Close Ad

The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Smart Kitchen Summit

One Year Later: We Check in with Verdical, Winner of the SKS2017 Startup Showcase

Last year indoor grow system Verdical beat our 14 other food innovation companies and took home the trophy at the 2017 Smart Kitchen Summit (SKS) Startup Showcase. CEO Andrew Deitz pitched onstage about how Verdical’s indoor platform for hydroponic gardening would allow restaurants, hotels, cafeterias, and more to grow greens and herbs in their own kitchen, making fresh produce more accessible year-round while reducing food travel and waste.

When we left them last year, Verdical had just won a $10,000 cash prize and was gearing up to “revolutionize kitchens across the nation.” This week I checked in with Deitz to see where the startup is, one year on.

A Verdical grow system inside Jardiniere.

Customers
Verdical now has four customers, all in the Bay Area: Michelin-starred restaurant Jardiniere, 25-store pizza chain Pizza My Heart, the Marin Country Day School, and Berkeley dining spot Saha. All in all, there are 17 Verdical units currently in the field (so to speak).

Though he wouldn’t give details, Deitz also said that Verdical would soon be expanding outside the Bay Area with national — and even global — customers.

Like most other indoor grow systems on the market, Verdical currently offers just herbs and microgreens. This certainly limits what they can provide, but they’re experimenting within the boundaries. For example, at Jardiniere Verdical isn’t just growing garden-variety (ha) basil. Instead, they developed seed pods for things like gem marigold, wasabi mustard, and blue Ethiopian mustard. “We’re providing unique, highly-differentiated stuff that they couldn’t get other places, but can grow right here,” said Deitz.

Starting at $200 per month, customers get the Verdical hardware unit, all the plants they can grow, and access to the Verdical App that controls the growing platform, manages inventory, and provides education about new ingredients. According to Deitz, the price is cost neutral to the current herb and microgreen spend of their customers. Since Verdical works with everyone from a school to a Michelin-starred restaurant, I would imagine their monthly spend on microgreens and herbs varies pretty wildly, but Deitz said it’s actually surprisingly consistent.

Funding
This year Tabard VC, a food and agtech venture capital firm, invested an undisclosed amount in Verdical. Several angel investors have also funded the startup, though Deitz wouldn’t disclose details.

Partners
Verdical has teamed up with TE Connectivity, using the tech company’s sensors to monitor humidity, moisture, external temperature, water level, and water quality in their grow units. The two connected at the SKS last year and have been building a partnership together ever since. Verdical started using TE sensors in their early prototypes six months ago. “We helped them figure out how to better partner with startups,” said Deitz. “And they’re helping us figure out how to connect from the field all the way into somebody’s stomach.”

Verdical CEO Andrew Dietz with the TE Connectivity team at SKS 2018.

Competition

Since last year’s Smart Kitchen Summit, quite a few companies have made strides to bring indoor grow systems to restaurants. Farmery also installs indoor hydroponic grow units in restaurants. Farmshelf recently put one of their hydroponic mini-farms in a New York Oath Pizza location. On a slightly larger scale, but Freight Farms installs and manages indoor farms in shipping containers for use in corporate cafeterias and more. And that’s not even taking into account companies working on residential or large-scale indoor farms.

While he wasn’t sure about the growing mechanics of other indoor farming systems, Deitz was confident that Verdical would distinguish itself from the pack with its agtech. “We’re innovative because we’re growing with a soil-based medium,” he explained. By harnessing the water purifying and nutrient delivery powers of soil, he claims they can grow produce more efficiently. He also told me that using soil is a safer bet than going with hydro or aquaponics: that way, even if there’s a power outage, the plants can still get what they need to survive.

Deitz, however, doesn’t think that on-site indoor farming is zero-sum game. “The market is so big, it’ll take us a while to bump into each other,” he said, referring to Verdical’s competitors.

What’s next?
According to Deitz, Verdical will soon be announcing new customers and expanded partnerships (we’ll keep you updated). But as they grow, the company will continue to focus on its original goal: connecting people to their food source. “That’s where you can see a shift in consciousness,” he said. Until then, if you’re in the Bay Area, drop in on one of Verdical’s restaurant customers and taste fresh-picked some exotic microgreens.

