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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

smart oven

The Food Tech Show: Steam Ovens, Sustainable Packaging & Paying With Your Face

The Anova Precision Oven was first announced at The Spoon’s own Smart Kitchen Summit in 2016 and now it’s finally shipping. Chris and Mike strategize about how to convince their significant others to fit yet another countertop appliance in the kitchen.

Other stories discuss on this week’s show:

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Whirlpool’s W Labs Countertop Smart Oven is Now Selling for Half The Original Price

Did you know Whirlpool has a countertop smart oven?

Don’t worry, most people didn’t, in part because Whirlpool never talked much about it after it launched in early 2019.

But now that you do know about it, you might also be interested to know they’re selling it for just $399. That’s half the original sticker price for the smart oven from W Labs, Whirlpool’s innovation hub. From the looks of it, the price reduction looks permanent.

So why is W Labs selling its June clone which debuted in January 2019 so cheap? It might be because the group is looking to clear out the remaining inventory of a product which was, from the beginning, positioned as an experiment. They only made 2000 of them and they only sold the product online and not through traditional Whirlpool appliance showroom sales channels.

Still, the wind down makes me wonder if the big appliance manufacturer is making way for a more permanent replacement. Whirlpool tends to do big refreshes to its product lineup every two years, which means 2021 is a refresh year after a relatively quiet 2020 and a big 2019. As part of a larger refresh, I can see a countertop smart oven as a logical candidate for the lineup.

It also appears Whirlpool is closing out its scan-to-cook smart microwaves and is out of stock on many of its smart ovens or ranges. While some of this could be due to COVID-related supply chain disruptions, this could be another indication that the company might be starting to wind down its current lineup more broadly as it prepares for a new line of smart ovens for 2021.

Tovala’s David Rabie on How He Built a Loyal User Base For His Smart Kitchen & Food Delivery Startup

Despite the complexity of building two businesses at once and presenting them as one integrated whole, Tovala’s managed to build a highly loyal user base with what is arguably the highest lifetime user value in the connected kitchen space.

I decided to catch up with Tovala’s CEO David Rabie and ask him how he’s managed to find success while other companies have struggled. 

The interview is an exclusive offering for Spoon Plus members. You can learn more about Spoon Plus here. 

Smart Oven & Food Delivery Startup Tovala Raises $20 Million Series B To Fund Growth

Tovala, the Chicago-based smart oven and meal-delivery startup, announced today it has raised a $20 million in Series B funding.

The round, led by agrifood venture capital firm Finistere Ventures, follows $9 million in Series A funding, bringing the company’s total funding close to $40 million.

It’s an interesting time for Tovala to raise such an impressive B round, coming during a pandemic where many venture firms have refocused their efforts on stabilizing existing portfolio investments and large corporate investment arms have either dialed back or outright eliminated venture initiatives.

But while the pandemic has chilled many industries, Tovala has only seen business accelerate the last few months in part due to its position at the intersection of two markets benefitting from quarantine-induced cooking: countertop home cooking appliances and home food delivery.

As we’ve noted here at the Spoon, the combination of stay-at-home orders and restaurant dine-in shutdowns led to an explosion in home cooking activity, which led to countertop home cooking equipment sales growth that was at multiples of normal industry volumes.

But according to Rabie, who I caught up with last week to discuss their latest funding, while Tovala has experienced strong growth during the pandemic, their business had actually started taking off in the second half of 2019.

“The business has been growing really fast for nearly a year now,” said Rabie. “The investors took comfort in the fact that this wasn’t a COVID trend where our business took off and might go away when normalcy returns, but actually the opposite. Business was booming pre-COVID, COVID accelerated that growth, and we believe it will accelerate adoption after COVID as people build new habits.”

Since Tovala started shipping a few years ago, I asked him why business took off last year. According to Rabie, the main difference is they changed how they talked about the product with their customers.

“We went through this exercise over the first half of 2019 to rebrand the company and better speak to our core customer,” said Rabie. “If you come to our website today versus a year ago, it looks like night and day, it’s different messaging, different photography, different videography, different user experience, same core product, just marketed differently.”

