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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Smart Kitchen Summit

The Future of Cannabis Edibles is Wellness, Not Recreation (Podcast)

“The [cannabis edibles] consumer is probably not who you think it is,” said Linda Gilbert, formerly Managing Editor, Consumer Insights cannabis data company BDS Analytics. “The average age of a cannabis consumer is 42. This is not an 18 year old living in his parent’s basement.”

As marijuana legalization expands, so does its consumer base. More and more users of all ages and backgrounds are looking to experiment with this trendy new ingredient — but they’re not necessarily coming to it in order to “get stoned.” Many turn to cannabis as a natural way to take the edge off of anxiety, manage their pain, or just relax. “They’re doing it for more health and wellness reasons than recreational purposes,” emphasized Gilbert.

But unless they’re a historic marijuana user, they don’t necessarily want to smoke something. Instead they’ll turn to edibles. “[There’s a] cultural shift of acceptance,” said Merril Gilbert, founder of cannabis dosage labeling company TraceTrust. And more and more companies — even Big Food companies — are starting to notice.

Scott Riefler, VP of Science for cannabinoid company Tarukino, pointed out that cannabis is rapidly becoming a food ingredient in its own right. “It’s something that can be added to the culinary experience,” he said. In fact, cannabis can be a functional ingredient in everything from wine to chocolates. And as it becomes more widely legalized, its applications (and user base) will spread.

In this conversation from Smart Kitchen Summit 2018, I talk with these three panelists about the burgeoning cannabis edibles market — and where we can expect it to grow from here.

You can listen to the podcast by clicking play below, download here or find it on Apple Podcasts.

Video: For Investors, the Food Space is “The Next Big Thing”

“As investors, we always look for the next big thing… and the food industry is the next big thing to get involved in.”

That’s how Brian Frank, founder of FTW Ventures, kicked off the food tech investment panel at the 2018 Smart Kitchen Summit. He was joined onstage by Carmen Palafox, partner at Make in L.A.; Tom Mastrobuoni, CFO of Tyson Ventures; and the Spoon’s Ashley Daigneault.

Indeed, it seems like the time is ripe for investment up and down the food supply chain. Like, for example, the shift towards meat alternatives; a growing consumer demand with which protein giant Tyson Foods is very familiar. But instead of simply staking out their territory, Tyson, which produces 35 million chickens per week, decided to capitalize on this trend and invest in its disruptors: from plant-based Beyond Meat to cell-based Memphis Meats.

“We look at technology from two angles; how applicable is this to our supply chain, or how disruptive is this to our supply chain going forward?” said Mastrobuoni. “We all diversify.”

Palafox agreed that timing is a key aspect of investment. “A lot has to do with cultural shifts and the way that people are thinking about food safety,” she added. For example, her firm, which focuses on hardware, recently invested in Pathspot, a device which scans restaurant employees’ hands to test for pathogens. “They’re trying to change culture from within food chains.”

Of course, not all food innovations work seamlessly (cough, meal kits). During the panel, Frank admitted that he had accidentally stolen a shopping bag from the Amazon Go store. “Amazon spends millions and millions of dollars to develop a system to track you in their store, yet they don’t track the bags,” he said. “And this is where I think that technology as a service for these things is still evolving.”

There are a lot of other really rich observations and smart takeaways in this panel, plus some smart insight into food system investment. Check out the video below to hear what this diverse group of investors is most excited (and worried) about in the food tech space, and how they think we’ll all be sourcing, cooking, and eating food in the future.

Defining Strategies For Investing In Food Tech

For more videos of panels, fireside chats, and startup pitches from the 2018 Smart Kitchen Summit head to our YouTube channel!

Video: Soggy Food Sucks Uses Thermodynamics to Keep your Fries Crisp During Delivery

“When we talk about the Smart Kitchen Summit (SKS), it’s not just about being smart or connected,” said Michael Wolf before he announced the winner of the SKS 2018 Startup Showcase. “It’s about finding an interesting product that hasn’t been there before that solves for a real consumer need. And this winner really showed me that.”

Indeed, Soggy Food Sucks, who took home the title of Overall Winner at the Startup Showcase, makes a product that seems almost deceptively simple. Their frozen patch sticks to the inside of a food containers and wicks condensation to keep takeaway eats crispy, crunchy, and decidedly non-soggy. No artificial intelligence, virtual reality, or robots in sight.