Scenes from SKS2018: Runner Robots, 3D Printing, Celebrity Chefs, and More

It’s been one week since the fourth annual Smart Kitchen Summit (SKS) in North America, and we’re still processing all the incredible discussions we heard, futuristic foods we tasted, and inspiring people we met. This year, we had over 50 panels, solo talks, and fireside chats; 13 talented young companies pitching at our Startup Showcase; and one very photogenic food-running robot.

Here’s a quick look back at some of the highlights from the two-day event. Look out for panel videos coming soon!

Thanks to all who helped make SKS such a huge success! Next up, we’re headed to Vegas: we’ll be putting on the first (and only) foodtech event at CES 2019 — drop us a line if you want to get involved!

SKS 2018: A Growing Community Accomplishing Big Things

Every year after Smart Kitchen Summit, I do a couple things:

  1. Catch up on sleep.
  2. Process and distill all the insights, conversations and connections made during the past few days.

And this year, with over 600 attendees, 80 speakers and 30 sponsors at our flagship food tech event, there were a whole lot of interesting ideas to digest.

So now that I’ve caught up on sleep, I wanted to share some of the lessons I learned during these action-packed two days.  While I will no doubt continue to connect the dots from the lessons learned last week — and gain additional insights as I watch the videos of the sessions I missed (stay tuned for those!) — here are some early observations about the trends on display at SKS 2018:

Products are shipping

Onlookers check out the second generation June oven

At the first SKS in 2015, many of the early conversations were about next-gen cooking devices that had yet to ship. Compare that to today where companies like June are on their second generation product, and big appliance brands have deep integrations with software platforms from the likes of Innit and SideChef, and we are seeing a market that is less about theory and more about what happens when you put these products in the hands of actual consumers.

Innovation across the food system is interconnected

While some conversations about the future of the kitchen may start with looking at connected appliances, SKS showed us the future of food and cooking spans new delivery formats, AI & robotics, food retail, home design and much more.

We heard from startups making AI platforms to create highly personalized new flavors for CPG companies. Executives from restaurants, big food, appliance, and software companies talked about how their companies are taking part in a rapidly changing meal journey. We heard from home designers working with technology providers to create new kitchens that incorporate intelligence within the fabric of the home.

The big takeaway here is that all of these stops along the journey to the plate are not isolated, but part of a bigger interdependent whole.

Business models are crystalizing

The Wall Street Journal’s Wilson Rothman talks to Malachy Moynihan

One of the biggest challenges in new markets is figuring out how companies will make money. Because of this, at this year’s SKS we dug deep into how business models are changing with a bunch of amazing talks and conversations from those forging a new path. We heard from the President of BSH Appliances about transitioning one of the world’s largest appliance makers to a services-oriented company, from ChefSteps on the path to becoming a food delivery company, and about lessons learned by the former head of product behind both the original Amazon Echo and the Juicero.

After hearing from these leaders on stage and discussing their business models in the hallways and backstage, I’m am convinced those pioneering the future of food are figuring out new and unique approaches that are informed by the past — but break conventions when and where necessary.

Existing markets morph slowly (with occasional ‘big bang’ jolts of innovation)

One thing I try to keep in mind is markets don’t change overnight. Existing product categories  — whether they are packaged food, appliances, restaurants or retailers — evolve as new alchemies of technology, business model innovation, societal changes, and company cultures bring about long-term change to a given market.

Pablos Holman talks about the future of 3D printed food

Occasionally, however innovation evolution is catalyzed by those that help us see into the future, and this year at SKS we heard about a few of these big-bang jolts of innovation. Whether it starts with a maker who hacked together a home sous vide circulator in 2012, a serial inventor working in a well-funded research lab where he convinces Nathan Myhrvold of potential of our 3D printed food future or Amazon’s reimagining the future of the grocery store, we were shown the potential of accelerating innovation through singular visions.

Innovation is happening globally

Hirotaka Tanaka talks about Japan’s food tech market

We took our event international last year with Smart Kitchen Summit Japan, and this year we went fully global by taking the event to Europe. This global nature was on display in Seattle this week with startups from all over the globe showcasing their ideas and products, appliance and food goliaths sponsoring our event, and speakers from all over the world discussing their ideas on stage

We are exploring stories at SKS and The Spoon

One of the realizations I’ve had since starting the Smart Kitchen Summit in 2015 is that our job is to help food innovators share their stories. We do that throughout the year by telling stories at The Spoon of creators doing exciting work. We also engage in conversations with them on our podcasts where we can learn more about their work.

