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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

smart kitchen

Recipe Database Yummly Will Personalize “The Entire Digital Kitchen” to Help You Cook The Perfect Steak

If you’ve ever searched for a recipe online, odds are you’ve perused at least a few offerings on Yummly. This massive database started out with a focus on personalizing recipe discovery. Then, almost three years ago, appliance giant Whirlpool bought the company and the stakes changed. In the words of Greg Druck, Chief Data Scientist at Yummly, the company has now expanded from “personalizing recipe discovery to personalizing the entire digital kitchen.”

Curious? So were we, which is why we invited Druck to speak at Customize, our food personalization event happening next week in NYC. (Hot tip: There are still a few tickets left, and you can get 15 percent off with code SPOON15.)

To ramp up to the main event we asked Druck a few questions on what exactly a personalized kitchen might look like and what tools it’ll feature (hint: digital assistants and something called a “virtual pantry.”). And yes, the kitchen of the future should be able to perfectly cook a steak to your personal definition of doneness, every single time.

Check out the Q&A below. We’ll see you in New York!

Tell us a little bit about what Yummly does. 
Yummly is the most advanced AI-powered digital kitchen platform with over 25 million users. Yummly started out as a personalized platform for discovering online recipes. We are now expanding our offering to support the future of the kitchen. We want to help our users achieve their cooking-related goals with smart appliance integrations, premium guided recipes, and tools for meal planning and shopping.

Yummly places strong emphasis on personalized recommendations for the consumer. How do you optimize those suggestions? 
The Yummly recipe ingestion pipeline (pun intended) builds comprehensive representations of over 2 million recipes by inferring latent structure. Machine learning models parse the recipe and map it onto our food knowledge graph, inferring nutrition information, cuisine, techniques, difficulty, and more. This provides a foundation for content-based recommendation algorithms. 

Yummly also learns taste profiles for 25 million users by combining explicit and implicit feedback based on behavior and usage. Machine learning systems synthesize this data along with other contextual and ambient signals including day of the week, season, and location to create dynamic personalized feeds for each of our users. 

Has Yummly’s acquisition by Whirlpool changed its approach to personalization (by gathering data from home appliance usage, etc)?
Whirlpool’s acquisition of Yummly has allowed us to expand from personalizing recipe discovery to personalizing the entire digital kitchen. We believe personalization is the key to helping people achieve their goals, such as eating healthy, saving money, and reducing stress. Combining Whirlpool appliances as the hardware with Yummly software and machine learning systems allows us to personalize the experience to each home cook.

For example, Yummly will recommend personalized meal plans and shopping lists — in addition to individual recipes — based on a user’s tastes, goals, and appliances. We’ll keep track of the ingredients they have on hand and incorporate information from their “virtual pantry” into recommendations that will help them save money by reducing food waste.

Integrations with the Yummly Smart Thermometer and Whirlpool ovens will allow Yummly to adapt cooking algorithms to each user’s needs: for example, cooking a steak to a user’s personal definition of doneness. Combining these ideas into one seamless experience will substantially reduce friction in the kitchen. 

How do you envision recipes (and the recipe recommendation process) getting even more personalized over the next 5 years?
Conversational digital kitchen assistant AIs will help people create plans and recommend custom recipes that are much more personalized to specific needs and more useful for achieving goals in the kitchen. AI will guide you through the week, providing ongoing personalized advice, as well as gamifying and tracking progress against goals over time.

Your AI services will personalize a weekly meal plan and schedule for your household and then have the ingredients delivered to your home. Your plan may include a custom stir-fry recipe that uses up the carrots and chicken that were going bad (recognized using in-kitchen cameras) to save money and reduce food waste. It may avoid pasta or adjust ingredients according to your personalized nutrition plan to help you maintain a low-carb diet (because your assistant knows you’re not tracking well against your weight-loss goal). It might include a cheesy broccoli recipe to help you achieve your goal of getting the kids to eat more vegetables. It may even suggest cooking the chicken dish on Sunday to have an easy meal ready for Monday, reducing the stress of meal planning. Lastly AI may automatically adjust the bake time and temperature to make the dish extra crispy for you, and monitor cooking using a smart thermometer, notifying you when it is done.

This is just the tip of the iceberg — get your tickets to Customize to hear Druck’s fireside chat, where we’ll discuss how personalization will reshape the consumer kitchen. Get 15 percent off tickets with code SPOON15.

Food & Drink Pods Were Everywhere at CES, but Do Consumers Want Them?

If you were seeking out food tech at CES last week (and believe me, we were), you might have noticed an awful lot of one thing: pods. I was surprised by how many companies I saw demo-ing pod-based food or beverage system. Here are just a few:

Fresco’s olive oil press

Fresco
Tucked into the Italy pavilion at Eureka Park I stumbled across Fresco, the maker of a “Keurig of Olive Oil.” Insert frozen pods of olive oil into the EVA device (which is about the size of a French Press), press a button, and in five minutes you can collect your cold-pressed olive oil. You can select different varietals of olive oil and even choose infused flavors, like chili or basil.

