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The Food Tech Show: Is The Smart Kitchen Dumb? Discuss.

The Spoon gang got together this week to discuss some of the stories we’re reading and writing about.

In this episode of The Food Tech Show, Chris, Jenn and myself talk about:

That it. As always, take a listen to this episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. You can also download it directly to your device or just click play below.

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Steve Nackers on The Evolving Role of Cyber-Security in the Connected Kitchen

Does your blender prefer a specific brand of low-fat yogurt? Is your stovetop eager to share snapshots of last weekend’s epic dinner party? Just how connected are smart kitchens, and more importantly, which appliance knows what (and who are they sharing it with)?

Steve Nackers, corporate Manager of Electronic Controls for Sub-Zero, will be at this year’s Smart Kitchen Summit discussing cybersecurity, the connected kitchen, and the chances of your slow-cooker chili setting off five alarms in all the wrong places.

We sent him a few questions before the October event about how the Sub-Zero team are tackling innovation, performance, and adaptive privacy settings.

This interview has been lighted edited for clarity. 

Tell us more about what you do for Sub-Zero Group, Inc.
I’ve been with Sub-Zero Group, Inc. for over 18 years. During that time, my career has spanned from field support to product launches to innovative research initiatives. I have enjoyed experiencing a wide part of the DNA of this family-owned company and its commitment to its customers — something I’m excited to see even more growth around with the recent breaking ground on our new innovation center that will serve as a hub for research and development.

As the Corporate Manager of Electronic Controls for Sub-Zero Group, Inc., my team will be one of the first to move to the new innovation center where we will work alongside teams from across our three great brands on developing and integrating the controls, software, and innovations that deliver on that promise of quality and value that Sub-Zero Group, Inc. is known for.

How have you seen technology transform the way we cook in the kitchen?
Yes — technology is reshaping the kitchen and the home space around us in ways we see, and in ways we don’t. However, it is important to make sure that those technologies are applied in meaningful ways that enable and enhance the consumer experience. From the NASA-inspired air filter technologies that enhance food preservation to precision software and instrumentation that has evolved greatly in the last decade to provide the consumer greater control and more predictable cooking results, these technologies are reshaping the cooking experience. We continue to take really innovative and new technologies and shape them in ways that help our consumers to have an experience in the kitchen that gives them confidence.

Do you envision a future in which all kitchen appliances are connected and controllable via your phone/voice?
The key thing is providing the consumer with choice. Homeowners still really value the ability to interact with their appliances, but are also looking for ways to improve their efficiency in the kitchen. Their data, privacy, and security should be what they have control over, and we need to enable them to interact with their appliances in the ways that are most seamless and comfortable for them. For some people, that will be voice, for others it is mobile, and still others it is a physical knob. Thoughtfully designing the appliances from day one throughout our engineering process to accommodate that choice and respecting the values of our consumers is what drives our vision of the future.

How do you address consumer concerns about privacy with IoT-enabled devices?
We take security very seriously and have worked closely with organizations like UL and Microsoft from the start to ensure proper measures are in place to be proactive about vulnerabilities. Cybersecurity is an ever-changing landscape, and is something we must continuously evolve and update our security measures to stay on top of. The most important thing is to have a mindset and commitment to security as a priority in every step of your design process and throughout the various levels of your organization. That is something we take seriously and continue to cultivate.

We also understand that consumers have concerns about IoT enabled devices. Our customer service teams are dedicated to working with consumers on their questions. Our hope is always that any concerns they might have we address so effectively that they come away with confidence and a greater sense of trust. To that end, we work to be clear, transparent, and effective in communicating what and how data is handled.

What’s the one kitchen appliance you could never live without?
My Wolf induction cooktop, hands down. Induction is finally making inroads in the U.S., and I’ve converted a few family and friends as well. I had used gas and standard electric methods for years previously, but getting my first Wolf induction cooktop was eye-opening. The power, efficiency, and absolute precision was amazing. To be able to drive a pot of water to rolling boil in under a minute, and yet leave chocolate at a soft melt for as long as needed with such precision on the same devices is incredible. There is a lot of exciting innovation to come in this space too which makes me even more eager for future generations of the product!