We also like to have the stories we discover shared from the SKS stage. Stories resonate most when shared by the person who lived it, and it’s through thoughtful conversation, questions, and connections that new chapters are added.

Thanks to all those who made SKS 2018 possible and a special thanks for those who came to SKS and shared your story. For the rest of you, we can’t wait to hear your story, share it with our community, and maybe even have you on stage for SKS 2019!

Got a good food tech story to tell? Let us know.  And if you want to participate in our FoodTech Live at CES, drop us a line. 

3 Tips to Avoid Failure, from the Man behind Juicero and Amazon Echo

In the hardware startup world, the margin between success and failure can be razor-thin. Malachy Moynihan knows a thing or two about both: He was the Chief Product Officer at infamous kitchen hardware startup Juicero, and also led the charge for Amazon’s Echo and Fire TV devices.

At the Smart Kitchen Summit yesterday, he sat down with the Wall Street Journal’s Wilson Rothman to talk about why some tech products succeed — and why others become a cautionary tale.

So how did Juicero go from a startup darling with $120 million in funds to, in Moynihan’s words, “the poster child for Silicon Valley excess and VC ineptitude?” The infamous Bloomberg story may have been the nail in the Juicero coffin, but according to Moynihan there were significant hurdles much earlier. Getting 20 packs of cold-pressed juice to customers every week is a very expensive process that doesn’t have an efficient supply chain in place. “The logistics just don’t scale,” explained Moynihan, which other companies (such as meal kits) are struggling with to this day.

“We should have stayed in the commercial space,” said Moynihan. “We really went after a fully branded experience… with lots of money spent on Facebook doing influencing.”

Moynihan finished with three takeaways for new hardware startups:

Always think about your consumer first.
“If there’s one lesson I learned from Amazon, it’s to always think first about the customer, said Moynihan. To make a successful product, you have to engineer a perfect consumer experience with the minimal amount of friction. Take the Amazon Echo: It cuts out the step of typing on a phone or computer, and reduces the amount of appliances you need on hand.

The first product doesn’t have to be perfect.
“Think very very deeply about the really critical features that you have to have — and the ones that would be nice to have,” said Moynihan. You don’t have to get everything into the first iteration of your product; patience is key. Patience for failure, patience for roadblocks, and patience for consumer acceptance. “The path to a lot of these products is: ‘It won’t work it won’t work it won’t work — oh my God, it worked!” said Moynihan.

Cultivate the press.
That last one may have been slightly tongue-in-cheek, but it’s important nonetheless. Good press is critical to the success of any product — especially a consumer-facing hardware one.

Look out for more posts on the panels, companies, and news from the fourth Smart Kitchen Summit!

 

SKS 2018: Meet the Winners of the SKS Startup Showcase

With so much of the innovation and breakthroughs in food and technology coming from the startups, we’d be remiss if we didn’t highlight the amazing work these companies are doing in the space. Throughout the last day and a half, various startups took the Smart Kitchen Summit stage to present their products. And while it’s never an easy task, our panel of judges managed to whittle the contenders down to a few winners, which we’ve summarized for you here:

Excellence in Design: MoJoe Brewing
ChefSteps co-founder Chris Young awarded the Excellence in Design award to MoJoe Brewing. MoJoe makes a portable coffee brewer and travel mug combo that lets users brew hot coffee or tea on the go, using any temperature water (even cold!). The device can be powered by a wall socket, car charger, or a rechargeable battery, and is slim enough to fit in a standard cupholder.

Best in Innovation: Garbi
Presented by Zorlu Ventures, the Best in Innovation award went to a company called Garbi. The startup makes a smart trash can that recognizes items you throw away and reorders them for you from local e-commerce retailers. The founder, Brandon Bourn, told the audience Garbi is also working on a recycling feature that would let Garbi’s garbage cans “sort” items into trash, recycling, or compost.

Overall Winner: Soggy Food Sucks
Michael Wolf stated that the overall winner solved a big consumer problem with a simple solution. The award went to the wonderfully named Soggy Food Sucks, which makes a patented peel-and-stick patch that absorbs condensation and to keep your food fresh — and never soggy — during transit.

We chatted with founder Bill Birgen (a former aerospace engineer!) a few weeks ago about his company and their mission to do one thing: keep restaurant leftovers and food delivery at its best.