When I saw this I instantly flashed back to the Juicero debacle — do you really need a device to thaw pods of frozen olive oil? According to the reps at the booth, though, you kind of do. The EVA heats olive oil to its ideal temperature, between 20 to 25 °C (77 °F), where you can taste all of its flavors.

The machine costs €79 ($87) and each frozen pod is around €1 ($1.11). For now only Italians can order Fresco, but the company is trying to move into the U.S. While Italian cucinares (cooks) might shell out extra euros to get optimally extracted olive oil, I’m not sure American home cooks will have the same level of devotion. Especially when they could just buy fancy olive oil from their local co-op or farmers market.

CES 2020: N2FALLS' portable nitro coffee

N2FALLS
You’ve probably heard of (or tasted) coffee pods, but nitro cold brew is a new entrant to the pod-based caffeine space. Korean company N2FALLS makes small cylindrical pods which, when inserted into the partner drink lid over a glass of water, expels compressed nitrogen-infused coffee concentrate. Voila — a nitro cold brew. Or if you do it over milk, a nitro latté! The company also makes pods for tea, juice and even booze-free wine.

Coffee prices vary by quantity but average to about $3 per capsule. For now N2FALLS is only available in Korea, but the company is in the midst of planning a U.S. expansion. Initially they’ll sell their pods in brick & mortar shops (the rep I spoke to named Amazon Go as a target) before selling online.

Tigoût
Argentinian startup Tigoût is a pod-based machine that bakes up wee single-serve desserts (think: Belgian chocolate cake or a white chocolate blondie). Insert a pre-prepped frozen pod (or two) into the machine, press start, and in a couple of minutes you’ll have a piping-hot sweet treat. Tigoût has a connected app so you can monitor your bake remotely and reorder capsules as needed.

The device itself costs $400 and each pod is $1.50. Right now there are 12 options, including six savory offerings. Tigoût’s founder and CEO Rodrigo Córdoba, who showed me the machine on the CES show floor, plans to launch the company officially in December of this year.

CES 2020: A Demo of Drinkworks, the Pod-based Cocktail Robot

Drinkworks + Bartesian
Adventurous CES goers could sample the hard stuff thanks to a few pod-based machines. Drinkworks and Bartesian are both cocktail-mixing robots which rely on flavor capsules to make classic drinks.

Drinkworks, which is the result of a joint venture between Keurig Dr. Pepper and Anheuser-Busch, is a countertop appliance which turns pods into cocktails, ciders, and even beers. Just pop a capsule — which already contains alcohol — into the machine, press a button, and out comes your drink of choice. You can see it make me a Moscow Mule at CES in the video above (which, yes, I drank at 10am cause Vegas). Drinkworks is available in select states for $299 and the pods cost around $3.99 each, depending on the drink.

Like Drinkworks, Bartesian is also a pod-based cocktail robot. It uses capsules filled with juice, bitters and other mixers. However, unlike Drinkworks, however, Bartesian users have to provide the spirits themselves — which allows for more customization but also adds an extra step (and expense) to the process. Bartesian devices are currently available at retailers around the country (and online) for $349.99.

Pod people?
Clearly food & bev companies have seen the success of Keurig and Nespresso and decided that pods = the future. And there’s some validity to that. Pods offer near-instant gratification (assuming you remember to reorder them) and a high level of consistency. They also give consumers the option to switch things up according to their mood — if you want a hazelnut espresso one day and a vanilla one the next, no problemo — and provide hardware makers recurring revenues.

But while pods do allow some level of wiggle room, their very nature means that they still end up trapping consumers. You may be able to choose the flavor of your cold brew/dessert/cocktail pod, but you’re reliant on the pod itself to get the finished product — and that means you’re beholden to a specific appliance manufacturer. Consumers can chafe against being locked into food ecosystems. Pods also don’t give you wiggle room to tweak a recipe — for example, if you like a slightly less boozy cocktail or a sweeter cold brew.

There’s also the negative environmental aspect to consider. While some pods are technically recyclable, most end up in landfills. That could become a bigger issue as consumers begin to prioritize sustainability more and more.

Despite their obvious convenience, will the cost of pods — both literal and environmental — keep consumers away? Clearly a bunch of companies at CES don’t think so. But I’m not so sure that the pod-volution of food and drink will take off — especially for more niche products, like olive oil.

Instead, I think we’ll see a growth of smart devices like the Picobrew, which can work with the company’s Picopacks or let consumers add their own ingredients. Even Keurig is getting on-board. You can buy the company’s proprietary pods, but many machines also let you buy reusable pods and add your own coffee for more of a customizable and waste-free twist. The DIY aspect still keeps consumers within the hardware device’s ecosystem, but allows them more flexibility (and sustainability). That’s the type of tech I’d like to see more of at CES 2021.

Whirlpool’s Yummly Introduces Wireless Smart Thermometer

Yummly, the digital recipe and cooking platform acquired by Whirlpool, announced the new Yummly Smart Thermometer at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) today.

