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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

smart oven

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 awareness about how important food is in creating a productive work environment and satisfied employees.

The only problem is not every company has the resources of Google or a food service visionary like Google Food director Michiel Bakker to lead the charge, especially those small to midsize firms where food is sometimes an afterthought.

But now Markov, the company behind the Level smart oven, wants to change all that by providing the food service hoi polloi with a turnkey service that turns their break rooms or kitchenettes into mini-Google cafeterias. The San Francisco startup’s new service, called Hot Pantry, combines the Level smart oven with food delivery that keeps an employer’s fridge (also provided by Markov) stocked with healthy food choices ranging from breakfast items like red flannel hash to mix and match lunch offerings like Tuscan short ribs and kimchi fried rice.

The Level oven

According to Markov CEO Leonard Speiser, the company isn’t building out its own kitchen (unlike consumer-focused Tovala, maker of a smart steam oven), but instead is partnering with food companies to create the various food offerings.

“We took our technology and partnered with the food service industry to provide companies of 30 to 300 employees with a little slice of the Google experience in their own office kitchenette,” Speiser told me via email.

The move into office food service is an interesting one for Markov, which has largely been known to this point for its next-gen smart oven that utilizes a patented cooking technology to steer RF beams within the cooking chamber. But providing a turnkey food offering paired with its oven might just be a smart business move to differentiate itself from the increasingly crowded market of startups looking to reinvent the office cafeteria with fresh and healthy food options.

While the Level oven is an impressive device, I think one of the company’s biggest challenges will be communicating to office managers why an office food service needs something other than a standard microwave oven. Cooking tech nerds like myself can appreciate the uniqueness of a cooking box that can see its food, steer RF signals and heat different foods at different rates and temperatures within the same cooking chamber, but communicating that to an office worker is a different story. This is probably why Markov’s consumer-facing messaging puts a big emphasis on the oven’s interactive front-display touch screen, which provides visually rich information about Hot Pantry’s food offerings, ingredients and nutritional information.

Another key variable that will help determine the success of Hot Pantry is pricing, something the company is not disclosing at this time. While the corporate market is less price-sensitive than the fickle consumer market, oven or no oven, Markov will need to be price competitive with other corporate food service providers.

Today the Hot Pantry is only available in the Bay area, but Markov hopes to expand Hot Pantry eventually to new markets.

“It would be great if all companies could offer Google programs, but most don’t have the scale,” said Speiser. Markov hopes to change that, and the company’s CEO thinks they may even have a leg up on the search giant in one area:

Unlike Google, “the Level Hot Pantry experience is open 24/7,” said Speiser.

Beko Shows Off Grundig Smart Wall Oven that Blasts Water Inside to Clean Itself

Amidst all the faces on cookies, cheese making robots and world champion pizza chefs packed into a Las Vegas casino ballroom last Tuesday evening for the inaugural FoodTech Live @ CES , a new smart wall oven from one of Europe’s largest appliance makers made its US debut.

Called the Gourmet Chef Oven by Grundig, the new built in connected wall oven unveiled by Turkish appliance giant Arcelik (Beko is the US brand for Arcelik) has some interesting features, with one in particular that had the crowd at FoodTech Live buzzing with interest.

Beko unveils Grundig built-in smart wall oven at FoodTech Live at @CES 2019

As can be seen above, the Gourmet Chef not only comes with many of the capabilities you’d expect from a smart oven such as food recognition and guided cooking, but also has a unique self-cleaning feature that includes an internal water spray and special detergent dispenser.

“It cleans, it washes, it dries,” said Sazi Bugay, Product Director for Beko US. “Every time you use it, it gives you a clean interior.”

Admittedly, watching water splash around the inside an oven is a bit discombobulating at first, making one half-wonder for a moment if this is a dishwasher or a cooking box. It also made me ask myself how frequently one would need to wash their oven (raise your hand if you clean your oven pretty much never). That said, self-cleaning features may become a necessity in the age of smart ovens in order to ensure those internal cameras that identify food and enables cook-session monitoring stay relatively clean.

In the end, the self-cleaning feature plus some other nice-to-haves like a dehydration capability, steam oven and baking plate for pizzas make the Gourmet Chef an interesting and differentiated addition to the smart oven space. The Gourmet Chef (as well as Whirlpool’s new offerings which debuted at CES) also underscores the acceleration of a trend I highlighted in my 2019 outlook: the entry of big appliance makers into the smart oven market with built-in offerings that help move the segment beyond just the countertop.

