’s attempt to create a smart fridge built around the company’s own operating system and packed with technology like fridge cams to identify food and help you with your shopping.

Then, there was the acquisition of Whisk, an intelligent food and shopping app that helped pioneer the shoppable recipe space. Whisk had not only amassed an extensive food database, which would ultimately become a foundation for some of Family Hub’s (now Bespoke Family Hub) shopping and recipe capabilities, but it also served up the foundational ‘Food AI’ that is now being pushed to the forefront by Samsung.

Then, there were various attempts to use AI through automation in the kitchen, as the company announced (and never released commercially) different cooking and kitchen-task robots at CES.

And we can’t forget that Samsung also took some of the smart home technology from its SmartThings smart home group (another Samsung acquisition) and paired it with Whisk’s recipe intelligence to create SmartThings Cooking, a guided cooking app.

This leads us to this week, in which Samsung announced what amounts to packaging up this collected knowledge and technology – save for (at least for now) the robotics – into a newly expanded app and platform called Samsung Food. Samsung Food, which the company describes as “a personalized, AI-powered food and recipe platform,” looks like a significant step forward for the company’s efforts to build a centralized digital food management app. It also is a logical move to consolidate much of the collected efforts under the Samsung brand after the company had collected a variety of platforms that served as a foundation for what we see today.

Let’s take a look at precisely what the company unveiled. In the announcement, Samsung detailed four primary areas of activity for Samsung Food: Recipe Exploration and Personalization, AI-Enhanced Meal Planning, Kitchen Connectivity, and Social Sharing.

For recipe exploration, Samsung looks like it’s essentially using what was an already somewhat evolved feature set in Whisk. Samsung says that it can save recipes to a user’s digital recipe box anytime and from anywhere, create shopping lists based on their ingredients, and is accessible via Family Hub. In addition to mobile devices, users can access Samsung Food with their Bespoke Family Hub fridges, which will provide recipe recommendations based on a list of available food items managed by the user and shoppable recipe capabilities.

With the Personalize Recipe function, Samsung Food looks like it builds on the personalization engine created by Whisk and plans to take it further through integration with Samsung Health. According to the announcement, by the end of this year, Samsung plans to integrate with Samsung Health to power suggestions for diet management. This integration will factor in info such as a user’s body mass index (BMI), body composition, and calorie consumption in pursuit of their health goals and efforts to maintain a balanced diet.

The AI-Enhanced meal planning feature looks like a longer-view planning feature that consolidates personalized recipe recommendations, and it will no doubt similarly benefit from the integration of Samsung Health.

With Connected Cooking, Samsung has rebranded and extended the features of the SmartThings Cooking app, adding new devices like the BeSpoke oven and incorporating some of the same guided cooking features.

And, of course, a consolidated food-related platform from Samsung wouldn’t be complete without a social media component. My guess is the Social Sharing feature – which will allow users to share with their community – is the least necessary addition to the app and will ultimately not be all that successful, as consumers will continue to use mainline social apps (TikTok, Instagram, Facebook) for their food-related social sharing.

The company also teased expanded computer vision capabilities in 2024 in the announcement. The company’s Vision AI technology “will enable Samsung Food to recognize food items and meals photographed through the camera and provide details about them, including nutrition information.”

Overall, I’m impressed with the overall cohesiveness and trajectory of what I see in Samsung Food. I think it’s a sign that Samsung – despite having the occasional misstep and strategic vagueness around their food vision – looks like they remain committed to becoming the leader of the future kitchen, something that they started way back in 2016 with the launch of the Family Hub line.

Podcast: Becoming a Kitchen Tech Reviewer With Wired’s Joe Ray

In this week’s episode of the Spoon Podcast, we catch up with Wired’s Joe Ray.

Here at The Spoon, we’re fans of Joe’s kitchen tech reviews, where he cuts through all marketing blather and hyped-up features and tells the reader exactly why he or she should (or shouldn’t) buy a product. 

In this episode, we take a look back at how Joe got started in food, why he picked up one day and went to France to become a writer, his tutelage under the famous restaurant reviewer François Simon, and his approach to kitchen technology journalism.

We also talk about the current state of kitchen tech, the smart kitchen, and where we see it all going.

You can listen to the podcast by clicking play below, on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.