The wireless thermometer keeps track of both internal food temperature and ambient cooking temperatures, and can be monitored via an accompanying app that sends alerts when the food is ready.

At first, this sounds a lot like the Meater smart thermometer. Smart thermometers can actually be pretty great because they allow you to remotely monitor your cooking without opening your oven and letting all the heat out.

But what differentiates Yummly’s Smart Thermometer from Meater and others is its ability to integrate with both the Whirlpool and Yummly ecosystems. So if a person is cooking from a Yummly recipe, the Yummly Thermometer will know what step the user is on and be able to communicate with a Whirlpool oven to adjust the temperature or switch from roasting to broiling automatically. According to the press release, this type of integration will be available in late 2020.

The Yummly Smart Thermometer also seems to be helping Yummly create something akin to a deconstructed June Oven. The Yummly mobile app can be used to recognized ingredients and suggest recipes. Those recipes can be communicated to a compatible Whirlpool oven and the thermometer can talk with the oven to create an automated cook program. While this requires a number of different pieces to create a smart oven, it also means you don’t have to take up countertop space with an additional cooking appliance.

The Yummly Smart Thermometer will be on display at CES this week, and available for purchase in early 2020 with an MSRP of $129.

Here’s Your Handy CES 2020 Food and Kitchen Tech Preview & Walking Guide

Heading to CES?

Make sure to wear comfortable shoes, bring some Tylenol, and get ready for lots of food and cooking tech!

Having gone to the world’s biggest consumer tech show for well over a decade, I’ve gotten pretty good at finding new products that are of interest to me. That said, even for someone like myself who’s spent more than his fair share of shoe leather getting around the ugly carpets of Vegas, finding the latest in food tech has always been something of a challenge at a show where entertainment, robotics and car tech news usually steal most of the headlines.

The good news is that all started to change last year with the debut of Impossible Burger 2.0, and, based on my pre-show planning over the past couple of weeks, I expect to see a whole bunch of food and kitchen tech news at this year’s CES.

I figured I’d share some of my research by putting together a guide to what’s going on in food tech and smart kitchen at CES 2020 to help you make the most of your time in Vegas. I’ve even added booth numbers for most of the products to help you get there.

During the next few days, I’d also suggest you check back in here at The Spoon for stories, videos and interviews from The Spoon editor team. And, if you plan on making foodtech news at CES with a cool product you think we should check out, drop us a note at the tip line.

So here we go! Check out these food and kitchen tech products at CES 2020:

Robot Pizza: Back in October, attendees of the Smart Kitchen Summit got to sample pizza made by the Seattle based pizza robot startup Picnic. For those of you who couldn’t make it to Seattle, now’s your chance: Picnic’s pizzabot will be serving pizza at CES. Lines for food are long at CES, and I expect the pizza-robot lines at the Las Vegas Convention Center to be even longer.

Robot Ramen: If pizza isn’t your thing, you might want to make your way over to the Taiwan Tech Area in the Sands Eureka Park (Sands 51411) to check to another Smart Kitchen Summit alumni Yo-kai Express, which will be dishing up noodles from their robot ramen vending machine.

Beerbots: You’re gonna need something to chase the pizza, so you might want to check out a beerbot like PicoBrew (Sands 41518) or stop by Treasure Island for FoodTech Live (ticket needed) to see MiniBrew or BEERMKR. Also, while I haven’t hear anything out of LG yet about their beerbot, I am waiting to see if they’ll have an update on their beer brewing appliance they debuted at last year’d CES.

Drinkbots: If you’d like something a little stiffer (I’d suggest to wait til after noon, but this is Vegas and you are an adult), try out a cocktail robot like the Drinkworks (Sands 42546 and FoodTech Live) or Bartesian (Sands 40852).

Wine Tech. Oh, so you’re a wine snob, are you? Don’t worry, you can find that too. Earlier this week Chris wrote about the Albi from Albicchiere (Sands 52722), a cool countertop appliance that stores and serves your wine. Invineo will be showing its connected wine dispenser off as well (Sands 50863).

DNA-Driven Food Choices. Food personalization is moving beyond simple suggestions, and in the future it will get downright personal by creating diet plans based on a person’s biological makeup. If you want to check out a couple of companies looking deep inside your body to make food recommendations, check out DNA Nudge (Sands Booth 44316) or Sun Genomics (FoodTech Live – ticket required for entry).

Smart Countertop Cooking. There will be an array of different countertop cooking appliances that are powered by smart software and cook in new and interesting ways. CES will be the first chance to see a working version of the long-promised Anova smart oven (see our post here), which you can see in the Sands (booth 40946) . The Julia, which is a multicooker reminiscent of the Thermomix, features guided cooking videos delivered via a touchscreen interface. You can find the Julia at in the Sands at booth 41367. Speaking of Thermomix, they’ll be showing off the TM6 at FoodTech Live (ticket required). If you’re the smoothie type, check out the cool next-gen Millo blender (Sands 40346), who will also be showing off a smart table with wireless power.

