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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Smart Kitchen Summit

Do You Have The Next Big Idea in Cooking Technology?

Here at The Spoon, we think a lot about cooking. Sure, a big part of why is because we love to eat, but it’s also because we’re obsessed with cooking technology.

And to be honest, there’s been a shortage of exciting new technology to make food and drink over the past couple of years. While we’ve seen some exciting advances like new smart ovens, crazy food robots, and even a drink replicator, the reality is there’s a lot more room for innovation.

Which is why we’ve asked those building new things in the world of cooking technology to show us what you’ve got. Whether it’s a new food-making robot, a new kitchen system or something we’ve yet to even conceive of, we want to hear about it!

The best ideas will become finalists for the core cooking category at Smart Kitchen Summit INVENT on October 16th and showcase their innovation. Finalists will also be invited to a dinner at CES 2023, where The Spoon is partnering with the Consumer Technology Association to bring food tech to Vegas.

So if you are building the next big idea in kitchen tech, what are you waiting for? Apply today!

Announcing The Spoon Fall Event Series

We are very excited to be announcing The Spoon’s slate of events for 2022 (and January 2023).

The Spoon’s event series in 2022 includes the new innovator and startup-focused SKS Invent, our first in-person event exclusively for leaders & changemakers called The Spoon Food Tech Leader’s Forum, and finally, the CES’s Food Tech Conference & Exhibition powered by the Spoon in January 2023.

With this new series, we are focused on discovering and celebrating innovation across the series, which is interconnected from beginning to end.

Read below to find out about each and how the series interconnects.

Smart Kitchen Summit Invent

Over the past decade, there has been great innovation in food and cooking. We saw the arrival of precision heating and modernist cuisine cooking techniques. Smart connectivity and audio assistants enabled us to interact with our appliances in new ways. Robotics and AI were layered onto cooking. New combination cooking appliances that use steam or precision RF heating made their way into the kitchen.

But there is so much more that can be done and we want to help accelerate progress towards this future. In particular, we think there are five areas of innovation in which we’d love to see more innovation: Core Culinary, Sustainability, Delivery & Commerce, and Places & Spaces.

We’ll be writing more about SKS Invent and our call to action for the future of food and cooking innovators in the coming days, but you can learn more about each and apply to showcase your innovation at SKS Invent here. You can also inquire about sponsorship and purchase early bird tickets.

The Spoon’s Food Tech Leader’s Forum

One of the things that excite me most about events is the energy and creativity that comes from bringing together leaders from diverse but related industry backgrounds together. New ideas and collaborations always follow these exciting events that spark conversation, learning, and laughter when new perspectives and approaches collide.

The Food Tech Leader’s Forum will feature an exclusive event bringing together visionaries, inventors, entrepreneurs, and executives to map the future of food tech. It will include discussions about some of the industry’s most pressing topics, strategy whiteboard workshops, curated networking opportunities, and product demos and tastings designed to show you what the future of food will look like.

The event will also feature the finalists from the SKS Invent to showcase their vision and demo their products live and in-person.

If you would like to learn more about how to apply for a ticket, become an FTLF patron or more, you can do so here.

Food Tech at CES 2023

Food tech is heading back to the big stage at CES 2023!

Last January The Spoon powered the first-ever dedicated food tech conference and exhibition at the world’s biggest tech conference, and in 2023 we’ll be teaming up with the Consumer Technology Association to bring food tech back in a big way.

We’ll be programming an all-new conference full of exciting topics and working hand in hand with the CTA to find the most interesting companies to showcase what they’re building on the show floor. We are also planning a special Spoon evening event to highlight the winners of the SKS Invent innovation awards.

If you would like to sponsor The Food Tech conference at CES or exhibit in the designated Food Tech Exhibition at CES, you can head to this page and fill out the contact form and we will be in touch!

As you can see, all of these events are interconnect and there is a throughline that brings together new innovators, groundbreaking concepts and more as we journey from online to Seattle to Vegas in January 2023.

I look forward to seeing you on this year’s food tech journey!

SKS 2021: Meet Ottonomy, Maker of Autonomous Food Delivery Robots

Time to meet Ottonomy, one of the ten startups pitching tomorrow at Smart Kitchen Summit!