After Rabie and Tovala spent time talking to their key customers who used the Tovala multiple times per week, they realized the company’s value was in helping to solve the problem of weeknight dinner. They also realized they weren’t an oven company so much as a service company.

“The oven is the vehicle to access that food but most of our customers are not really in the market for an oven. It was kind of a lightbulb moment.”

After the rebrand, the company has seen an increase in annualized revenue of 300 percent since September of last year. In some ways, Tovala has been the little smart kitchen company that could, continuing to grow and raising more funding as other, more high profile companies, have struggled.

I asked Rabie why Tovala has succeeded when others haven’t.

“A lot of companies haven’t made it and I think there’s a lot of reasons why,” said Rabie. “The first reason is (you need to be) super clear on the problem you’re solving and making sure it’s a real problem.”

He also said that while he thinks a recurring revenue business is necessary nowadays, it can’t just be an afterthought.

“Whatever that subscription component is, it has to be inherent to the product and it has to make a lot of sense.”

Tovala plans to use the new funding round to increase staff, expand production capabilities and fuel growth. And while Rabie indicated they will build on top of their current technology, he made it clear the funding won’t largely be sunk into developing a next-generation oven.

Makes sense for an oven company that isn’t really an oven company.

If you’re a Spoon Plus subscriber, you can see my full interview with David Rabie discussing his latest funding round here.

The Spoon’s Black Friday 2019 Food Tech Deal Roundup

You may not have fully digested that pumpkin pie yet, but it’s time to start shopping for Black Friday deals.

To help makes things easier, we’ve put together the top food tech and kitchen tech Black Friday deals in one place. We’ll be updating this post throughout the next couple days, so make sure to check back.

If you see a good deal you think we haven’t mentioned yet, drop us a line.

DrinkWorks Home Bar for $199 (50% off)

If you’re lucky enough to live in a state (Florida, Missouri, California, Pennsylvania and New York) where DrinkWorks has began selling its pod-based home cocktail robot, you can take advantage of a half off deal for Black Friday. Prices goes up on Cyber Monday, but those same residents can still save $100 on the Home Bar through December 31st. To take advantage of 50% off pricing, use discount code BLACKFRIDAY on the DrinkWorks website.

Terra Kaffe TK-01: $100 Off

While some of us are still waiting for our Spinn coffee machines, those of you still in the market for a do-everything grind and brew coffee machine can take advantage of a $100-bucks-off Black Friday deal for the Terra Kaffe TK-01. Use discount code BF2019 at checkout on the Terra Kaffe website for a limited time to get this barista-in-a-box for $675.

Nomiku Meals: 40% Off

While still selling its consumer sous vide appliance, Nomiku has largely pivoted to focusing on its sous vide ready meals. This week the company is selling all of its meals for 40% off. Use discount code BLACKFRIDAY at checkout.

Instant Vortex Air Fryer: $79

You finally joined the pressure cooker crowd last holiday season, so isn’t it time you try an air fryer? Walmart is offering $40 off on the Instant 7 in 1 air fryer for Black Friday.

Tovala Connected Steam Oven: $99

As Chris wrote about earlier this week, the Tovala connected steam oven is on sale through Black Friday for $99 (regular retails is $299), provided you buy a minimum of six meals for the scan and cook appliance.

PicoBrew Pico C Beer Brew Appliance: $150 Off

PicoBrew products are perpetually on sale nowadays, but you can pick up an especially good price this Black Friday by scooping up a Pico C for just $249, which is $150 off the list price. You can get this and lots of other deals on the PicoBrew offers page, no promo code needed.

Brava Smart Oven: $250 Off

Brava just got bought by Middleby, so it looks like the company’s celebrating by dropping the price on its smart oven. You can pick up the Brava oven “Starter Set” for $250 off the regular price of $1095 over on the company website.

Anova Pro: $100 Off

Anova usually has a bunch of Black Friday deals on offer and this year is no exception. The sous vide market leader’s latest product, the Anova Pro, is on sale for $299 this Black Friday, $100 off the list price.