Come watch Steve speak on Hacking The Oven: Cybersecurity & The Connected Kitchen at SKS next month! Get 25% off your tickets here.

SideChef Brings Guided Recipes to Haier Smart Fridge Lineup

Today at IFA in Berlin, SideChef and Haier announced a new partnership which will put SideChef’s guided recipes on all new Haier smart fridges released in the European market. The new feature will offer step-by-step cooking instructions and recommend recipes to owners of Haier smart fridges based on the current content of their fridge.

From the release:

Guided recipes are now at users’ fingertips, ensuring successful meal preparation every time. SideChef’s rich recipe content is curated from chefs and culinary professionals, unlocking unlimited meal potential while taking into consideration cuisine cravings, dietary restrictions, and general preferences.

This deal marks another step in the SideChef-Haier relationship, which has been growing steadily for over a year now. The two companies worked closely on development of the GE Kitchen Hub smart display and this past April they expanded their relationship by building an integration that enabled users to send cooking instructions and parameters to different GE appliances from within the SideChef app.

SideChef has in the past done deals with GE in the U.S. and Electrolux is Asia. Now, with the addition of Haier in Europe, SideChef will continue to expand its geographic-specific relationships in the appliance space as it helps Haier build a strong offering in localized language content (such as French and German).

“As Haier China expands its product line out further geographically, we are working with them to have products that are localized through content,” SideChef CEO Kevin Yu told me over the phone. “Recipes are a huge driver for them and others.”

The SideChef content will make its way to all of Haier Europe’s new smart fridges with displays later this year. While the initial version of these guided recipes won’t have the ability to drive and interact with other Haier appliances (such as with the GE implementation in the U.S.), Yu didn’t rule it out from future versions.

And while today’s news is based on the company’s new partnership with a major appliance brand, Yu told me that it’s not just hardware companies he’s talking to nowadays.  Meetings with big food and appliance brands are taking up as much or more of his calendar space as they all have gotten serious about digitization in the face of an ever-growing threat from Amazon. Yu said it started with the Amazon acquisition of Whole Foods and momentum has only grown since that time.

“We’re seeing a lot of urgency from the food guys,” he said.

BSH Home Appliances Invests in Chefling to Bolster the AI-Powered Pantry

BSH Home Appliances (or BSH Hausgeräte GmbH) announced today that it has made a strategic investment in Chefling, maker of an AI-powered assistant for the kitchen that helps a user manage food inventory, create shopping lists and zap digital recipes to their connected appliances. The Munich-based appliance giant will acquire one third of the shares of the Silicon Valley startup as part of the deal, the terms of which were not disclosed. This deal comes a year after Chefling raised $1 million as part of a pre-series A funding round and less than two years after the startup pitched as part of the SKS Startup Showcase.

The deal was driven by BSH’s Digital Business Unit, the group responsible for the Home Connect platform as well as BSH’s Future Home accelerator initiative. BSH sees Home Connect, their Wi-Fi based connectivity platform for their Siemens, Bosch and Gaggenau home appliance brands, as a foundation to offer digital services. The company acquired a controlling interest in Kitchen Stories in 2017 to add guided cooking capabilities to their services toolkit, and with this deal the two companies will look to build out a personalized pantry management digital services layer for HomeConnect.

“With our Hardware+ strategy, we want to offer meaningful support to our consumers in the everyday usage of their appliances,” said Mario Pieper, BSH’s Chief Digital Officer. “Chefling offers digital services that link the entire cooking journey, from inspiration to inventory management, shopping, and cooking. With Chefling’s Artificial Intelligence technology platform, both companies are in a strong position to raise the bar on personalized services and assistance in the kitchen.”

This deal didn’t happen overnight according to Chefling cofounder Amar Krishna. The two companies first announced a partnership during SKS 2018 last October, and over time realized it made sense to explore a deeper relationship. Under the deal, Amar explained that Chefling will look to leverage BSH’s reach to expand connections with grocery and CPG brands, while also building on the startup’s UltraConnect platform which they debuted at CES.