Ottonomy is a maker of autonomous delivery robots. Unlike most other sidewalk delivery bots, Ottonomy can navigate through both outdoors and indoor environments. The company, led by longtime robotics entrepreneur Ritukar Vijay, was founded last year and has already racked up mobile ordering partners like Crave.

So why did Vijay, who has worked on autonomous mobility solutions for car makers like BMW, decide to focus on a delivery bot?

“One thing which struck me is that autonomous cars will still take some time to hit the mainstream,” said Vijay. “So what is the best way to actually utilize that know-how to solve a problem of today? That’s how we came down to delivery. Because that’s something which is a real use case that autonomous driving can solve.”

While competition is heating up in this space, Vijay believes his product is hitting the market at just the right time.

“The labor shortage is hitting the restaurants and wages have increased massively,” said Vijay. “So it becomes very, very difficult for large businesses to give a solution the customer expect and have a sustainable future. At the same time, from the customer side, they want a cleaner, faster and cheaper way of getting those kinds of services. So it’s a win-win from both customer and the restaurant side.”

You can watch Carlos Rodela’s full interview with Ritukar Vijay below. If you’d like to connect with Vijay at the Smart Kitchen Summit, get your ticket today!

The Spoon Interviews - Ottonomy

SKS 2021: Meet Culineer, an App That Connects Home Cooks With Local Food Producers

Time to meet our next startup for the Smart Kitchen Summit Startup Showcase: Culineer. Culineer is an app that helps home cooks find recipes and connects them to local farmers and food producers.

When asked why she created Culineer, company cofounder Jodi Frank said it started with her own challenges as a home cook.

“I wanted to solve my own frustrations with cooking,” said Frank. “Most home cooks share my frustration that it takes so much time and energy to decide what to make, find your recipe, get ingredients. By the time you get home, you don’t have any time to cook. So I wanted to make all that a lot more simple.”

As she started to focus on solving her own cooking struggles, it didn’t talk for the former industrial safety executive long to realize that so much of what you cook at home is rooted in your local community. “I really started to think about my own needs,” said Frank. “Food like super persona, and it’s inherently connected and communal.”

And because no one is more integrally connected to the local food community than farmers, Frank knew it was critical for Culineer to make that connection.

“Culineer helps bridge that gap between the farmers and what they are producing with the home cook.”

You can watch our conversation Frank in the video below. If you want to connect with Frank in person and see her pitch at the Smart Kitchen Summit, get your ticket today!

The Spoon Interviews - Culineer

SKS 2021: Meet Blix, A No-Cleanup Smart Food Maker

We’re just five days away from SKS 2021, which means it’s time to preview another Startup Showcase finalist.

Today’s featured startup is Blix, a company which makes a no-prep, no-cleanup smart food maker. The Blix food maker uses a patent-protected smart lid which incorporates an integrated blade and RFID tag to enable the user to make a variety of instant meals. The user just adds liquid into the mixing cup, pours in pre-prepared ingredients from a Blix meal pouch and the Blix machine prepares the food in minutes.

Watch The Spoon’s Carlos Rodela discuss the Blix story with company founder Ariel Sterngold. If you’d like to connect with Ariel at Smart Kitchen Summit, get your ticket today!

The Spoon Interviews - Blix

SKS 2021: Meet ChocoMake, a Smart Chocolate Machine for the Home Kitchen

If there’s one thing the world can use more of, it’s chocolate tech, and we have it for you with our latest Smart Kitchen Summit Startup Showcase finalist interview: ChocoMake.

In this interview, Carlos Rodela talks with ChocoMake founder and CEO Liora Omer. ChocoMake is a countertop home chocolate making appliance that enables the amateur chocolatier to control taste & texture, shape and the composition of their chocolate creations.

You can watch the video below and learn more about ChocoMake at their website. If you would like to connect with Liora Omer at the Smart Kitchen Summit, get your ticket today!

The Spoon Interviews - ChocoMake

Meet the Innovators Selected as Finalists for the 2021 SKS Startup Showcase

Every year, we put out a call for innovators who are using tech to disrupt and ultimately improve the way we eat, prep and interact with food. We receive Startup Showcase applications from all corners of the global food system and get to learn about the ideas that will spark change and help shape the future of food and the kitchen. In the end, our editorial team selects 10 or so finalists who represent the most unique and transformative ideas in food tech.