Intelligent Surface Cooking. I expect some interesting news in terms of smart cooking surfaces. One cool demo I plan to check out is the GHSP concept that is both an induction cooking surface and a touch interface (North Hall 3111). I also expect the Wireless Power Consortium to be showing off their Ki cordless kitchen platform at their usual spot in the Las Vegas Convention Center at on the walkway near the South Hall (South Hall SL-2).

Smart Home Gardening/Vertical Farming Systems. I’ve been following smart gardening systems for years at CES, but this is the first year we’ve seen big appliance brands jump in. As Jenn wrote earlier this week, LG will be showing off a new indoor gardening system at CES (Central Hall 11100). Not to be outdone, GE will be coming with its own home gardening kitchen concept called “Home Grown” which it will be showcasing at the Haier/GE booth in the central hall (Central booth 16006).

Home Food Robots. We’re not sure how fully fleshed out the Autokitch cooking robot concept is, but they’ll have a booth at CES (Sands 53034). And while it’s not quite a fully robotic kitchen concept or bread making robot, the Tigoût is a pod-based baking machine from Argentina that’s is worth checking out. Drop in a pod, out spits a souffle or a raspberry muffin. You can see the Tigoût in action at Sands 52768.

Coffee and Tea, Please. If you’re looking for a nice cup of tech-powered tea, you should check out the Teplo tea maker, which will be at the Panasonic booth in the Sands (Sands 42711). If you’re more of a coffee person, then you’re in luck if you have a ticket to FoodTech Live: A production line version of the grind and brew Spinn will make its debut after a long-anticipated wait. The Terra Kaffe – which grinds, brews and steams milk – will also be in attendance at Food Tech Live.

Alexa, Give Me a Coke. Sure, this one is kinda gimmicky, but we are talking CES after all. Amazon and Coca-Cola are teaming up for a voice-powered Amazon Alexa “Coke Energy Wall” where attendees will be able to ask Alexa for a coke and a smile (delivered via what the PR describes as a “one of Alexa’s witty responses”. You can find the Amazon Alexa Coke Energy Wall at Sands booth #40934.

Smart Fridges. Smart fridges have been debuting at CES for years, and this year they are more evolved than ever. LG will be showing off its new InstaView ThinQ refrigerator, which uses computer vision and AI for real-time inventory of what’s inside (Central Hall 11100). Samsung will be back with its latest edition of the Family Hub smart fridge line, this time powered by Whisk, a smart food AI platform they acquired in spring of 2019 (Central Hall 15006). If you’re interested in products that make existing dumb fridges smart, Smarter will be showing off its smart fridge cam platform at FoodTech Live (ticket required).

Fake Meat. Impossible stole the show last year at CES with the debut of the Impossible 2.0. In retrospect, it was a brilliant move for the fake meat unicorn to unveil their next-gen meat at CES 2019, mostly because it would be the first time most journalists and attendees would have a bite of a plant based burger. It also didn’t hurt that the 2.0 is much better than the 1.0. This year Impossible will be back, kicking things off with a press conference at 5 PM on Jan 6th and then serving up twenty five thousand free samples of Impossible Burger (I’m guessing it will be the new recipe/3.0 edition) their new pork product and the Impossible Burger at the Central Plaza of the Las Vegas Convention Center.

Smart Grillin’. The Weber folks partnered up with June late last year to add some software powered cooking intelligence to their grill. You can swing by their booth at the South Hall to see what those two have cooking on the Barbie (South Hall SP-2). Also, Chris wrote up the news this weekend about Yummly’s new entry in the increasingly crowded smart thermometer space. You can check that new product if you make an appointment with Whirlpool and swing by their meeting space at the Wynn (Wynn hospitality suites). Speaking of smart thermometers, Meater is back and you can check out their latest if you have a ticket to FoodTech Live.

Tiny Adorable Dishwashers. Like many of you kitchen nerds, I’ve been excited about the Tetra. Only problem is, Heatworks, the company behind the Tetra, is a bit behind on shipping their sexy little countertop cleaning machine and so it looks like they are staying home this year and focusing on getting it out the door in 2020. But don’t worry! If you’re looking to scratch the countertop cleaning machine itch, head on over to the Daan booth to check out equally adorable Bob (Sands 50819).

Ok, that’s it. While this list isn’t exhaustive, it’s a good start. If anything really interesting pops up before tomorrow’s CES Unveiled, I’ll update the post (send me any news I’ve missed via our tip form), and for more detailed updates make sure to check back here at The Spoon all next week!

GE Appliances Unveils New Version of its Kitchen Hub Screen and New Cooking AI

GE Appliances, a division of Haier, today announced the newest version of its Kitchen Hub smart kitchen and ventilation system as well as new artificial intelligence (AI) technology to assist with meal planning and cooking.