According to Bugay, Arcelik’s new oven will be rolled out in Europe by the end of 2019 and should enter the US market in 2020 under the Beko brand. Pricing has not been disclosed.

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

Tovala Introduces Second Generation Smart Oven for $349

When smart oven and meal delivery startup Tovala shipped their first generation oven in April of 2017, it was an impressive feat. Not only did the company deliver quickly and avoid the seemingly endless delays that often plague hardware crowdfunding campaigns, but the Chicago company also launched an accompanying meal delivery service for smart steam oven at the same time.

Since the quick execution on their initial product(s) showed Tovala doesn’t mess around, it’s perhaps not all that surprising the company is already back with act two: Today the Tovala unveiled their second generation smart oven, available immediately for purchase on the company’s website (and in a couple weeks on Amazon) for $349.

According to Tovala CEO David Rabie, a new and improved oven was always part of the plan.

“We’ve been working on this for over a year and its all driven by customer feedback,” said Rabie in a phone interview. “The whole idea was to put our product out there in homes, see what customers think, what they like and don’t like, and improve it.”

While Tovala has been able to improve the first generation oven over time through software and firmware upgrades, the company knew that there were some improvements that could only come in the form of an entirely new piece of hardware. So what’s different with the new Tovala?

Size. The first thing you notice first when comparing original oven and the new Tovala is the smaller size of the newer product.

“We heard over and over how valuable real estate was in the kitchen,” said Rabie.

The footprint of the new appliance is smaller than the original, 8 pounds lighter, all while keeping the internal cooking chamber the same size.

Steam Venting. While one of Tovala’s main attractions is its steam oven feature, the first generation Tovala vented a whole lotta steam during a cook session. Over time, that might be a problem for wood cabinets. With the new Tovala, they kept the steam oven functionality but have significantly reduced the amount of steam emitted by the oven.

Redesigned Interface. The biggest change with the Tovala is evident on the front of the oven. While the first generation Tovala UI was simple and sparse by design, it forced users of the oven to go to the app to do almost everything.

As Richard Gunther, a Kickstarter backer of the first oven, wrote in his review for the Spoon:

“For anything more specific or complicated than these slightly flawed Toast and Heat functions, you need to pull out your phone and use Tovala’s app.

…to use your oven.

If you want to, say, broil something for 6 minutes, you need to use the app. If someone in your household wants to heat something at 375° for 25 minutes, they’ll need to use the app. If your house-sitter or visiting in-laws want to cook someth—oh, let’s face it…they’re out of luck.”

Tovala heard the frustration voiced by Richard and other Tovala generation one users and completely redesigned the front of the oven, adding a significant amount of features that are accessible without the app.

“Sometimes people just want to push the button to broil or just want to bake without having to take out their phone,” said Rabie. ” We re-did the front of the oven so people can do that really easily.”

Results
While I never had a generation one, I’ve been testing the new Tovala for the past week (longer review to come) and my initial impression is the new oven strikes a nice balance between app control and on-device interface. With the app, I’m able to peruse recipes I can make by scratch and send optimized control instructions to the oven. I’m also able to track the process of a cooking session and get alerts. On the oven itself, I’m able to see progress of the oven via a on-device digital display, or see the temperature, I can also initiate baking, broil, reheat or steam functionality with a push of a button.

With the Tovala meals, you can also choose to forgo the app and simply hit the scan button and place the QR code on the package below the reader (though the appliance still needs to be connected to Wi-Fi to use read and cook a meal) and the oven automatically loads the multi-step cook session instructions. From there, you put in the food (usually two containers: a protein and a veggie/grain) and the oven will cycle through bake, steam and broil functions. I tested four meals and each were tasty and filling.

I also tried out one of the chef’s recipes in the app. While I like the idea of having ready-to-cook meals ready to insert into my oven, the reality is that I sometimes just want to make something quick and I won’t have a prepped Tovala meal to put into the oven.

I made an egg frittata, and liked how the app gave me a shopping list and instructions for preparing the meal. Once I had everything prepped and ready to cook in a small pan, I inserted it in the oven, hit “cook” on the app that sent cooking step instructions to the oven, which in the case of the frittata included bake, steam and broil.

In a few minutes I had my fritatta plated up and ready to eat.

While the Tovala isn’t as sensor packed as the June or offering any next-gen heating tech like the Brava, its comparatively lower price, steam functionality and meal service is something I think that appeals to a certain customer base. The oven is small and the packaged meals are meant for a single serving, so the night I tested out the Tovala I had to do four separate cooking session to feed my family of four (ed update: Tovala emailed and indicated it’s possible to cook multiple of the same Tovala meal at one time). While that’s obviously not ideal, my guess is the typical Tovala customer is someone who is looking for a way to make meals for one or two people quickly without a lot of work, and for that the Tovala does the job nicely.