Check back for more posts throughout the day, and follow along for a steady stream of updates on our Twitter and Instagram feeds.

SKS18: Innit Updates Shopwell App, GE Partners with SideChef and Hestan

At the Smart Kitchen Summit today, guided-cooking platform Innit announced an upgrade to its Shopwell app, which helps users discover personalized food recommendations.

Michael Wolf wrote about Shopwell on the Spoon shortly after it launched in 2017:

“The app, which has been downloaded over 2.5 million times, scans packaged foods at retail and provides a score based on the user’s profile. The app’s patented algorithm helps to analyze packaged food and give real-time matching scores against a user’s personalized nutritional profile which factors in a user’s gender, age, allergies and dietary goals.

The deal extends Innit, which has developed a platform for appliance makers to create connected products for the kitchen, further into the nutritional and shopping portions of the food experience. ShopWell’s database of over 400 thousand packaged food items and consumer facing app allows Innit to touch the consumer’s food experience from the point of purchase to consumption.”

The new Shopwell app will double coverage to encompass over 800,000 items, and also adds more social sharing capability so users can make personalized shopping lists which they can share on social media. If the food doesn’t get a high score, Shopwell can recommend “trade-up” foods to better meet your nutrition goals.

GE cooktop with integrated Hestan smart cooking technology.

Across the Smart Kitchen Summit lobby, GE Appliances had an announcement of their own. Two, actually.

First off, the appliance giant announced they are partnering with mobile cooking platform SideChef. GE’s 2019 appliances will feature 5,000 recipes from chefs and bloggers, and will also have meal planning and guided cooking capabilities.

GE also announced it’s working with smart-cooking system Hestan Cue to create induction cooktops and ranges for their Café appliance line. Using Hestan technology, the cooktops can automatically adjust cooking temperature as users go through video-guided recipes.

Café is the first to offer induction ranges with built-in Hestan technology. Owners can download the Hestan Cue app, which will walk them through step-by-step recipe preparation and simultaneously control the temperature. There are also options that can heat pans to the ideal temperature for common dishes, such as seared scallops or scrambled eggs.

Keep checking in for more news from the Smart Kitchen Summit: new products, platforms, updates, and more! Follow along on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. 

Silo Comes Out of Stealth at the Smart Kitchen Summit

Today at the Smart Kitchen Summit, a new kitchen hardware company emerged from stealth mode. Silo makes a countertop vacuum-sealer system they claim will keep food fresh up to five times longer than your average plastic container.

The system consists of a vacuum base and a set of plastic containers, and integrates with Alexa. Founder Tal Lapidot first got the idea for Silo when he was looking for a better way to keep food fresh at home. Applying his engineering background to vacuum storage, he decided to try the technology on containers instead of plastic bags, which are single-use and less environmentally friendly.

“I wanted something fast and easy,” he told me. “Take a container of food, place it on something, and get it vacuum sealed with one touch.”

Since the product he wanted didn’t exist yet, he decided to invent it. Lapidot filed a patent for his technology, and in 2016 he quit his job to pursue Silo full-time.

From the beginning, he knew he needed to make his product smart. “Many of us don’t remember what food we put in the fridge one week ago,” said Lapidot. “The device can give you a stamp of approval that that food is still good… It’s the missing piece.”

Originally, Silo used an app to track food freshness. But users didn’t always have their phones when cooking, and there’s also the whole “sticky fingers in the kitchen” issue. To solve that, the company decided to turn to voice.

Users tell Alexa what food they’re storing with their Silo and the technology will track how long that food lasts. If you ask Alexa what you have on hand for dinner, it will list off what items in your fridge are ready for cooking. You can also ask it about the state of specific foods.

According to Lapidot, Silo is the first company to make a device that has Alexa built in, which means that there’s a fully enabled Alexa Dot in the base of the device. Not only can Silo vacuum seal your food, it can also read you the news, dictate a recipe, or play some tunes.

The company will launch its Kickstarter campaign on October 16. Lapidot said he couldn’t yet disclose prices, but told us that backers could purchase the Silo vacuum seal device plus bundles of containers.

Silo turned to Kickstarter to source funds because the product attracts early adapters. “We want to make waves,” said Lapidot. They’re planning to ship by Q3 of 2019.