The new Kitchen Hub still sports a giant 27-inch touchscreen and fan that’s mounted over your cooktop range, but now also features a built-in microwave and three different cameras: one looking down on the cooktop, one looking straight out for video chatting, and one inside the oven so you can monitor cooking either on the Kitchen Hub screen or via the accompanying mobile app.

Other features of the Kitchen Hub include built-in Google Assistant, SideChef for recipes and guided cooking, Netflix and Spotify, smart home monitoring and control and live video chat.

Those cameras built into the Kitchen Hub aren’t just for video chats and sharing photos of your homemade pho. Cameras that are built into a number of different GE Appliances will use computer vision and AI to identify food and recommend meals based on ingredients on hand (presumably with a camera built into a fridge), help detect doneness of food and even raise or lower oven temperature.

The battle for the “Kitchen Screen” has been going on for a couple of years now as appliance manufacturers look to leverage the kitchen being the center of a home as a means of making their smart ecosystems more enticing for consumers. And it looks as though in addition to big screens, having an AI solution for your cooking is the new table stakes. Yesterday, both LG and Samsung announced their new smart refrigerators, each sporting a big touchscreen and AI to help with meal planning and grocery shopping.

With its big, horizontal screen, GE Appliances’ Kitchen Hub certainly fits in with how people currently watch movies and TV on their home screens (moreso than on the narrow, vertical screen that are typically built into fridges). The addition of the microwave and ventilation to the Kitchen Hub could give it the versatility to attract consumers and become the center of the smart kitchen.

We’ll have to wait until later this year to find out. Both the Kitchen Hub and GE Appliances’ AI come out in late 2020.

The 2019 Kitchen Technology Year in Review

2019 was an action-packed year in world of food tech. Among other things, we saw an explosion in new products that promise to change what we eat, rapid change in food delivery models, and something of a slow motion food robot uprising.

The consumer kitchen also saw significant change, even if things didn’t move as fast as some would hope. As we close out the year, I thought I’d take a look back at the past twelve months in the future kitchen.

It’s An Instant Pot and Air Fryer World and We’re Just Living In It

Here’s an experiment: Next time you’re making cocktail-party conversation, ask someone about their most recent cooking gadget purchase for the home. Chances are its either an Instant Pot or an air fryer.

The above chart shows why this should come as no surprise, as it plots consumer interest in the Instant Pot and air fryer categories (as determined by Google searches) over the past five years. It also shows the seasonality of that interest (both spike during the holidays) and how air fryers have closed the gap with Instant Pot.

Regardless of how the two products perform relative to one another, the big takeaway is that the Instant Pot/pressure cooker and air fryer represent the two breakaway categories in countertop cooking over the past few years, and that trend continued strong in 2019.

Why? Because both products give consumers lots of cooking power to create a variety of meals at a low entry price point. Add in what are large and vibrant online recipe communities for both product categories, and you can see why both only became more popular in 2019.

Next-Gen Cooking Concepts See Mixed Results

Outside of pressure cookers and air fryers, 2019 was a decidedly mixed bag of results for next-gen countertop cooking concepts. June and Tovala both plugged along selling their second generation ovens, Suvie started shipping its four-chamber cooking robot and Brava’s “cook with light” oven tech sold to Middleby. But unlike the air fryer and Instant Pot, none of these new products have gone viral.

Why?

First, most of these products are fairly expensive, often coming in at $300 or above. That’s probably too high to convince enough consumers to take a chance on a new product in a new product category they don’t know much about.

Second, consumers need to better understand these new products. While I don’t expect Thermomix to replicate the success they’ve found with direct-sales in Europe in North America, there’s a reason such a premium priced product has succeeded in Europe: it has made consumer education and evangelism core to the business model.

Finally, the market has yet to see a product with just the right mix of new technology and high-value user-focused features that supercharges consumer interest. That said, there are some new products like Anova’s steam oven or the Miele Dialog’s solid state cooking (I’m told most big appliance makers are working on a similar product) that could potentially capture the imagination of consumers.

Large Appliance-Makers Continue to Dabble in Innovation

So here’s what some of the big appliance brands with resources did in 2019: Whirlpool came out of the gate fast with a lineup of new smart cooking appliances at CES 2019, including a pretty cool modular smart oven concept in the SmartOven+. Electrolux launched a new Drop-powered blender and partnered with Smarter to add machine vision and connected commerce features to its smart fridge camera platform. Turkish appliance giant Arcelik debuted a combo cooking and washing product concept under the Grundig brand.

Overall though, it wasn’t a big year for appliance-makers on the innovation front. Many of us waited for these companies to launch some of their more promising technologies, like Miele’s Dialog or BSH Appliances Pai interface, but neither effort seemed to move forward much, at least in any public way, in 2019.

A Sputtering Consumer Sous Vide Market

It was a bad year for those who make sous vide gear. In mid-year we learned that ChefSteps, maker of the Joule sous vide circulator, would be laying off a significant amount of the team after they ran into money problems. And, just a little over a week ago, one of the first consumer sous vide startups in Nomiku announced it would be shutting its doors.