In its 8th year, the SKS Startup Showcase has served as a launching pad for some of today’s most interesting food tech startups. With companies as diverse as smart stove and food delivery startup Tovala, food delivery packaging startup SavrPak, and upcoming Shark Tank contestant IncrEDIBLE Eats, alumni of the Showcase are making an impact across the food innovation landscape.

Each finalist will get a chance to pitch on stage at the 2021 Smart Kitchen Summit, happening virtually in just a few weeks on November 9th and 10th.

If you want to see the finalists pitch and have a chance to network with some of the top leaders and newest startups in food and kitchen tech, grab your ticket to SKS here.

Let’s meet the 2021 Startup Showcase Finalists.

  • AIGecko is powering a touchless checkout kiosk with their AI-powered food recognition API. Customers can select food and place their selection at the kiosk and using artificial intelligence that drives both facial and food recognition at the kiosk. Guests can also get the nutritional information of their dish and get connected to a nutrition expert through the connected app.
  • Blix is a smart food maker that promises to eliminate both the preparation and the cleanup of cooking a meal from scratch. Blix includes a smart lid with an integrated blade and RFID tag to ensure consistent results each time a dish is made.
  • Castiron is a central hub and platform for independent kitchen-based chefs to sell their creations direct to customers. It also includes resources and creator community to support and grow their business. Castiron says their customers include bakers, juicers, jammers and similar culinary artisans to market and sell their goods.
  • Chocomake is a smart home chocolate maker and ingredient kit developed by a female-led startup launching in 2022. The appliance allows users to create custom varieties of chocolate in different shapes, composition and texture. Chocomake can help with allergies and dietary restrictions and can produce vegan, non-GMO and sugar-free chocolate with easy prep and cleanup.
  • Clew is a countertop appliance that grinds, heats and dries home food waste in two hours and transforms it into shelf-stable material that can be refined into compost or place into a recycling stream for further processing. After processing through the Clew appliance, the amount of waste material is reduced by mass by over 80%. Clew is working to produce an early prototype.
  • Mezli is building containerized robot restaurants called “auto-kitchens.” The “restaurant-in-a-box” business leverages automation and shipping containers to power a fully autonomous kitchen able to cook, plate and pack each dish. Mezli founder and CEO told The Spoon that their auto-kitchens can go 48 hours or make 300 meals (whichever comes first) before requiring servicing by a non-robotic worker.
  • Natufia is an integrated and automated indoor smart hydroponic kitchen garden created for at-home food growing. The smart kitchen garden can grow up to 32 simultaneously with automatic watering and lighting and gives users of 40 seedpods. Natufia customers can grow everything from leafy and microgreens to vegetables and flowers.
  • Ottonomy creates autonomous robots that enable contactless deliveries of food and retail products. Ottonomy robots require zero human supervision for navigation and can operate in both indoor and outdoor environments. The company’s proprietary software claims to allow for fully autonomous operation in crowded and unpredictable environments including in airports, malls and office buildings.
  • Culineer is a platform where farms can educate and communicate with consumers looking for locally produced foods. While consumers often don’t know how to cook everything they may purchase direct from farms, farmers don’t have resources and time to provide food level education. Culineer fills that gap with recipes, harvest updates, education and peer support; this gives farms increased customer satisfaction and retention.
  • WSVC is an appliance company that has invented a new type of multi-purpose microwave oven that features traditional microwave cooking as well as Waterless Sous Vide Cooking (WSVC). WSVC cooks food with low consistent heat similar to sous vide but without the water bath and vacuum seal. WSVC will debut for the first time at the 2021 Smart Kitchen Summit.

Deadline To Pitch Your Food Tech Innovation At Smart Kitchen Summit Is Near

Each year since 2015, the leaders in food, appliances, retail, delivery, and kitchen come together to discuss and demonstrate the tech innovation that’s transforming the way we buy, cook and eat food. The 2021 Smart Kitchen Summit (SKS) will remain virtual this year on November 9th + 10th but will still include an audience favorite: the Startup Showcase.