As we know all too well at The Spoon, crowdfunded kitchen appliances can have a tricky time making the leap from concept to shipment. Lapidot, however, is confident that won’t be an issue for his company. “Many times, hardware companies work very hard developing a prototype, but they don’t always understand the realities of manufacturability,” he said.

Silo already has two manufacturing partners, one of which is the largest manufacturer of food-grade plastics in China. Many on their team also hail from the manufacturing sector, so they understand potential pitfalls and can avoid them.

Keep checking in for more news from the Smart Kitchen Summit: new products, platforms, updates, and more!

MyFavorEats Lets You Customize Recipes to Your Likes and Your Kitchen

One of the biggest themes we hear about in the future of recipes is the ability to fully customize recipes to accommodate allergies, dietary needs, and plain old dislikes. (Sorry, olives!)

MyFavorEats, one of the 13 companies pitching at the Startup Showcase for the Smart Kitchen Summit (SKS) next week, is working to make recipes modular, so home cooks can easily swap out ingredients or customize them to their particular appliances. Read our Q&A with co-founder Orly Rapaport to learn a little more about how MyFavorEats is leveraging AI to transform the way we interact with recipes forever, then get your tickets to see her pitch live at SKS next week!

The Spoon: First thing’s first: give us your 15-second elevator pitch.
MyFavorEats: We use AI to transform online linear text recipes into a machine-readable, easily customizable format. Users can easily swap ingredients and personalize meals to their particular dietary preferences, and adapt recipes to their new kitchen appliances.

What inspired you to create Myfavoreats?
I am a home cook and a software engineer. I like to cook and to experiment with innovative gadgets in the kitchen. I realized the need for a tool that would help me tweak recipes to meet various dietary needs and to easily adapt recipes to my new kitchen appliances.

What’s the most challenging part of getting a food tech startup off the ground?
Food and kitchen digitization opens up a new world of cooking experience. This is a new domain that is still under development, being pushed by startups as well as big enterprises. With various stakeholders’ involvement, it is quite clear that standardization and technological alignment are needed to ensure a holistic scalable user experience.

How will Myfavoreats change the day-to-day life of its users?
MyFavorEats will give home-cooks the flexibility to personalize their favorite recipes. It would help recipe publishers to automatically upgrade their linear text recipe sites into a smart, revenue-generating format. It would provide kitchen appliance manufacturers a tool for automated scalable recipe generator.

What’s next for Myfavoreats?
We are now focused on launching pilots together with recipe publishers and appliance manufacturers.

Thanks, Orly! See her pitch live onstage at the Smart Kitchen Summit next week — tickets still available. 

DoorDash Wants to do Last-Mile Logistics for Everything, Not Just Food

To say that the food delivery market is heating up would be an understatement. It’s already red-hot, and competitors are using every tool in their toolbox — self-driving robots, drones, cloud kitchens, and beyond — to stake their claim in the growing market.

One such company is DoorDash. The food delivery startup has been on fire lately: they recently raised another $250 million, have been experimenting with “moonshot” initiatives (such as drones and robots), and even expanded into grocery delivery.

Next week, DoorDash’s COO Christopher Payne will take the Smart Kitchen Summit stage to speak about how delivery is reshaping the meal journey — and how he’s leveraging tech to help DoorDash stay competitive. Until then, we’re delivering you this piping-hot Q&A, in which Payne discusses the convenience economy, the last-mile logistics problem, and DoorDash’s plans for the future.

Read the full Q&A below.

The Spoon: Food delivery is drastically changing the way that people discover, source, and consume food. How do you see DoorDash, and other food delivery players, disrupting the meal-planning journey?

DoorDash: The convenience economy has already transformed how we consume food, which will in turn affect the food supply chain, merchants’ brick-and-mortar strategy, and restaurants’ operational demands. According to UBS, by 2030 online delivery could make up to 10 percent of the total food market, commanding $365 billion in market share.

At DoorDash, we empower our merchant partners to expand their reach, revenue streams and off-premise dining offerings as consumers continue to shift to the convenience of digital ordering. For customers, we’re focused on offering the best selection and introducing new services to connect them with their favorite restaurants. For example, earlier this year, we debuted DashPass subscription service — offering unlimited access to hundreds of restaurants with free delivery — and Pickup, which allows customers to choose a convenient delivery option at no cost. Both of these services were designed to generate even greater value for our merchant partners, while driving stronger customer loyalty with lower prices.