So what does UltraConnect do? According to Krishna, it can take any digital recipe and convert it it into a machine readable format to be used by a connected appliance.  It also enables ‘pantry management’ by taking ingredients on hand – not just the what of what you have, but the weight as well – to automatically generate a “smart recipe”.

The machine learning capabilities at the core of UltraConnect have taken time to build and have gotten stronger as Chefling’s user base has grown into the hundreds of thousands, said Amar. As he told Chris last January, reaching over 600 thousand users meant “giving Chefling the hundreds of thousands of data points (recipes searched for or browsed, recipes chosen, frequency of cooking, etc.) required to do more deep learning and, as Krishna put it “unleash the algorithms.””  

Of course, as with any deal like this, I have to wonder what it means for a startup’s other relationships.  Chefling announced an UltraConnect partnership with GE at CES this January, and so it remains to be seen if GE will remain open to using Chefling’s technology as the startup enters a strategic relationship with BSH. GE also works with Innit and SideChef, and could expand those relationships further. But, since Chefling-BSH wasn’t a full acquisition, it may be the Louiseville-based appliance brand could be fine with the new arrangement.

Food Tech News: GE’s Latest Kitchen Hub, New Vegan IKEA Meatballs, and Meal Delivery Galore

Happy Saturday! This week was a big one for us at The Spoon — we kicked off our shiny new Future Food newsletter covering all things alternative protein, from plant-based meat to insects to cellular agriculture. Make sure to subscribe here.

But for now, let’s turn to this week’s food tech news. We have stories about IKEA’s new plant-based meatballs, GE’s latest smart kitchen hub, and a new frozen meal delivery service. Enjoy!

Mosaic, a new frozen meal delivery company, launches on East Coast
There’s a new D2C meal delivery service on the scene. This week Mosaic, a company which ships frozen, pre-cooked vegetarian bowls to consumers’ doorsteps within one day, began operations on the East Coast. The bowls range in price from $8.99 to $12.49 which is pretty pricey compared to what you’d find in the freezer section of the grocery store, but on par with traditional meal kits. Mosaic raised a seed round of funding in 2018 and is planning to launch in new cities soon.

Photo: GE

GE’s starts selling new kitchen hub, amps up SideChef partnership
The latest version of GE’s kitchen hub, which made its first appearance at CES this January, is now hitting store shelves (h/t CNET). Priced around $1,199, the hub has a built-in smart touchscreen which includes guided cooking capabilities from SideChef.

In fact, SideChef and GE have been ramping up their partnership lately. Sidechef’s app is now connected to a sizeable 74 GE ovens and ranges, allowing home cooks to set cook times, monitor temperature, and change up the cooking mode on their connected appliances.

Photo: IKEA

IKEA’s making a meatier version of their plant-based meatballs
Vegetarians who love Swedish meatballs, rejoice. The Daily Mail reports that IKEA is developing a new plant-based version of their famous meatballs which will look and taste more like the “real thing.” The Swedish furniture giant launched a vegan meatball made of chickpeas and vegetables back in 2015, but this new version will apparently be more in line with the more realistic offerings from Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods. IKEA plans to trial their new meatballs in early 2020.

Photo: Wegmans

Wegmans teams up with DoorDash
This week East Coast supermarket chain Wegmans announced that it will partner DoorDash to launch its Wegmans Meals 2GO food delivery service. Hungry people can use the Wegmans Meals 2GO app to order from the Wegmans’ prepared food section, which includes pizza, salads, and sushi. Customers can opt for carry-out or curbside pickup, or can get delivery for orders of $20 or more if they live within a 5 mile radius. So far the service is available in two locations in Rochester, New York and one spot in Virginia, and Wegmans plans to roll out the service to 40 stores by the end of this year.

Did we miss anything? Tweet us @TheSpoonTech!