The Startup Showcase is a once-a-year competition that gives future food and food tech startups with the most interesting, cutting edge solutions a chance to pitch our executive-level audience of investors, C-Suite leaders, chef and culinary experts, food and tech journalists, retail and tech giants + more.

The applications only require basic information as well as a place to talk about your product and a place to talk about why you’d be a good fit for the SKS Startup Showcase.

The deadline for applications is 11:59 pm PST on Thursday, September 30.

The Spoon editorial team will review each application and any supporting materials that were linked in the submission; Startup Showcase finalists are selected from this group and give the chance to pitch and demo their solutions live at SKS 2021 on November 9th and 10th.

Take a look at past Startup Showcase coverage on The Spoon and videos from prior events.

For virtual tickets to the 2021 Smart Kitchen Summit, visit the registration page and sign up. {Hint: if you can afford it, the VIP level will not only give you access to the entire SKS 2021 digital archive, but you get to choose from some lovely free merch!}

We hope to see you in November!

SKS 2020: Watch the SKS Startup Showcase Finalist Pitches

At last week’s Smart Kitchen Summit, ten finalists made their case on the virtual stage why they should be chosen as winner of the Startup Showcase competition.

The Startup Showcase, which started back in 2015 and is one of the longest running dedicated food tech startup pitch contests in the world, had its most diverse and interesting mix of companies yet, with products ranging from cultured seafood to a food robots to a taste-enhancing cutlery.

While SKS attendees got to see the finalists from the main stage last week, we figured Spoon readers might also like to see the pitches.

Here’s how the Showcase worked: The pitch sessions were one of two portions of the showcase. After the founders pitched from the virtual stage on the first day, the next day they headed to their virtual breakout rooms where they showed off their products and answered questions from the judges.

The judges for this year’s Startup Showcase included Wired’s Joe Ray, Good Housekeeping’s Nicole Papantoniou, test kitchen expert Jane Freiman, Modernist Cuisine author/ChefSteps founder Chris Young and rlTLK/Pieshell founder Cheryl Durkee. The judges went into virtual “exhibit” areas where the founders could show off their wares and answer questions.

Since contactless pick up pod startup Minnow was declared the winner, we thought we’d also include a clip from the Minnow booth explaining how the product works.

From Food Robots to Fermentation, Innovation and Inspiration Was Everywhere at Smart Kitchen Summit 2020

The sixth annual Smart Kitchen Summit concluded last week. And while the pandemic pushed the show online, it was still as exciting and informative as ever.

There was far too much great stuff to fit into one recap post, so instead, the The Spoon team is each offering up their own highlights and trends spotted during the show.

We’ll be posting SKS video highlights over the coming week, and Spoon Plus members will have access to the full session video archive (become a member today!).

In the meantime, here are some of the takeaways from SKS 2020:

MICHAEL WOLF – SPOON FOUNDER

COVID-Catalyzed Innovation
While it wasn’t surprising to hear at SKS 2020 that every part of the food world was significantly impacted by COVID-19, it did surprise me just how much the pandemic catalyzed innovation and action in those building our food future. Whether it’s the acceleration of investment in food platforms or the reinvention of the grocery or the rapid digital transformation of the restaurant business, the ingenuity and hustle built into all parts of the food system was on display everywhere at our annual food tech conference.

Future Food Innovation Is Strong
In 2020, we’ve seen an explosion in new cell-based meat companies, new attention given to the power of fermentation as a highly-scalable future food platform, and the rapid maturation of tools like CRISPR to power future food innovation. All of this was on show at SKS 2020 as leaders from these spaces talked about the challenges of scaling their businesses as the bring them out of the labs and into the marketplace.

The Future is Exciting, But There are Different Views on How to Get There
It became clear on day two at SKS that two of the most visible CEOs in the food tech space has sharply different views on the viability of cell-based meat at an alternative to traditionally produced animal meat. Pat Brown of Impossible made it clear that he felt cultured meat would never be scalable enough, while Josh Tetrick of Eat Just felt it would be a big part of food’s future, but only after 15 years and lots of work. Differing viewpoints on how to build the future are expected in the formative early days of a market, but it’s hard not to take notice of such a big difference on what many see as the future of meat.