Through offerings like these, plus expansion into areas such as grocery delivery (which DooDash launched with Walmart this spring) we’re introducing new levels of convenience and are transforming how customers dine and shop for their food.

How does DoorDash distinguish themselves from other services in the extremely competitive and crowded food delivery market?

We offer the best selection of restaurants at the highest quality of service.

In five years, we’ve partnered with 90 percent of the top 100 restaurants that offer delivery including brands like The Cheesecake Factory, Wendy’s, and Chipotle. Across our 1200+ cities in the US and Canada, customers can order from more than 100,000 merchants.

DoorDash has always led with a merchant-first approach, offering a suite of products to our restaurant partners, ensuring the highest quality delivery, every single time. With our products and integrations for merchants, we ensure faster and more accurate deliveries, and our in-house support system offers best-in-class service that solves customer problems in real-time.

We also built DoorDash Drive, a platform that helps merchants run their own private label delivery service through DoorDash, tapping our operational expertise and fleet of more than 200,000 Dashers across the US and Canada. By leveraging DoorDash insights and experience, these efforts have enabled businesses to grow their off-premise platforms and increase delivery sales by up to 300 percent.

Tech plays a huge role in food delivery, and some companies are experimenting with technology like automation in dark kitchens and delivery drones. How do you think that tech will shape the future of food delivery, specifically for DoorDash?

The last mile of delivery is the most expensive and time-consuming part of fulfillment for merchants and their logistics partners. The technology behind food delivery is the reason it has come so far today and it will only continue to grow as we continue to see a shift from in-store to digital ordering — a shift that’s expected to reach $200 billion.

At DoorDash, we look at on-demand delivery as operating at the intersection of a math problem and a human problem. The company was founded to solve the logistics problems of a three-sided marketplace — merchants, customers and Dashers — through technology.

In addition to using AI and machine learning (ML) technologies to improve last-mile delivery, we are always seeking to continue experimenting with innovative tech to make the food delivery supply chain a better experience our marketplace. For example, we’ve announced pilot programs with Starship Technologies and Marble to deliver food using robots. Robots bring a new option to the table for efficient delivery; tackling smaller, shorter distance orders that Dashers often avoid, but also freeing up Dashers to fulfill the bigger and more complex deliveries.

For DoorDash, the innovations we roll out will be focused on empowering merchants and providing an even better experience for both our Dashers and customers. It’s too soon to say if that will come from drones or self-driving vehicles, but building the entire ecosystem of products and working closely with city regulators to deploy a reliable and safe system will take some time.

Do you see DoorDash diversifying beyond food to become more of a general e-commerce company?

DoorDash was founded with the goal of being the last-mile logistics layer that empowers businesses to thrive in the digital and convenience economy. This spring, through the DoorDash Drive platform, we expanded beyond restaurant delivery with the launch of our first national grocery partnership with Walmart. Since announcing our partnership in Atlanta, we’ve scaled to more than 300 stores across 20 states in the United States, and will continue to roll out this proven model to power deliveries in new areas in retail and beyond.

As merchants look to meet consumer demand for convenience, DoorDash will support these businesses as they look to broaden their on-demand delivery offerings and update commerce strategies. We’re excited about enabling local businesses to compete.

How do you see the food delivery space evolving over the next 5 to 10 years?

If you think forward, the digital and convenience economy is only going to keep accelerating. We’re just at the beginning. DoorDash is at the forefront of becoming the technology and logistics partner to each of these businesses in every city to make this happen.

The democratization of convenience is more important than ever — people living away from urban hubs want the same advantages as people in major cities. This demand inevitably affects the supply chain, and food delivery companies are logistics agents that will see more and more shifts.

—

Thanks, Chris! If you want to see him speak more about the competitive world of food delivery, snag your tickets to the Smart Kitchen Summit on October 8-9th in Seattle.

Google’s Geoff Barnes on the Complexity and Potential of Voice Assistants

In the past few years, voice assistants have been playing an increasing role in the meal journey. Take Google, for example; its voice assistant has developed a guided cooking platform, made integration partnerships with big appliance brands, and even added the ability to make eerily realistic-sounding restaurant reservations.

As a Senior Interaction Designer for Google, Geoff Barnes works to constantly improve the user experience with the Google Assistant. Next week he’ll take the stage at the Smart Kitchen Summit (SKS) to speak about how voice can play a helpful role in the connected kitchen. To warm up, we asked him about the uncanny valley, the future of voice technology, and the task he uses his Google Assistant for every single day.