Free Impossible Burger at BurgerIM

If you want to step away from your computer on Black Friday (we recommend it), new burger chain BurgerIM is offering a free Impossible Burger to any guest with the purchase of a BurgerIM burger. The chain has 212 locations and you can find out if one is nearby on their website.

Suvie: $200 Off (Black Friday Only)

If you want a home cooking appliance that truly does it all, you might consider the Suvie multi-zone cooking robot. The appliance can cook a protein, starch, veggie and sauce all the same time and has a built-in refrigerator to keep things cool while you’re away. All that functionality isn’t cheap – the Suvie is normally $1,199 – but for today only you can get $200 off by using the discount code BF200.

Cinder Precision Grill: $80 off

Chris had the Cinder precision grill as one of his food tech holiday picks, so if you want to give this unique dual cooking surface precision heating appliance to the foodie in your life, you can pick one up today for $349, a full $80 bucks off full retail. The deal is Black Friday only, so better hurry.

ckbk: $24.99 (50% off) for the ‘Spotify of Cookbooks)

Why just buy someone a cookbook when you can buy them pretty much every cookbook under the sun? The ckbk service is aptly called by some the Spotify for cookbooks, giving the subscriber access to over 400 cookbooks. You can get a year subscription to ckbk for $24.99 or a six month subscription for $14.99 through this week.

Meater Connected Thermometer: 20% Off

The Meater connected thermometer is one of those gifts that seems like they were designed in a lab to perfectly fit the tech-forward griller in your life and today you can get 20% off the Meater or any other product in the Meater store.

Middleby Acquires Brava

Brava, makers of the eponymous countertop smart oven, has been acquired by industrial and residential cooking equipment company, Middleby. TechCrunch broke the news, and details of the acquisition were not provided other than it was a mix of cash and stock. The four-year-old Brava had raised $12 million in funding

Brava came out of stealth in July of 2018, showing off its countertop smart oven that uses light to cook and has the ability to cook different types of food at different temperatures at the same time. The Brava oven shipped alongside an accompanying meal plan in November of last year, costing a whopping $1,000.

Brava Founder and CEO John Pleasants said in the TechCrunch article that the company was “closing in on 5,000 customers,” which isn’t a lot. But it’s not hard to understand why Brava has struggled in the market. It was the most expensive of the countertop smart ovens at the time, and in our testing, it was hampered by the small cooking cavity and tripped up by other design details that diminished the experience.

The smart oven market is still relatively new, but it’s a crowded space, with other startups like June, Tovala, Suvie already offering products and Anova‘s smart oven on the way (not to mention existing appliance makers like Whirlpool). Brava’s high price probably prevented the company from gaining serious traction.

As far as its future, the Brava brand will remain and become part of Middleby’s commercial and residential offering (Middleby owns the Viking brand). Pleasants will stay on as CEO of Brava, while the company’s 38 employees will move over to Middleby.

Depending on how this holiday season goes, I wouldn’t be surprised to see similar smart oven acquisitions in 2020.

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.

Amazon Issued Patent For System That Coordinates Microwave Oven With Wi-Fi Network Traffic

Back when the government first set aside radio spectrum real estate for home and industrial use in 1947, one of the very first applications they had in mind was the microwave oven. Only the then nascent cooking technology, which operates within the 2.4 GHz radio band, wouldn’t be using the newly reserved spectrum to send communication signals over the air, but would instead be creating electromagnetic radiation to heat food.

Three quarters of a century later microwave ovens are still heating our food, only nowadays their widespread use congests the same ISM bands (Industrial, Scientific and Medical) that are now widely used for digital communication networks such as those based on Wi-Fi. Most of the time it’s not a problem, at least until someone gets hungry and zaps a snack in the microwave. When that happens, the device’s electromagnetic radiation can disrupt the quality of a Wi-Fi network operating in the 2.4 GHz frequency band.*

In other words, heating up Hot Pockets usually results in dropped data packets.