Why did the consumer sous vide market lose steam? My guess the primary reason is because sous vide cooking is just too slow as an everyday or multiple-time-per-week cooking method. While some like Nomiku wanted to position the sous vide as a replacement for the microwave, it just isn’t convenient enough and requires too many steps for culinary average joes accustomed to the push-button cooking of the microwave. The reality is over time many sous vide circulators ended up stuck in the kitchen drawer.

Software Powers The Meal

At Smart Kitchen Summit 2017, Jon Jenkins said we will all someday “eat software” as it becomes more important in how we create food in the kitchen. Evidence of this was everywhere in 2019 as companies rolled out new software features to do things like cook plant-based meat to companies like Thermomix and Instant Brands betting big on software for the future.

We also saw kitchen-centric software players like SideChef, Drop and Innit loaded up on more partnerships with appliance and food brands to better tie together the meal journey, while Samsung NEXT acquired a digital recipe and shopping commerce platform in Whisk.

In short, it’s fairly obvious that for a kitchen appliance brand to survive, it’s becoming table stakes to have something of an evolved software strategy.

Amazon Continues Its Push Into Kitchen

If there’s been one takeaway from watching Amazon over the past few years, it’s that they see the food and the kitchen as an important strategic battleground. This past year did nothing to dispel this belief as the company introduced their own smart oven and continued to file weird food-related patents. Amazon also pushed forward with new delivery concepts for the home that bring together the different parts of the Amazon portfolio (voice ordering, smart home, grocery and more).

Grocery Delivery Space Race

Amazon wasn’t the only one looking to connect the smart home to grocery delivery this year. Walmart also debuted a new in-fridge delivery service called InHome. Meanwhile both companies and big grocery conglomerates like Kroger continue to invest in robotics and home delivery.

The reason for this growing interest in innovative home delivery concepts is pretty simple: more and more consumers are shopping online for groceries. Big platform players like Amazon and Google see a massive new opportunity, while established grocery players are forced to innovate to play defense.

No One Has Recreated The Success of the Keurig Model (Yet)

While much of the early focus for new kitchen startups has been on copying the Keurig model of pairing a piece of kitchen hardware with a robust consumer consumables business, unfortunately none have really been able to emulate the model for food products. There’s been no shortage of cocktail making robots, coffee, 3D food printing, chai tea and others attracted the the concept of recurring revenue that food sales bring, but as we’ve seen it’s hard to emulate the pod model approach.

Some, like Tovala, look to have had some limited success on pairing cooking hardware with food delivery, while others like Brava, Nomiku and ChefSteps weren’t able to create sustainable models. Genie and Kitchenmate are making a go of it in the office environment, while Level couldn’t and had to shut its doors earlier this year.

I expect kitchen hardware entrepreneurs to try to continue to pair food sales with products, but I expect that it will be tough sailing unless the company land upon very compelling, easy-to-use solution that turnkeys the cooking solution.

Cooking Media: A Peloton For The Kitchen Emerges

Forget Buzzfeed Tasty quick-play cooking videos. In 2019, we saw the emergence of other players providing deeper, more personalized cooking guidance that emulates what Peloton or Mirror have done with home-fitness instruction. Food Network made the biggest splash with its Food Network Kitchen concept while others like FET Kitchen are creating their own hardware platforms.

For Buzzfeed’s part, they haven’t given up on Tasty quite yet. Instead, they partnered up with Amazon to push their recipes onto the Echo Show, complete with step-by-step guidance. The combo creates essentially what is a fairly quick and easy guided cooking product.

Food Waste Reduction Comes Into Focus — Everywhere But The Home

If any place is lacking in innovation when it comes to reducing the amount of food we throw away, it’s the consumer kitchen. Sure, some startups are trying to rethink how we approach cooking by helping us to work with the food we have, while others are rethinking the idea of food storage, but innovation in home food waste reduction is lacking when compared to what we are seeing in restaurants and CPG fronts. We hope this changes in 2020.

True Home Cooking Robots Remained A Futuristic Vision in 2019

While single-function taskers like the Rotimatic did significant volume and others like Suvie positioned itself as a “cooking robot” for the home, the reality is we saw no significant progress towards a true multifunction consumer cooking robot. Companies like Sony see the opportunity to create a true home cooking robot, but for now food robots remain primarily the domain of restaurants, grocery and delivery.

Bottom line: It was an exciting year in the connected kitchen and we expect 2020 to be even more exciting. Stay tuned next week for my outlook on what to expect!

The JuneOS (Precisely) Heats Up New Weber SmokeFire Pellet Grill

Weber announced its new connected SmokeFire wood pellet grill today, which will use the JuneOS for precise temperature control and step-by-step guided cooking. This is the first time June’s technology has been incorporated into a third-party product.

June’s cooking smarts in the SmokeFire grill will be a little different from what June Oven users are used to. For starters, the grill is controlled by the Weber Connect app, which is powered by the JuneOS but invisible to the user. Second, there is no built-in camera to automatically recognize food or touchscreen to control the grill. Instead, there’s a black and white display on the grill with the click knob.