Brava Comes Out of Stealth, Introduces Oven That Cooks With Light

Today Brava, a smart kitchen startup based in Redwood City, California, announced their first product.

Called the Brava, the eponymously named oven can reach temperatures of 500 degrees within seconds and is supposed to use less energy during a cook session than a typical oven uses during preheating, all by cooking with high-intensity light technology that had previously been used in industrial applications like heating metal and semiconductors.

The Brava oven, the company says, is “the future of cooking.”

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s go back to the beginning of the story.

Cooking For Mom

The company had its origins six years ago when one of the cofounders, Dan Yue, was having a holiday dinner with his parents and watched as his mom spent most of her time preparing the meal in the kitchen.

At the time, Yue was transitioning from away from the social gaming industry, where he was the founding CEO of a company called Playdom.  Yue’s company was acquired by Disney and Yue had some time on his hands, so he started thinking about a new kind of oven that could help someone like his mom spend more time with her family and not have to bounce back and forth to the kitchen.

It was pretty early, and so the idea of a smart oven was new, but even back then Yue knew the oven should be more than smart. He thought it should also be better than traditional ovens by making cooking more convenient and approachable.

The idea stuck with Yue, but he soon became preoccupied with another new company he had started in the food space (meal kit company Green Chef), and it wasn’t long before he put the idea for a new oven on the back burner.

It would be a few years later before the idea got new momentum, which would come in the form of Yue’s former high school classmate Thomas Cheng. When Yue told Cheng about his idea, what became Brava almost seemed preordained since Cheng had been investigating new heating technologies. Before that, Cheng had also been working with smart home startup August helping to develop the company’s smart lock technology but was looking for a new challenge.

Yue was still busy with Green Chef, so it would be Cheng who would spend almost the entire next year in a garage working on developing early prototypes of what would become the Brava oven, experimenting with high-intensity lights, which up to that point had largely been used to heat metal.

It wasn’t long before these experiments led Cheng and Yue believe they were onto something. They thought they could build a “different kind of oven.”

A New Kind Of Oven

Back in the fall of 2016, Brava had just reeled in a $12 million funding round and boasted an all-start founder team that included August’s former head of hardware (Cheng), the founding CEO of Playdom (Yue) and an ex-Samsung/Disney executive named John Pleasants, who would become the company’s CEO.

But Brava was in stealth and that would pretty much be all the news the company revealed for the next two years. So when the company invited me down to visit their lab and see the top-secret project they’d been working on for the past couple years, it was an offer I couldn’t refuse.

I’d already known a few things going in:

Of course, I also knew Brava isn’t the first company interested in recreating cooking. It’d been an interesting few years in the world of food tech, and we’ve seen a variety of new and interesting approaches to rethinking the oven.

First, there was June, who made a smart oven with machine vision and software to create more precise cooking sessions. Then there was Tovala, who paired a smart steam oven with a food delivery service. Last fall Miele introduced the first consumer oven to use RF solid state technology, while this year I discovered a company called Markov had been issued a few patents to essentially make a smarter microwave. This year we also learned about Suvie, a four-chamber cooking robot that utilized a unique water routing technology to apply heat and steam food.

The lobby at Brava

So when I arrived at Brava’s nondescript office in Redwood City, I was eager to learn more about exactly how the company had developed an entirely new way to cook. I checked in the lobby and was soon greeted by company CEO John Pleasants, who led me into a large room where about a dozen or so busy workers, not surprisingly, looked like they were preparing to launch a new product in a couple of weeks.

We made our way into a conference room, and we started to talk about the product.

Pleasants told me about his early days with the company and how they’d started out working in a house (“it was very much like the show Silicon Valley”) until they moved into this office building. He gave me a presentation which featured an overview of the new oven, and he talked about who he thought was the target market (he sees two main groups to start: tech-forward consumers who love food and anyone who doesn’t think cooking at home is a viable option). We even ate some food cooked in the oven (crisped cheese) that was tasty.

Before long, we got up to look at the oven.

Brava prototypes

Here’s where I was introduced to Thomas Cheng, now the company’s CTO.

During those early days in the garage, Cheng worked on prototype after prototype, most of which I saw when he took me over to a wall where they had lined all of them up on a table.  There were probably ten or so prototypes, progressing from the first that looked something like a college science project to the final version that was pretty close to the final production version.