Consumer Kitchen Innovation Requires Putting The Consumer First
Whether it was kitchen tech reviewers like Joe Ray or Lisa McManus, authors like Eve Turow-Paul or longtime industry experts like Jane Freiman, it was clear that while consumer food behavior is changing more quickly than ever, changes in home kitchens is more evolution than overnight revolution. New approaches to cooking, shopping and food storage through technology will take if they put the consumer first and are thoughtfully designed to reduce pain-points in our busy lives.

CHRIS ALBRECHT – SPOON EDITOR IN CHIEF

Daisy chaining different robots
The days of food robots existing in silos is numbered. Right now cooking robots, serving robots, delivery robots and cleaning robots all do their own thing with no interaction, but it won’t be long before they all start working together. We talked about this during my panel with Picnic, Bear Robotics and Dishcraft, and the concept was illustrated by Piestro’s partnership with Kiwibot. There are still sticky issues like standards to be worked out, but they will be, especially if there’s money to be made. And soon enough a robotic cook will hand off a meal to a server bot that brings a meal to your table and shuttles empty plates back to the robot dishwasher.

We need a new word for “vending machines”
With companies like Fresh Bowl, Yo-Kai and Chowbotics basically building restaurants in a box, it might be time to ditch the moniker “vending machine.” Founders from both Fresh Bowl and Byte Technologies remarked that they avoid using the term in presentations because it is an immediate turnoff for potential customers. Vending machines are no longer just room temperature racks of pre-packaged snacks, and a new name is needed to reflect that.

Induction is Becoming More Mainstream (in the U.S.)
Did you read that Atlantic piece on why you should “Kill Your Gas Stove?” While cooking with gas may offer precision, evidently it can also offer up a bunch of toxic fumes. Thankfully, electricity-based induction heating is here to save the day. While Europeans have been using induction for a long time, it hasn’t really caught on in the U.S. in a meaningful way. But that seems to be about to change. GE showed off its high-tech induction cooktop at SKS, and it looked pretty amazing. But you’re also seeing induction pop up in smaller form factors like SKS Startup Showcase participant, BonBowl. We could be at a tipping point for induction (and I’m all for it).

JENN MARSTON – SPOON EDITOR

“Wellness” foods will become more accessible.
When Journey Foods’ Riana Lynn said there is an opportunity for food and healthcare to work more in unison, fellow panelist Peter Bodenheimer (Food-X) replied that one way to do that is to make the so-called “wellness” market more accessible. Right now, these foods and technology platforms are “high cost and high concept,” meaning they’re conceptually and financially out of reach for many consumers. Panelists didn’t name specific companies, but two that immediately spring to mind are the delicious-but-expensive frozen meal service Daily Harvest and Viome’s microbiome-based dietary platform. Both could help fight chronic conditions like obesity and diabetes, but we need more investment in such endeavors to help bring their costs down. Even more important, we’ll need more data on what is and isn’t working when it comes to health-centric food tech solutions. 

Visualizing cleanliness data is “table stakes” in COVID-era restaurants.
More customers want transparency into the food they order from restaurants, and nowadays, a lot of that transparency is around safety and cleanliness. On a restaurant tech panel, Pathspot founder Christine Schindler said her company has seen a huge uptick in demand for visual cues around cleanliness. Restaurants not only want the Pathspot device, which scans employees’ hands to ensure they’re properly washed, they also want to be able to show customers proof of this. Restaurants are now displaying buttons and stickers that essentially visualize the data a device like Pathspot is collecting (e.g., “2,000 verified hand washes today!”). And as more restaurants opt for the ghost kitchen model, where customers never even see the physical location, it will become even more important for businesses to document their health data, physically and digitally. Visual cues for this data will be an important part of restaurant tech going forward.