The Q&A has been edited for clarity.

The Spoon: As voice recognition and AI become more and more realistic, how will you develop user experience (UX) to avoid the uncanny valley?
Geoff Barnes: The problem with the uncanny valley as Masahiro Mori described it was in people’s discomfort with the artificial trying to imitate the real and getting uncannily close. But he was dealing with physical robots, and the chasm between an obvious robot and a human being is both hugely multidimensional compared to a voice assistant, and broader than I think most people imagine when they conceptualize the uncanny valley in terms of the ubiquitous chart.

In voice user interface (VUI) — especially in the age of autotune and after decades of AI voices in entertainment and interactive voice response (IVR) in everyday life — I think we’ve both narrowed and made shallow the uncanny valley. The result is that Siri, Alexa, and the Google Assistant sit perched to its left. At this point in history, I think the salient question is less about how to avoid getting stuck in the uncanny valley and more about deciding on which side of it your product can better serve your users.

What are some unexpected things you think about when designing UX for Google Assistant?
What comes to mind first is I do all sorts of things to keep from focusing on how a sample dialog looks in writing. When you’re designing for voice, what matters is how things sound spoken. In school, we all learn not to write the way that we talk. Yet that’s exactly what we want of the Assistant: conversationality. We want to make computers talk like humans — not the other way around. So I read all dialog aloud. I’ll pull colleagues aside to do table-reads with me. We have text-to-speech (TTS) simulators that can play our text in the Assistant’s voice.

Another: I try to think about all the possible ways in which normal use might break the experience. For instance, Google Home has pretty great beam-forming [Ed note: beam-forming is technology which allows it to pick up your voice amid extraneous noise], but the mic still picks up cross-talk and ambient sounds. If something the user says is polluted by stray words, the Assistant needs to be able to help with conversation repair. The same goes for users responding in snippets, sentence fragments, and other partial structures where their intent might not be fully revealed, and thus might not be recognized. Part of human conversation is natural repair in situations like these, so we spend a lot of time designing to emulate that in the Google Assistant.

What role do you envision voice assistants playing in the homes — and kitchens — of the future?
Right now, a lot of what we see people using virtual assistants for is task completion, and I think that will continue. As virtual assistants evolve, though, we’ll see the complexity of tasks they can handle increase, and people will put them to more complicated and valuable use. Imagine virtual assistants that can interpret and address really complex requests, can carry on multiple conversational threads at once without losing track of contexts, and can work with you on a range of time-scales. Suddenly, you’re not talking about a fact-checking timer in the kitchen with you; you’re talking about a presence that can be a communications hub, keep you company while guiding you through complex recipes and routines, and do things like plan your date night — from booking dinner reservations, to hiring the babysitter, to ordering flowers.

What’s something you use your Google Assistant for every single day?
I like to drink good coffee in the morning, and for nearly 10 years, that meant I’d get up and make a Chemex. Friends thought I was a little crazy for not having a pre-set automatic coffee maker, but every automatic coffee maker I’d tried had two problems: First, it made coffee that smelled and tasted like burning plastic, and second, most burners are so hot that they scald the coffee within a few minutes of it being brewed. So you have to make sure you’re awake right when you told the coffee maker you would be, or else your plastic-flavored coffee would be even further burnt by the time you got to it.

Enslaving myself to a timer for a bad cup of coffee didn’t sound that great. With the advent of smart switches and Google Assistant integrations, though, I found a great solution: I got a Technivorm Moccamaster (which makes delicious coffee) and plugged it into a Wemo switch that I named “the coffee maker”. Now, every morning when I wake up — no matter whether I’m up early or I’ve overslept — I tell my Google Home, “Hey Google, start the coffee maker,” and in 5 minutes I have a perfect pot of coffee waiting for me two floors away. It’s a real first-world life-changer, but it’s a life-changer nonetheless.

—

Thanks, Geoff! If you want to see him speak more about Google’s work on connected kitchen platforms, snag your tickets to the Smart Kitchen Summit on October 8-9th in Seattle.