Despite its lack of bells and whistles, Soggy Food Sucks captured the judges’ attention because it solves a real, relatable problem in the food delivery space: how to keep food crisp during its journey from the restaurant to your home.

“We’ve all experienced the disappointment of food delivery, when our food arrives after being ravaged — ravaged I say — by the horror of condensation,” preached Birgen onstage. So he decided to use his engineering know-how (he used to be an actual rocket scientist) and solve the problem with some basic chemistry.

Watch the full video to see Birgen’s charismatic pitch for a product that we think has the power to massively improve the food delivery business. See ya never, soggy fries.

SKS 2018 Startup Showcase: Soggy Food Sucks

For more videos of panels, fireside chats, and startup pitches from the 2018 Smart Kitchen Summit head to our YouTube channel!

Video: How Epic Fails Helped Markov Make a Robot that Cooks

“Innovation” is a word that’s thrown around an awful lot in the technology world, and food tech is no exception. But creating actual innovation — that is, solving a problem in a new way — is really, really hard. And it usually requires a lot of failure.

Which is why Arvind de Menezes Pereira, CTO of automated systems company Markov, started off his solo talk at the 2018 Smart Kitchen Summit with videos of SpaceX’s test rockets exploding, one after another. “Most of us would see a failure like this which is so expensive and think: there’s no point doing this,” he said. But SpaceX kept chugging along and, eventually, they were able to land a rocket on a target in the middle of the ocean.

Though they weren’t dealing with space rockets, that sort of persistence came in handy when the Markov team began developing the LEVEL: a device that could cook fast like a microwave, precisely like a sous vide, and prepare multiple food items simultaneously. “We didn’t know [it] was possible in the beginning,” said Pereira. “But we decided to do it anyway.”

Cut to many destroyed egg whites later (“cheaper than rockets,” Pereira joked), and the Markov team had their SpaceX moment. Check out his full talk to hear how he identifies and tackles grand challenges in the smart kitchen (don’t worry, there’s a handy food-related acronym in case you forget).

Watch the full video below.

Innovating The Hard Way: How Tech Companies Can Solve Real Problems in Cooking

Look out for more videos of the panels, solo talks, and fireside chats from SKS 2018! We’ll be bringing them to you hot and fresh out the (smart) kitchen over the next few weeks.

Video: Can You Sell Things in the Smart Kitchen Without Being Annoying?

Most of us have heard the adage that the kitchen is the heart of the home. But it’s also a space that’s ripe for commerce, especially with all the new appliances, software, and services rolling out as the kitchen gets smarter.

In this video from the 2018 Smart Kitchen Summit, Richard Gunther of Digital Media Zone speaks with Iri Zohar of Freshub, Benton Richardson, of Amazon Dash, and Shawn Stover of GE Appliances about the future of in-kitchen commerce models: be that automated grocery replenishment, personalized suggestions, or shoppable recipes.

But how do you sell things to people in their kitchen in a way that, as Gunther put it, “isn’t annoying?”

Watch the full video below to find out.

Kitchen Counter Point of Sale: Analyzing In-Kitchen Commerce Models

Look out for more videos of the panels, solo talks, and fireside chats from SKS 2018! We’ll be bringing them to you hot and fresh out the (smart) kitchen over the next few weeks.

Kitchens Aren’t Going Away, But They Will Adapt To Better Fit A Changing Consumer

When you have a conference focused on the future of food and cooking, people inevitably ask you what the kitchen of the future will look like.

That usually means talking a lot about emerging cooking technologies, new appliances and futuristic kitchen designs — but what if the answer to the question about what happens to the most central room in the home is that, in a world with push-button food delivery, grocery store meal kits and the eventual rise of cooking robots, the kitchen as we know it might cease to exist?

It’s certainly a topic I’ve been thinking a lot about over the past few months, so I figured what better question to ask during the opening session of the Smart Kitchen Summit.

When I put the question to Hestan Smart Cooking‘s Jon Jenkins, he said that when framed in pure economic terms, doing away with the kitchen makes lots of sense.

“It’s hard to make any kind of economic case that it makes sense for you to be doing cooking at home if all you’re cooking for is to get food to fill your stomach up,” said Jenkins.