Most of us tolerate the problem because we don’t really think about it. Not Amazon. This week the company was issued US patent number 10,477,585 for a system that coordinates the heating element of the microwave (the magnetron) with the home’s Wi-Fi network.

How does it work? Basically by employing a system where the microwave oven and Wi-Fi network coordinate network traffic around the magnetron’s on-off cycle.

From the patent:  the “wireless communication device (e.g., the microwave oven itself, a speech interface device in the environment of the microwave oven, etc.) may determine if the magnetron of the microwave oven is operating, and, if the magnetron is operating, a coordination mechanism can be implemented to send data wirelessly in the environment during the magnetron’s off period, and to cease sending the data in the environment during the magnetron’s on period.”

So why would Amazon care about coordinating our microwave ovens with local digital communication traffic? Maybe in part to make sure the company’s tens of millions of Wi-Fi devices in our homes in the form of Alexa-powered Echos and Ring doorbells work well together. The company also has its own microwave oven product (as well as a new multifunction smart oven), so it’s not too much of a stretch to see the company implementing this technology in its own products as a potential differentiator.

In the end, it’s hard to say whether Amazon will ever even put this patent to use. The company is a prolific researcher and patent filer, and while the bulk of its patents have to do with things like cloud computing, drones and artificial intelligence, every now and then one of their patents is of a more domestic nature. But, like with the Seattle giant’s other patents like the electronic nose in a refrigerator or a smart garden, it sure is fun to speculate.

*Sure, network nerds will note that many Wi-Fi networks nowadays operate in a higher, less-cluttered frequency in the 5GHz radio band, but most Wi-Fi gear is dual-mode and still operate periodically in the 2.4 GHz band. 

Amazon Announces its Own Alexa Enabled Smart Oven

Amidst the many, many (manymanymanymany) announcements Amazon threw out at its special event here in Seattle today was its brand new Alexa enabled smart oven.

The Amazon Smart Oven is actually a four-in-one device that is a microwave, convection oven, air fryer and food warmer. The Smart Oven features voice control, so you can tell it to “cook one chicken breast,” as well as a scan-to-cook feature to automatically cook packaged foods. The Amazon Smart Oven is available for pre-order (bundled with an Echo Dot) for $249 with delivery starting in November.

The new smart oven is similar to the Alexa powered microwave Amazon announced at its event last year in that they are both what the company calls “reference models.” This is shorthand for saying that even though they are for sale, Amazon made these devices more to demonstrate what an Alexa powered device is capable of and how easy it is to build Alexa into hardware.

But there are a few drawbacks with Amazon’s Smart Oven. The voice control and scan-to-cook capabilities, while neat, also show off some of the shortcomings of the appliance. Just like the Amazon microwave, the smart oven must be paired with an Alexa device in order to make voice control work, so you can’t just use it out of the box on its own (hence the bundled Dot). And the oven does not have a built-in camera, so you have to use your phone or some other camera-equipped Echo device to read the barcode for scan-to-cook.

The most obvious comparison for the Amazon Smart Oven is the June oven. Both are multiple cooking devices in one, both feature cloud-based automated cook programs specific to different types of food, and both have temperature probes that plug into the device itself to monitor the internal cooking temperature of your food. Oh, and by the way, Amazon’s Alexa fund invested in June.

But the June costs $700, more than twice the amount of the Amazon smart oven. Sure, the June has more cook types (dehydrator, roast, etc.) and computer vision to automatically identify your food, but how much of that will consumers think they actually need when compared to the Amazon Smart Oven? Especially since Amazon’s device is not only a convection oven, but also sports a microwave, which the June does not. And more importantly, what happens when Amazon features its own oven on the front page of its massive retail site?

With the holidays approaching, we’ll soon find out.

‘Office-Food-as-a-Service’ Startup Level Discontinues Hot Pantry Service

The Spoon has learned this week that Level (formerly known as Markov), a startup that offers a managed office-food-as-a-service offering combining both food delivery and an AI-powered smart oven, has started to pull out of customer installations.