The SmokeFire can go from 200 to 600 degrees, so you can do both low and slow cooking as well as rip it up to get a hot sear. In addition to providing guidance on setup and meal-prep, the Weber Connect app also lets users set precise temperatures. Just like when using a June Oven, the SmokeFire will send an alert to the mobile app based on internal food temperatures to give grillers an ETA on when their food will be done.

Obviously, we haven’t had a chance to use the SmokeFire yet, but from the looks of it, it seems a lot like the Traeger Pro wood pellet grill with WiFire technology ($700). That too has an accompanying app that features precision heat control and step-by-step cooking guidance. I’m curious to see if June can carry over its clean, easy-to-follow oven UI that the Traeger lacks.

This partnership represents a first for both companies. This is Weber’s first pellet grill. It’s also the first time that June’s software has been incorporated into another company’s product. I spoke with June Co-Founder and CEO Matt Van Horn last week about this partnership and he said that his company has “always been open minded” about licensing its OS out to other companies.

The SmokeFire comes in either a 24 or 36 inch model, costing $999 and $1199 respectively. Each will be available for pre-order on Cyber Monday and shipped in early 2020.

SideChef Launches Guided Cooking Integration With Bixby, Samsung’s AI Assistant

This week, SideChef announced an integration with Samsung’s intelligent voice assistant Bixby. The partnership centers around the launch of a voice-activated guided cooking capsule (capsules are Samsung’s equivalent to Amazon Alexa skills) which will give users of Bixby-powered mobile phones access to approximately 15 thousand recipes, most with step-by-step video-powered cooking instructions.

From the news release:

“Users can hone in on the exact recipe they would like by adding natural language constraints, such as dietary restriction, cuisine type, and even specific ingredients. Once a recipe is selected, SideChef provides video instruction through Bixby to guide home cooks through the entire recipe preparation process, from start to finish.”

While Samsung’s voice assistant doesn’t quite have the same degree of loyal usership as, say, Google Assistant on mobile phones or Amazon Alexa in the home, it is installed on a whole lot of Samsung products. Last year Samsung CEO D.J. Koh declared that the company’s AI assistant could reach a total of 500 million devices if it were to be installed on every Samsung device.

Of course, to reach that massive audience, SideChef’s new capsule would then have to be installed by the consumer, who will be able to find it on the Bixby Marketplace (Samsung’s “app store” for Bixby Capsules). Samsung launched the marketplace in mid-2019, and the newness of the store may actually play to SideChef’s advantage as theirs is probably one of the few recipe-centric voice apps and most likely the only guided cooking capsule on the still relatively bare shelves of the Bixby marketplace.

This move comes a year after SideChef launched on Amazon’s video-enabled Alexa devices, the Alexa Echo Show and Echo Spot, and just a couple months after the smart kitchen software startup announced an integration with Haier’s smart fridges at IFA 2019. While it isn’t immediately clear if the Bixby integration will put SideChef on Samsung Family Hub refrigerators, I would expect that will happen sooner rather than later.

Finally, while SideChef continues to rack up appliance partnerships, the company is also beginning to explore partnerships with big CPG brands. Last month the startup partnered with Bacardi through its Alexa integration to enable step-by-step drink mixing.  This trend of food brands integrating with smart kitchen software platforms isn’t limited to SideChef, as SideChef competitor Innit announced a partnership in September with Mars through a Google Lens integration that will enable both guided cooking and personalized meal and nutrition recommendations.

SKS 2019: The Kitchen Evolution is In a State of “Good Chaos”

What’s next for the smart kitchen? What sort of new appliances will be gracing the countertops of the future, and what sort of technologies will power them? In short: What will it look like to cook at home in the future?

That’s exactly the question one of our panels tackled at SKS 2019. The discussion was led by The Spoon’s Chris Albrecht, who spoke with Lisa McManus of America’s Test Kitchen, Matt Van Horn of June and Steve Svajian of Anova about what’s coming down the pipelines for kitchen tech. The full video is below, but if you want a few quick highlights read on:

The future of the kitchen is software
Svajian argued that the smart kitchen space started out more hardware-driven, but has recently been shifting to focus more on software. Van Horn agreed. He said that in the early days of the company, people used what he called the “primitive” settings of the smart oven: bake, broil, etc. But now they’re using the automatic cook programs more and more. “That said, the hardware [still] has to be great,” added Svajian.

All tech aside, it has to work
McManus drove home the point that high-tech appliance are great, but they have to actually help people cook better — not just look cool. “We look at things that will make [cooking] easier and more accessible to everyone,” she said. “Things that are practical, that are functional.”

The smart kitchen space right now? “Good chaos.”
McManus summed up the evolution of the food tech ecosystem pretty neatly during the panel. “It feels like a really exciting brainstorm,” she said. “It’s good chaos.” Svajian agreed, equating the space to the evolution of the Web in the late 90’s. ‘The law of entropy is real.’