In other words, if a kitchen’s sole purpose is sustenance, there are lots better ways to spend your money than sinking a whole bunch of it into a space that’s almost always the most expensive room in the house.

That’s why, according to Jenkins, the act of cooking and creating food needs to be about more than just putting fuel in the tank.

“We better hope there’s something more that you get from cooking, that there’s some amount of pride in the thing you created,” said Jenkins. “If that’s the thing we manage to enable with these technologies, then I think all have a really bright future.”

According to Dana Cowin, host of the Speaking Broadly podcast and longtime editor of Food & Wine magazine, it’s this emotional connection to cooking that needs to be the focus for those industries with the most to lose.

Penny the robot brings water to thirsty panelists

“What that means is anyone who is invested in appliances, in cooking, in teaching, in gathering, needs to create even more of a movement of explaining what the value is, and really not actually selling the appliance,” said Cowin. “It’s really what is the emotional transaction that happens here because the physical transaction can be so easily replaced.”

Cowin also felt that the most likely evolution path for the kitchen is that it will morph over time to better fit how people use them.

“One of the things to keep in mind is all kitchens and all people are not created equal,” said Cowin. “Right now we have one kitchen model that people plug into. What we’re gonna see with kitchens of the future is lots more flexibility and a reinvention of what that kitchen model looks like.”

So how might the kitchen adapt to changing consumer behavior?

According to Cowin, kitchens in the future will have smaller appliances, have a bigger focus on recycling packaging from delivery, and may even have managed fridges stocked with food from a service provider.

“I can see a kitchen supplied easily by an outsider like a Farmer’s Fridge, except the home version,” said Cowin.

Ultimately, while both panelists felt that more technology in the kitchen is inevitable, the future of cooking and the kitchen itself will depend on how well the technology serves the consumer beyond simply automating tasks.

“Everything we use in the kitchen aside from our hands is technology,” said Cowin. “It’s investing the intellect in the way food is being made rather than pressing the button.”

You can listen to the full conversation with Dana Cowin and Jon Jenkins on the latest episode of the Smart Kitchen Show podcast by clicking play below or subscribing on Apple Podcasts.

Video: Food Blockchain — Just Hype, Or True Path To Food Transparency?

Blockchain is everywhere, from currency to copyright protection. Many also see the decentralized ledger as the key to food system transparency — that is, an incorruptible record of where food comes from, which can help increase food safety and promote customer knowledge. Others are skeptical, but blockchain is nonetheless a hot topic on the (dinner) table.

Two companies betting on blockchain as the future of food transparency are Walmart and Ripe.io. The former recently announced they would be using blockchain to keep track of spinach and lettuce sold in their stores, and the latter has been working for two years to create “The Blockchain for Food” (and racking up funding, too).

Watch as Stacey Higginbotham of Stacey on IoT talks to Walmart’s Tejas Bhatt and Ripe.io’s Raja Ramachandran about the impact of blockchain on the food ecosystem.

Food Blockchain: Hype Or True Path To Food Transparency

Look out for more videos of the panels, solo talks, and fireside chats from SKS 2018! We’ll be bringing them to you hot and fresh out the (smart) kitchen over the next few weeks.

Video: Why We Should Care About Food Data

Why do we need a data structure for food?

It’s something that the consumer probably doesn’t know about it at all. In fact, if a company is doing their job right, they shouldn’t be aware of it at all. But this underlying layer of terms, analytics, and data plays a critical role in how we all find, cook, and consume food.

In this video from the 2018 Smart Kitchen Summit, Stacey Higgenbotham of Stacey on IoT moderates a deep-dive discussion into the “Internet of Food” with Matthew Lange of IC-Foods, Victor Penev of Edamam, and Kevin Brown of Innit. Watch below as the speakers get nerdy and tackle the importance of data standards to help us eat better food — and maybe live longer, too.

Food Data: Standards, Ontologies & Analytics

Look out for more videos of the panels, solo talks, and fireside chats from SKS 2018! We’ll be bringing them to you hot and fresh out the (smart) kitchen over the next few weeks.

Video: Plant-Based, Cellular, and Sustainable — What is the Future of Meat?

Cell-based meat (also known as “clean” and “lab-grown” meat) is set to hit the market by the end of 2018, even though the FDA and USDA are still figuring out how to regulate it. At the same time, plant-based meat companies are seeing unprecedented levels of consumer interest and investment, even from Big Meat companies.