Dizzconcept Makes Folding Kitchens for Cramped Spaces

In our urbanized world of tiny spaces, finding room for a kitchen can be tricky. That’s the problem that Dizzconcept, one of the 13 companies pitching at the Startup Showcase for the Smart Kitchen Summit (SKS) this October, is trying to solve. They create super compact pop-up kitchens that fold, so they can fit into small apartments, cramped offices, and more.

Read our Q&A with CEO Darko Špiljarić to learn a little more about how Dizzconcept hopes to bring kitchens to all sorts of spaces, no matter how tiny. Then get your tickets to see him pitch live at SKS!

This interview has been translated by Karlo Krnić and edited for clarity. 

The Spoon: First thing’s first: give us your 15-second elevator pitch.
Dizzconcept: PIA kitchens are dedicated to solving a number of issues that mainly impact young people in urban areas. PIA kitchens save valuable space and have low rental cost, energy requirements and impact on the environment. We have a fully functional kitchen that only takes up 1 to 1.6 square meters (depending on the model) and each comes with a support for a 40″ TV.

What inspired you to start Dizzconcept?
I was inspired by a personal need to find work that was creative. I was especially drawn to create innovative products which improve people’s lives.

What’s the most challenging part of getting a food tech startup off the ground?
The most challenging part of our kitchen startup is introducing our idea to the architects, interior designers and developers. It can be tricky to make them open to a new way of designing small spaces.

How will Dizzconcept change the day-to-day life of its users?
The buyers of our products enjoy using them. When designing a product such as PIA, users get numerous other benefits in addition to good design: better organization space, lower rental cost, lower heating and cooling costs, lower energy and material cost. Besides, they feel good because they’re contributing to protecting the environment.

What’s next for Dizzconcept?
Currently we are perfecting our outdoor kitchen set (Nota) that will introduce significant innovations and improvements over the typical outdoor kitchen. We are also developing a new space-saving program called MOVI.

Thanks, Darko!  Get your tickets to SKS to hear him pitch alongside 12 emerging food tech companies at our Startup Showcase this October in Seattle.

Pizzametry Delivers Made-to-Order Pies from a Vending Machine

Have you ever perused the selection in a vending machine and wished for… more? You might be glad to hear about Pizzametry, the vending machine which bakes up hot, fresh personal pizzas on demand. We were certainly intrigued, which is why we chose Pizzametry as one of the 13 finalists to pitch at the Smart Kitchen Summit Startup Showcase on October 8-9th.

Check out our Q&A with Jim Benjamin, President of Pizzametry maker APM Partners, to learn more about the piping hot world of pizza tech — and the inspiration behind their pizza vending machine. Then get your tickets to see him pitch live at SKS!

The Q&A has been edited for clarity. 

The Spoon: First thing’s first: give us your 15-second elevator pitch.
Pizzametry: Pizzametry is a first of its kind, on demand 24/7 automated pizza-service for consumers.

–  A top quality pizza prepared from fresh ingredients = GREAT TASTING PIZZA!!

– Prepared food in a vending machine format.

– Just bring power and location.

– Internet connected (wired, wireless or cellular) and monitored.

– Easy to stock (with ingredients 150 pizzas) and to maintain.

– Designed for health and safety.

What inspired you to create Pizzametry?
Many years ago, Pizzametry inventor Puzant Khatchadourian was inspired when he was hungry with a stranded stomach in Manhattan, NY in the wee hours of the morning; everywhere was closed for a hot meal! Puzant and a group of investors did extensive consumer research, including traditional focus group format highlighted the need to create an efficient delivery system for a hot, fresh pizza in minutes to a significantly underserved market.

Then, a group of highly talented industry engineers went to work to develop a machine to automatically MAKE a fresh pizza. With over $14 million invested in the design — and rigorous testing of the machine in the development cycle — the company went through many iterations of the machine to create one with process perfection!

What’s the most challenging part of getting a food tech startup off the ground?Finding the right market placements for Pizzametry product and service, as well as alignment with the food technology and food automation markets.

How will Pizzametry change the day-to-day life of its users?
Consumers will never again be left stranded with an empty stomach; they’ll be able to get a hot, fresh pizza meal anytime and anywhere!

What is next for Pizzametry?
Next up is investment and funding for Phase 2.0 go-to-market. We also plan to build and deploy 30 productions machines into the food tech marketplace.

Thanks, Jim!  Get your tickets to SKS to hear him pitch alongside 12 emerging food tech companies at our Startup Showcase this October in Seattle.