If you want to hear more about where these three insiders see the fast-paced evolution of the kitchen heading, make sure to watch the full video below.

SKS 2019: Kitchen Tech Futures: A Look At What's Next

SKS Hot Seat: WPC’s David Baarman Says the Future of The Kitchen is All About Simplification

As kitchens get smarter, they also tend to get more cluttered and complicated, especially if the various connected devices involved don’t communicate with each other. Wouldn’t it be nice if there was some sort of universal standard that allowed all smart appliances to be interoperable?

That’s exactly what the Wireless Power Consortium (WPC) is trying to achieve with its new Ki wireless power standard. The consortium works with over 600 companies to simplify the smart kitchen, making various connected devices simpler to use in tandem — and, of course, wireless.

We sat down with David Baarman, Co-Chairman of the Kitchen Application & Promotions Group at WPC, at SKS 2019 last week to ask a few questions about how his company is working to make the kitchen not only smart, but also simple to navigate. Check out the video below and be on the lookout for more videos from SKS 2019 to hit The Spoon soon!

SKS Hot Seat Interview: David Baarman, Wireless Power Consortium

SKS Hot Seat: CocoTerra’s CEO on Why You (Yes, You) Should Make Chocolate From Scratch At Home

When you think about things you can make at home — bread, pasta, juice — chocolate is probably not something that jumps to mind. It’s a complicated, time-intensive process that takes skill and special equipment to master.

But what if there was a machine that could do it all for you? CocoTerra is a new startup lowering the barrier to entry to home chocolate making with the world’s first countertop chocolate-making machine. The device lets even the most basic home cooks create their own bespoke chocolate in just two hours.

We were so intrigued by this idea that we chose CocoTerra as one of the finalists for the SKS 2019 Startup Showcase, which just happened this week. In between giving out (very tasty) samples of chocolate, CocoTerra CEO Nate Saal sat down in the SKS Hot Seat to answer a few rapid-fire questions on his device, the potential of personalization, and how he envisions the future of the food ecosystem.

Check out the video below! And keep your eyes peeled for more videos from SKS 2019 coming your way soon.

SKS Hot Seat Interview: Nate Saal of CocoTerra

Millo Is Reinventing the Blender to Make it Quieter, Sleeker and Smarter

You probably have a blender in your house. It’s probably… fine. But what if your blender could not only make you a really good smoothie, but do it silently — and look pretty dang cool in the process?

That’s exactly what Millo, a new startup reinventing the blender, is trying to do. They’re one of the finalists in the Startup Showcase at our Smart Kitchen Summit {SKS} food tech conference. We spoke with Ruslanas Adam Trakšelis, the co-founder and Chief Commercial Officer of Millo, to learn more about how the company is improving upon one of the most common household staples. Check out the Q&A below then grab a ticket to watch him and the other Startup Showcase finalists pitch live next week! We only have a few left (seriously), so get on it if you’re interested.

This interview has been lightly edited for clarity.

First thing’s first: give us your 15-second elevator pitch.
MILLO is the blender reinvented as a smart gadget. Using unparalleled magnetic clutch and a brushless motor called AirDrive, the MILLO has no bulky-looking mechanical parts and stands out by its sleek Scandinavian premium/minimalist design. MILLO is cordless, buttonless and fully portable. Its smart electronics, together with firmware, enable real-time tracking of changes in liquid consistency, which allows extreme precision and creates a new dimension in recipes that are conveniently shared within the Millo app.

What inspired you to start your company?
MILLO was born out of the frustration experienced by everyone who makes smoothies. Usual blenders are noisy, messy and hard to wash. After a number of occasions in which I woke up my newly-born daughter while making my post-workout morning smoothie, I decided to reinvent the blender.

The moment of inspiration came when I was watching my daughter playing with a toy which rotated two dancing figures with magnets. That inspired me to develop AirDrive, a motor based on the magnetic coupling. The AirDrive technology eliminates mechanical friction of engine parts, thus the noise level is reduced significantly and I don’t disturb my family’s sleep.

What’s the most challenging part of getting a food tech startup off the ground?
I believe this is not related to food tech startups in particular, but startups in general — the main challenge is to find the right people who believe in the project the same way as you do, or close to it. Not only co-workers, but also investors, advisers, etc.

How will your company change the day-to-day life of consumers and the food space as a whole?
Today’s lifestyles have us more overworked and time-poor than ever, with our bodies and our well-being suffering as a consequence. Obesity, heart disease, and stress-related illnesses are some of the greatest threats to our health today. But we don’t need devices telling us to break our bad habits — we need technology to help us to leave them behind.

MILLO is not just an improved blender, but a true gadget specifically designed to help us integrate a better diet and nutrition to our modern, busy lifestyles. It takes the noise, mess, and hassle out of blending, making it easier than ever to make the right choices

Get one of the last remaining tickets to SKS to watch Trakšelis pitch onstage with the other Startup Showcase finalists! We’ll see you there.