According to our sources, Level employees have picked up the Level oven and fridge that combine to make the Level Hot Pantry service from customer locations this week, telling customers that things “haven’t worked out.”

I reached out to the company and was able to confirm the news.

“We are going to discontinue the Level Hot Pantry program,” cofounder and CTO Arvind Pereira told me via email. “We are working on a transaction and will have more to share in the future.”

Level is (or was) one of a number of different startups trying to rethink and innovate around the office meal. Other startups combining new cooking tech alongside food delivery include Genie and Kitchenmate, while a number of others like Byte and Chowbotics are offering up different spins on fresh food delivery and assembly.

Pereira indicated they are looking at selling the Hot Pantry offering (which presumably includes the food delivery business and the smart oven), but it’s yet to be determined if the company itself will continue as a going concern.

We will update this story as we learn more…

LG Appliances Will Automatically Cook Tovala Meals

LG announced today that it will integrate Tovala’s cooking technology into select LG ovens and ranges later this year. This means that people will be able to cook Tovala meals without the need for Tovala’s countertop smart oven in yet another move that makes the startup more of an open cooking platform.

Cooking Tovala meals with LG appliances will be a little different than cooking with the Tovala smart oven itself. Customers will scan the Tovala meal’s barcode with the Tovala mobile app, which will communicate the automated cook program to the connected LG appliance. What’s curious is that not all of the compatible LG models include a steam cooking function, which Tovala’s oven has, so we wonder how that will impact the finished product.

More importantly, however, is that this is the second move in as many weeks where Tovala has opened up its products. Last week, the company introduced the Scan the Store feature for its smart oven that allows people to scan the barcodes of store-bought foods and have the device automatically cook them. That move broadened the utility of the Tovala oven, and today’s partnership makes the company’s meal plans available to people who don’t own a Tovala. Though that potential audience can’t be very big, as I don’t imagine there are a lot of people without Tovala ovens clamoring for the company’s meal kits.

However, partnering with LG may not be about getting new meal kit customers, it could be making those meal kits more useful to existing customers. What isn’t mentioned in the press release is whether the larger cooking cavity of a traditional oven will allow people to cook more meals at a time. As my boss, Mike Wolf noted in his second-gen Tovala review, because the oven is small, it’s not as ideal for cooking for a family of four.

Tovala’s moves are part of an overall trend in opening up cooking platforms. The June smart oven has a dedicated Whole Foods button to automatically cook foods from that grocer, and will probably add more buttons. And instead of developing its own service, Brava offers accompanying meal kits from a number of different providers in its marketplace.

For its part, LG is racking up all kinds of outside software partners including Drop, Innit and Sidechef.

Tovala Becomes More Versatile with Addition of Scan-to-Cook Feature

While the Tovala has always been the most affordable of the new smart countertop ovens, the fact that it was tied to a meal subscription plan always made it feel constricting. The second-gen Tovala added more flexibility to the device itself, but it still seemed optimized primarily for making Tovala food. Yesterday, Tovala took another step towards broadening its capabilities by adding a new scan-to-cook feature (h/t to CNET).

Tovala’s “Scan the Store” works as you’d imagine. Buy a packaged item from the grocery store, scan the barcode on the item with the Tovala and the smart oven cooks the food automatically (no pre-heating required). Right now, the feature only works with Trader Joe’s frozen foods, though the company says it will be adding new brand partnerships (read: more grocers, more products).

Scan the Store puts Tovala at the center of two trends emerging in the smart kitchen space. First, barcode scanning to generate cook programs is being used by other appliances like the Alexa powered GE Scan-to-Cook microwave. The benefit being a more precise cook program tailored for each food rather than blasting everything with full power.

But like the June oven, Tovala is now setting itself up as a platform with brand partnerships. Last fall June added a Whole Foods button to its touchscreen menu for automated cook programs from that grocer. Tovala too will add more food from more grocers making it even more useful.

What the Scan the Store feature does most, however, is make the Tovala a more attractive device among the new wave of smart ovens. At $349, it’s cheaper than the June ($599), and the Brava ($995), and now those who buy it are now getting a more versatile appliance.