I might be able to bake with plant-based eggs in a few years.
Being a lifelong baker, I took a couple minutes at the end of my talk with Eat Just’s Josh Tetrick to ask when his company will make a plant-based egg that can be used in baking. The egg is “far and away the most versatile food ingredient,” with 22 different functionalities, he said. A plant-based egg you can bake with would mean one with binding and aeration functionalities, among others. Tetrick said the company is “about two years away” from providing the aeration functionality. To provide all 22 functionalities, he said they are “somewhere north of five years.” So find me at some point between 2022 and 2025 serving up the annual Marston Family holiday cake made from plant-based eggs.

A big thank you to everyone who participated in this year’s SKS! Hopefully next year we’ll all be able to get together in person again, but whatever form it’s in, the Smart Kitchen Summit will remain the best place to discover the future of food.

Smart Kitchen Summit 2020 Sessions, Day One

This post includes all the sessions from Smart Kitchen Summit Day one.

Included below are videos from the following sessions:

  • Embracing Innovation in Trying Times – Riana Lynn, Peter Bodenheimer, Ali Bouzari
  • The Changing Consumer Kitchen in the Era of COVID – Lisa McManus, Eve Turow-Paul, Susan Schwallie
  • Data Driven Personalization of Food and Cooking – Victor Penev, Nick Holzherr, Stacey Higginbotham
  • Future Fresh: Rethinking the Vending Machine – Megan Mokri, Chloe Vichot, Chris Albrecht
  • Building a Cell-Based Meat Startup – Benamina Bollag, Justin Kolbeck, Brian Frank
  • Future Kitchen Demo: The Millo Smart Table
  • The Smart Kitchen Landscape 2021 – David Rabie, Ben Harris, Kevin Yu
  • Table Talk: Food Robotics – Sean Hsu, Glenn Mathijssen, Chris Albrecht
  • Table Talk: Food Tech Investment Landscape – Brian Frank, Brita Rosenheim, Surj Patel
  • Product Demo: Meet the PizzaBot 5000
  • Workshop: Hacking Your Way to the Next Great Kitchen Product

If you purchased a ticket to SKS and have not received your Spoon Plus account activation, drop us a line.

If you didn’t attend SKS and would like to see these sessions, you can subscribe to Spoon Plus here.

SKS 2020 Day Three: Food Robots, Ghost Kitchens & a Tour of the Modernist Cuisine Kitchen

Yesterday at SKS was jam-packed with great insights and conversation.

Novameat printed meat for us, we learned Pat Brown believes cell-based meat will never be a thing, and Eat Just CEO Josh Tetrick outlined a four-phase plan to bring — you guessed it — cell-based meat to market. We also heard from Wired’s Joe Ray and ATK’s Lisa McManus on the proper way to use tech in the kitchen and headed into the labs, homes and headquarters of our Startup Showcase finalists to see what they’re building.

And we’re not done! Here’s what we have lined up for our final day of SKS 2020 Virtual:

Building Resiliency in Restaurants with Tech: We catch up with the leaders of Sweetgreen, Galley Solutions and Leanpath to hear how restaurants are using tech to build more resilient businesses during the pandemic.

The Online Grocery Explosion: Wall Street Journal’s Wilson Rothman talks to Shipt CEO Kelly Caruso about the changing nature of online grocery in 2020 and where it’s going in the future.

I, Restaurant: Chris Albrecht will sit down with the CEOs of Picnic, DishCraft and Bear Robotics to see how the adoption of robotics and automation is changing restaurants in the front and back of house.

The DoorDash Playbook: Brita Rosenheim will talk with DoorDash’s Tom Pickett about lessons learned and new opportunities in the food delivery market.

Ghost Kitchens Everywhere: Jenn Marston will talk with ghost kitchen and virtual restaurant experts about strategies for navigatng this red-hot market.

The OG in Molecular Gastronomy: We just added a early-day debut of my conversation with the guy who kicked off the molecular gastronomy revolution, Harold McGee, about his new book on smells and the state of cooking innovation. (Hint: he’s more excited about some other things going on in food innovation happening outside of the kitchen.)

Let’s Head Into the Modernist Kitchen: Speaking of molecular gastronomy, we’re getting a guided tour of the Modernist Cuisine by head chef Francisco Migoya.

Plus a whole lot more. (See schedule here.)

If you’d like to attend day three, you’re in luck! We’re offering a discounted day three ticket that gets you full access. See all the sessions, network with the community and more for just $99.