Watch as our panel from the 2018 Smart Kitchen Summit, featuring Tom Mastrobuoni of Tyson Ventures, Christie Lagally of Seattle Food Tech, and Thomas Bowman of JUST, Inc., explores the challenges and opportunities of the future of meat: plant-based, cell-based, and otherwise.

Plant-Based, Cellular & Sustainable: Exploring The Future of Meat

Look out for more videos of the panels, solo talks, and fireside chats from SKS 2018! We’ll be bringing them to you hot and fresh out the (smart) kitchen over the next few weeks.

Video: Rethinking Business Models in the Era of FoodTech

There was a time when Whirlpool was an appliance company, pure and simple. Nestlé focused exclusively on packaged goods. ChefSteps started as an online content community. But in the past few years, Whirlpool bought recipe content platform Yummly, Nestlé has added digital services, and Chefsteps has diversified into hardware and prepared food.

In the technology age, are the traditional roles of food companies breaking down?

Michael Wolf asked this question to Chris Young of ChefSteps, Stephanie Naegeli of Nestlé and Brett Dibkey of Whirlpool on the Smart Kitchen Summit stage. Watch the video below to see the panelists discuss how food companies are taking new, sometimes risky approaches in order to stay viable in the shifting smart kitchen ecosystem for years to come.

Rethinking Business Models In The Era of FoodTech

Look out for more videos of the panels, solo talks, and fireside chats from SKS 2018! We’ll be bringing them to you hot and fresh out the (smart) kitchen over the next few weeks.

Video: Richard Blais Wants to Make a Drone Delivery Service for Donuts

During his fireside chat at the 2018 Smart Kitchen Summit, Richard Blais compared the state of food technology to something it has probably never been compared to ever before. “There’s this Biggie/Tupac thing happening in food always,” he said, using the most famous rap rivalry of all time to reflect the current tension in restaurants: old world vs. new, low-tech vs. high-tech, woodfire grills vs. robots.

Despite his culinary pedigree, Blais embraces technology in the kitchen — at least, when it can make things easier for him. At the same time, he doesn’t want robots to take over everything in the kitchen. Repetitive tasks (hello, french fry preparation), sure. Donuts delivered via drone? You betcha. (That’s a real business idea, by the way — and he’s going to call it the Dronut.)

Inviting technology into the kitchen is a delicate balancing act, though. In the end, Blais is open to most things — as long as food tastes awesome. “That’s the ultimate judge,” he said. “Is that thing delicious?”

Watch the full video of Richard Blais’ fireside chat (and find out his dairy-based DJ name) below.

Richard Blais at Smart Kitchen Summit

Look out for more videos of the panels, solo talks, and fireside chats from SKS 2018! We’ll be bringing them to you hot and fresh out the (smart) kitchen over the next few weeks.

Video: To Survive, the Future Kitchen Must be Personalized, Flexible, and Emotional

The first panel of the 2018 Smart Kitchen Summit (SKS) North America started out not with a bang, but with a beep. Just after Jon Jenkins, Director of Engineering at Hestan Smart Cooking, Dana Cowin, former Editor in Chief of Food & Wine, and Michael Wolf got settled, self-driving robot Penny glided out onto the stage to bring them some water.

This little interruption was actually the perfect way to introduce their panel: The Disrupted Meal Journey. As automation edges its way further and further into our lives and our food, how will that transform the kitchen? Will people still cook in the future, or will they opt purely for food delivery — or just have a robot cook their meal for them?

Don’t worry. The panelists were confident that the kitchen wasn’t going to fully disappear: as long as it could use technology not only to make cooking easier, but also more exciting and emotional.

“If what we’re selling is purely sustenance, you don’t need a kitchen,” Jenkins stated. “We’ve got to hope we’re getting something more out of cooking.” Cowin agreed, adding that home meal preparation should leverage technology to become more “personalized, exciting, and diverse.”

Watch the video below to see the full panel, and hear Cowin and Jenkins’ predictions on how kitchens will have to adjust to survive in the age of ever-growing automation and delivery.

The Disrupted Meal Journey

Look out for more videos of the panels, solo talks, and fireside chats from SKS 2018! We’ll be bringing them to you hot and fresh out the (smart) kitchen over the next few weeks.