Food Tech News: Morningstar Goes Vegan, Smart Cheesemaker Fromaggio Launches Kickstarter

This week’s food tech news roundup starts out with a tale of two cheeses. On one hand, we have Morningstar, which has pledged to make all their products vegan over the next two years (cheese and all). On the other, we have Fromaggio, a smart cheesemaking device which just launched on Kickstarter, and which will allow you to make cheese from scratch in your own kitchen.

Kind of makes you hungry, right? Well go make a grilled cheese sandwich (vegan or not) and settle in to read our latest missive from the world of food tech news. In addition to all the cheese, this week we’ve got stories on canned tuna blockchain and a new tool that’ll tell you what wine to pair with your recipes. Enjoy!

Photo: Morningstar Farms.

Morningstar Farms to go 100% vegan by 2021
This week Morningstar Farms, which is owned by Kellogg, pledged to make its product line completely vegan by 2021. The company already sells plant-based products — from veggie breakfast sausage to burger patties — but will stop using eggs and dairy. Morningstar Farms is also debuting a vegan “Cheezeburger” at Expo West this week, which is their vegan Meat Lovers patty topped with dairy-free “cheddar.” This shift is a strategic move on Morningstar’s part to hone in on blossoming demand for plant-based products, especially protein.

Photo: Fromaggio Kickstarter.

Smart cheesemaking device Fromaggio launches on Kickstarter
For those who aren’t avoiding dairy, you might consider backing Fromaggio, a smart countertop cheesemaker that launched on Kickstarter this week. We’ve been fans of Fromaggio since we got to sample its tasty products at our Food Tech Live event at CES this past January. Cheese-lovers can snag a Fromaggio for $299 (the $249 level has already sold out), with estimated delivery in March 2020 (though we all know the struggle of crowdfunded hardware). The Fromaggio will retail for $579.

 

Photo by Thomas Martinsen on Unsplash

Allrecipes has a new tool that will recommend wine pairings
This Tuesday Meredith, owner of recipe recommendation site Allrecipes, unveiled a new tool that will recommend wine pairings to go with certain recipes in their database (h/t Digiday). Wine recommendations will be shoppable in U.S. states where it’s legal. The tool is part of Meredith’s partnership with Ste. Michelle Wine Estates, a vintner in Washington State (where Allrecipes is based), and will initially have 17 Ste. Michelle wines available.

Photo: Bumblebee.

Bumble Bee Foods and Carrefour use blockchain to track tuna and milk
It was quite the week for food companies to experiment with blockchain — though I suppose with buzz around the new technology, it’s always quite the week. Bumble Bee Foods announced that it has been piloting a program which uses blockchain to trace its yellowfin tuna from the time it’s caught until when it arrives on store shelves (h/t Fortune).

Over in Europe, Carrefour stated that it will soon begin rolling out a new product, Carrefour Quality Line (CQL) milk, which uses blockchain to provide increased traceability. Consumers can scan a QR code on CQL milk and get information about where the cows were milked, and when it arrived on retail shelves.

Did we miss anything? Tweet us @TheSpoonTech to clue us in on any food tech news!

Single? Samsung Launches Matchmaking Service Based Off What’s In Your Fridge

You know how they say that the best way to a man’s (or woman’s) heart is through their stomach? Well, Samsung is hoping that it’s actually through your fridge.

Just in time for Valentine’s Day, the technology giant is launching an online dating service called… wait for it… Refrigerdating. Users can upload a photo of their fridge (presumably after throwing away their moldy leftovers and Single Girl margarita mix) for free to the Refrigerdating website. After adding a short bio and a way to get in touch (phone number (!!!), email, etc), they’ll be given a string of other fridge shots and can either select “Not to My Taste” or “Let’s Get Cooking.” Matches will appear on the site and either party can reach out to connect to the human owner of the appliance that caught their eye. And who said romance is dead?

The app is meant to work in tandem with the Samsung Family Hub Refrigerator, which is outfitted with an Amazon Dash Button-enabled touchscreen on the door and an interior camera meant to let you track your fridge’s contents (and their expiration dates) from anywhere. But never fear: even those with plain old regular ‘fridges can still find love through Refrigerdating. As of now, there’s no mobile version of the app; it’s only accessible through a web browser.

According to CNET, the idea for Refrigerdating originated in Sweden, where there are apparently lots of single people and sexy fridges. Currently, the vast majority of users are in the Nordic region, but anyone in the world can try out the app. The release is clearly timed for Valentine’s Day, but there’s no word from Samsung on how long the service will last.

For Samsung, there’s an obvious payoff: getting a literal glimpse into your fridge, collecting data on what you’re buying and how you’re storing. From a romantic perspective, though, the idea may seem laughable at first (the cheesy name doesn’t help). But the more I thought about it, the more I decided there may actually be something to choosing your potential mate based on what they eat every day. After all, food is a huge part of life and can give good insight into individual values, lifestyle, and tastes — literally and figuratively.

If you know that someone likes organic yogurt, grass-fed beef, and natural wine, you’ll have a very different picture than if you know they subsist off of Gatorade and single-serve microwaveable meals. Of course, that’s assuming that no one tries to Refrigerdate catfish by hiding their Kraft singles behind their artisanal cheddar, the equivalent of posting a photo on a dating app of yourself ten years prior (when you still had hair).

In the end, selecting someone based off of the contents of their fridge makes just about as much sense as selecting based off of a few photos and a one-sentence bio. So if you’re hungry for love this Valentine’s season, maybe it’s worth putting yourself — and your fridge — out there.

Newsletter: Markov’s “Google Cafeteria in a Box”, Disrupting Office Food & Future of Beer

This is the post version of our weekly newsletter. If you’d like to get the weekly Spoon in your inbox, you can subscribe here.

Office Food is Hot

If you’ve spent any time inside a cubicle farm during your career, you know that office food can often be uninspiring. You forget to pack a lunch and chances are unhealthy options are all you have to choose from when it comes to the break room vending machine.

Luckily for us worker bees, the office lunch is having a moment, in large part thanks to the influence of Google. Google’s food service, under the stewardship of Michiel Bakker (who spoke at the 2017 Smart Kitchen Summit), has become the industry gold standard by showing how instrumental food is in keeping workers happy and productive.

Most companies, however, don’t have the resources of a Google, which means that emulating the search giant’s food program is often easier said than done. That’s why one startup named Markov has launched a new food service offering called Hot Pantry that they are basically pitching as a “Google cafeteria in a box.”

Readers of the Spoon may associate Markov with their Level smart oven, a cooking appliance that uses patented RF beam steering technology to cook food at different heat levels within the cooking chamber. Markov is still primarily a cooking technology company — the Hot Pantry service comes with their smart oven, after all — but the startup is now partnering up with food companies to stock the fridges (also provided by Markov) of mid-sized companies who do not have similar resources to invest in their food program.

I started writing about the growing momentum in startup activity behind new food options for the office a couple of years ago, and this year it seems like we’ve seen even more momentum for this space. Markov is just the latest startup to jump in, and Chris Albrecht this week wrote about a handful of others offering new takes of office food.

I’m excited about this newfound interest in feeding people well at work. So many of us spend a huge chunk of our lives sitting behind a desk, it makes sense for us — and our employers — to be considerate about how we are feeding ourselves.

Photo: Michael Wolf, in Pike Brewing Co’s Beer Museum

AI’s Impact on Food is Growing

The Level oven is just one example of how artificial intelligence — or AI — is becoming more important in food; a trend that shows no indication of slowing down.

Another example of this trend is highlighted in a story this week by Chris which looks at how food industry employers in China are implementing big-brother-esque AI systems to monitor kitchen workers for unsanitary conditions.

From the piece: Installed cameras will monitor the kitchen, and if they catch unsanitary behaviors, as analyzed by the AI, an alert is sent to the manager. The system will also be hooked into equipment like fridges to detect any anomalies that might cause problems.

China’s been perhaps the most aggressive in employing AI in surveillance systems with technology such as facial recognition, so it’s not all that surprising employers would embrace the technology as a way to squeeze more productivity out of workers. The march forward of AI and automation is inevitable in service industry jobs, but it’s also worth noting there’s a growing discomfort among workers and society at large about this technology. Bottom line: the societal reaction to cutting edge technology and its impact on us as both employees and consumers will become as much the story as the technologies — and their capabilities — themselves.

Speaking of automation, it was a topic that came up during a meetup we held this week in one of Seattle’s most historic craft brewpubs, where I led a conversation on one of my favorite subjects: beer. On the panel Annie Johnson, onetime Homebrewer of the Year and master brewer for PicoBrew, said that she believed that automation led to better beer. “To get good beer, you need automation,” she said.

The meetup also spanned other topics, including the big impact millennials are having on the beer market. This generation’s growing influence on all things food has led to a trend that Erin James of Sip Northwest calls the “adulting” of beverages that are traditionally non-alcoholic, such as kombucha and sparkling water.

From Catherine Lamb’s wrapup: According to James, in the millennial demographic, beer has surpassed spirits as the most popular alcoholic beverage. However, this audience is not just driven by taste. “They’re also very value-driven,” she explained. And they value both ingredient sources (local is king), opt for local craft breweries and prefer cans to bottles (for environmental reasons).

We had lots of other great stories this week, so make sure to check them out below.

Also, if you haven’t heard about our new one-day event on food robotics and automation, Articulate, you will want to check out our site. We’ve added some great new speakers, including person leading the charge in robotics for Albertsons, Narayan Iyengar, and Sony’s chief robotics engineer, Masahiro Fujita. Early Bird tickets for this April 16th San Francisco event are on sale now, so get ‘em while they’re hot!

Finally, our CBD slack chat went so well, we’re going to do it again. We will be announcing our new one next week, so make sure to sign up for our food tech slack if you want to participate in the next one!

Have a great rest of your week,
Mike

In the 01/31/2019 edition:
Robots + Connected Kitchen Appliances Can Help Diabetics Manage Diets
Anyone with kids knows that getting them to eat healthy can be a challenge. That challenge is compounded if your child has a disease like diabetes, where their diets must be strictly managed. That’s where Belgium-based IDLab thinks robots can help, especially for older kids who are a little more independent. In the video below, […]

Markov Rolls Out Hot Pantry Food Service, A ‘Google Cafeteria’ in a Box
Let’s face it: Not every company is a Google when it comes to profitability, technology prowess or lunch. Wait, lunch? Yep. Google’s food program has become the gold standard in the tech world and beyond for its healthy choices and focus on sustainability, and has played an outsized role over the past decade in raising […]

Domino’s Just Made It Even Easier to Deliver Pizza — in Saudi Arabia
If you order Domino’s pizza, your days of relaying special delivery instructions to the driver could soon be over. The pizza chain-turned tech company just announced via a press release it has expanded its partnership with location-technology company what3words to Saudi Arabia. Domino’s has already been delivering to geographic locations called Hotspots like parks and […]

Now With 600,000 Users, Chefling Turns On its Machine Learning Switch
Chefling released an update to its kitchen assistant app this week that the company says will create more personalized recommendations. The app update also includes enhanced pantry management as well as smart appliance controls. Previously, we described Chefling’s service this way: With the Chefling app, users can scan barcodes or take a picture of their […]

For the Future of Beer, “New is King” — That Means Cannabis, Automation, and Glitter
Fittingly, we held our Future of Beer food tech meetup last night at Pike Brewing Company’s Beer Museum, which features an epic collection of memorabilia spanning from the invention of beer in 6,000 B.C Sumeria to Prohibition to the craft brewery revolution of today. But we were concerned with where beer is heading next.

Costa Vida’s Journey to Tablet Hell and Back
“It was hard to find that line between encouraging the innovation and maintaining sanity,” Costa Vida’s Dave Conger recently said of his company’s journey into restaurant-delivery technology. As is the case for most restaurants now, the fast-casual chain saw the need to implement delivery and its accompanying pieces of technology into daily operations to keep […]

Is Big Brother Coming to Restaurant Kitchens?
As if food service didn’t have enough to worry about, what with robots predicted to automate many of jobs and put employment of actual humans in jeopardy. Now, even those humans who still have kitchen jobs in the future may have to contend with Big Brother peeking over their shoulder as they work. ECNS.com has […]

Restaurant Delivery Deals Change the Game for Super Bowl Snacking
Vegan burgers, free NFL gear, and mysterious boxes are all part of this year’s lineup.

Giant Foods Opening a Physical Hub for Ecommerce Orders
GIANT Foods announced yesterday it will open a new physical hub in Pennsylvania that only services ecommerce orders. With this move, Giant joins the ranks of grocery stores architecting new experiences to accommodate the growth in online shopping. Opening Feb. 12 in Lancaster, PA, the new 38,000 sq. ft. hub will be called Giant Direct, […]

Lavva Uses Pili Nut to Make Legit Delicious Plant-Based Yogurt
As a lactose-intolerant person who loves her morning yogurt & granola, I’ve tried my fair share of vegan yogurts. Usually I’m disappointed. Most plant-based yogurts are bitter or have an off-putting grainy texture; some just taste like a straight-up cup of either soy or coconut.

Podcast: How Tech is Changing The Job of the Kitchen Product Reviewer

No matter what publication a kitchen product reviewer writes for, one thing they all have in common nowadays is the need to consider is how technology is changing the way people cook. At SKS 2018, I sat down with four of the leading reviewers in the business to talk about just that.

On the panel were:

  • Lisa McManus – America’s Test Kitchen
  • Joe Ray – Wired
  • Ashlee Clarke Thompson – CNET
  • Wilson Rothman – Wall Street Journal

Among the topics we discuss are whether you should control everything through an app (or just be able to turn the thing on), how to tell when a new category is about to break out, and just what qualifies as kitchen tech?

Bottom line: If you make kitchen products for a living, this is a must listen.

You listen to the podcast by clicking play below, downloading it directly or on your favorite podcast apps such as Apple Podcasts or Stitcher. And oh yeah – if you’re a visual person, you can watch the video of the panel here.

Suvie Refrigerator+Four-Zone Cooker Makes Public Debut at Food Tech Live

Suvie, the connected countertop appliance that refrigerates your food and uses four-zone cooking to automatically have it ready for you when you want it, made its first official debut to the public this evening at The Spoon’s first ever Food Tech Live event in Las Vegas.

We’ve been following Suvie ever since it blasted through its Kickstarter goal last year, and were excited to see what will be a production machine. Check out this video with Suvie Co-Founder and CEO Robin Liss as she shows off the device and walks us through how it works.

Suvie Debuts at Food Tech Live in Las Vegas

Here Are Our Smart Kitchen Predictions for 2019

I used to think making predictions about consumer technology in the run-up to CES was a fool’s errand. After all, all it takes is one or two surprise announcements from a big player or ambitious startup to throw all of your assumptions for the coming year into question.

But my thinking about this has changed.  After the past couple CES’s, I’ve come to the conclusion that anything that comes out of the big consumer tech show almost invariably underscores trends we’ve already been observing rather than surprise us with entirely new ones.

So here, a week before the big show, are my smart kitchen predictions for 2019.

Big appliance Makers Get Into the Smart Oven Game

One of the big plans in my home for 2019 is a kitchen remodel.  Not surprisingly, I can’t wait to replace our old Amana oven from the 90s with a smart oven. The only problem? My wife wants a built-in oven and pretty much all the latest cutting-edge consumer ovens like the June and Brava are countertop appliances*.

The good news is that will soon change. Big appliance brands have all been investing in R&D to create new technology to power their next generation of appliances, and 2019 will be the year we’ll finally see built-in cooking appliances integrate smart features beyond just Wi-Fi. And it’s not just ovens. GE’s integration of the Hestan Cue technology is a sign surface cooking will get better and smarter too in 2019.

Now if I can only get my wife to hold off on the remodel for a few more months.

Microwaves Get Smart

In the world of kitchen tech, no appliance gets picked on more than the microwave. That’s because, for all its ubiquity, microwaves use tech developed during World War II to create results that are often less than perfect.

But the microwave as we know it is transforming, and it goes way beyond Amazon getting into the game. Startups like Markov are using AI to essentially create intelligent microwaves that can better steer their energy to heat with better precision, and big appliance brands like BSH are investigating microwaves with internal cameras to monitor cooking and adjust heating in realtime during a cooking session. Meanwhile, food companies like Conagra are also researching ways to create tailored heating algorithms for different frozen food product SKUs. Finally, I expect 2019 will be the year other big brands will join Miele in building home appliances with next-generation RF cooking technology that could essentially do away with traditional microwaves altogether.

Next-Gen Interfaces Are More Than Just Voice

At some point over the past year, voice assistants crossed the chasm from being “the future” to the everyday and commonplace.  And while the mainstreaming of voice assistants from Amazon and Google has meant hundreds of millions of devices installed in the field, I still think the future of consumer interfaces isn’t all spoken word.

So if every single interaction in the kitchen won’t start with a conversation with Alexa or Google, what will that mean?  As I’ve written before, projected touch screen interfaces are potential game-changers, and finally last year we saw a big appliance maker in BSH that seemed serious about bringing their projection interface (called PAI) to market.

Finally, while we’ve seen some plateauing of interest in chatbots as a control layer, I still think we’ll continue to see social and messenger integrations create interesting conversational interfaces in coming years, especially as Gen Z comes into their own as a consumer force.

The Kitchen Computer Isn’t Coming. It’s Already Here

A few years ago, word got out about a secret Amazon project called Kabinet in which the Seattle e-commerce giant was supposedly building a ‘kitchen computer’.  While the company never released a product called they referred to as an “kitchen computer”, my assumption has always been that the Echo Show was the result of this secret effort and could have easily have been called just that.

Now just a couple years later, the voice-enabled smart display has become one of tech’s biggest battlegrounds as Amazon, Google and even Facebook jockey for a space on our kitchen counters.  Because these devices are trojan horses for commerce and services sold into the home, these companies see the kitchen – the home’s central hub for most families – as the most desirable landing spot for these devices. In 2019, I expect these companies to continue investing into food and cooking-centric applications and to beef up their partner rosters (like Google’s hookup with Innit) in order to build these capabilities out further.

The Emergence of the Sentient Kitchen

Last month, I uncovered a Whirlpool patent for a computer vision system that would use machine learning to help it better understand behaviors within the kitchen and react to them. It was a fairly expansive and ambitious patent, one which told me Whirlpool sees AI as one of the key battlegrounds for the future of their space.

And the appliance giant isn’t alone.  Amazon has been working on anticipatory food delivery while startups like Icebox are building AI-powered systems that make sure you never run out of eggs. Add in some interesting research in areas like synthetic sensors and we’re seeing the foundations for the sentient kitchen being built before our eyes, where the kitchen and underlying systems become able to anticipate and react to the consumer’s needs.

Food-Driven Revenue Models Come Further Into Focus

While the appliance business has historically focused on selling metal boxes, 2019 will be the year many appliance brands adapt their business models to include recurring revenue through food sales (subscription and otherwise). Tovala and Nomiku have been working on home food delivery for a couple years, and over the past six months they were joined by the likes of Brava, June and ChefSteps. 2019 will also see big appliance brands move in this direction as well, and an early sign of this is LG’s Home Brew appliance, a home beer brew system with an accompanying subscription ingredient business.

2019 will see also see grocery and delivery platform players making focused efforts to partner with appliance brands. In broadband parlance, cooking appliances are essentially the “last mile” when it comes to food decisions, meaning those who control the cooking and food storage control, in many ways, consumer food spending.  Amazon knew this years ago (hence the “kitchen computer”) and others are just now waking up to the strategic importance of the connected kitchen.

There are my predictions for the smart kitchen in 2019, now let’s see what happens at CES next week to reinforce those thoughts (or blow them up).

If you’ll be at CES showing off some cool kitchen or foodtech, direct message via Twitter. We’ll have the entire Spoon team there reporting from the show. 

*The lone exception was the June built-in oven, but the startup essentially end-of-lifed that appliance when they launched the gen 2 June.

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.