Cheng talked about those days working in the garage and how he experimented with the light-heating technology to figure out how to use it. The intensity of heat was so high (“I remember trying to simulate frying, and I blackened my fries in like two seconds”), so it would take some work to figure out how to apply it in a consumer oven.

Part of the answer would be advanced sensors.

“Heaters are kinda useless by themselves,” explained Cheng. He walked me over to another table with a variety of sensor probes on it, and he picked one up.

Brava probe sensor prototypes

“This sensor probe is made of platinum, manufactured in Switzerland and mounted in gold alloy,” said Cheng. “It’s kinda pricey, but it has the performance.”

Cheng explained that the oven needed this pricey probe in the final production model because the company’s heating technology needed a guidance system to apply the heat.

The sensor probe, combined with the oven’s internal camera, send information to the oven’s computational engine, which then guides how the heat should be applied in near real time.

“Part of the magic of Pure Light cooking is we can move from pan searing to direct energy transfer to bake within three seconds,” said Cheng. “It’s almost like having an oven, an induction skillet and a special light cooking device with a robot mediating between these things.”

It sounded neat, but I was still curious about how the light heating technology actually worked. This was when Cheng showed me his whiteboard.

Brava’s technology explained (kinda)

The whiteboard had a hand-drawn version of what is the visible spectrum. Cheng described how the Brava used different wavelengths along this spectrum from the Brava’s light bulbs to apply heat either indirectly to the food for baking emulation using longer wavelengths (“that’s how we do baking emulation like a toaster oven”) to smaller wavelengths where the photons hit the heating tray directly (“this is how we emulated induction skillet heating”).

Needless to say, it’s complicated. I asked Cheng if they’d written a white paper on the technology to explain it, and they said their patent applications went in depth into the tech (feel free to dive in).

Just as my brain reached the midway point between fried and scrambled as I tried to understand the explanation for manipulating light wavelengths for the purposes of cooking food, Cheng and Pleasants asked if I’d like to try some food. I quickly said yes.

Cooking With Light

They took me into the company’s test kitchen where I was introduced to the culinary team. They were standing a row of long metal tables that had Bravas on top and trays of food ready to go into the oven.

Cooking with the Brava

Pleasants explained the culinary team spends its days preparing different types of foods and concocting recipes that the Brava oven can use. Because the technology is completely different from traditional ovens, the culinary team had to with the hardware and software teams to create cooking parameters for each type of food and specific guided cooking recipes to help guide the users of the oven.

In short, I was now in the place where the company honed the raw power of light-powered cooking into a polished user experience.

Lindsay West, a chef by training who had previously worked with Sur La Table and now part of Brava’s culinary team, walked me through the features of the Brava and explained their development process. Another culinary member showed me how to start a cook and make sure the food is correctly placed on the tray.

The Brava user interface was fairly straightforward, a small color touchscreen display that allowed you to program a cook, as well as instructional videos to show you specifics for each recipe. In short, the Brava user interface is heavy on guided cooking.

You can see us walking through the interface and inserting food into the Brava in the video below:

Then they fed me.

The food was good. It included salmon (moist), steak (tasted like sous vide cooked) and even ice cream (it was at this moment I was ready to declare the Brava a miracle machine, at least until West told me they’d only roasted the strawberry topping for the ice cream).

A Brava cooked meal

Of course, any demo prepared with a chef in a room is going to be good, but from what I could tell the Brava cooked all the meals, did it quickly and they tasted delicious.

Building A Brand

By now we were near the end of my visit. We discussed things like business models and talked about the food delivery service they’ll be offering (with Chef’d) and how all their food will be locally sourced and high quality.

As we talked, I thought about how the company seemed like it had the potential to create a new type of cooking appliance. But at the same time, I knew that developing new companies in mature hardware markets is really difficult. Not only do you have to compete with bigger, more deep-pocketed incumbents, but you have to face other startups trying to do that same thing. Sonos, which most would agree reinvented how we think about home audio – is currently struggling to get an IPO off the ground after being beaten to a pulp by the Amazon Echo over the past couple years.

I asked Pleasants about why they thought they could be different and why they don’t just license their technology to a big appliance maker.

“We think we have something special and we think we can build a brand,” he said.

Maybe I was just still under the influence of a tasty lunch, but as Pleasants said it, it didn’t seem all that ridiculous. After all, microwave ovens sit in pretty much every home nowadays, something that wasn’t the case in the 1960s.  It had been a long time since the dawn of the microwave era and, at some point, new innovations will come along and get adopted.

Will that next-generation heating technology be cooking with light? Too soon to say.  I do think that at some point the company should license the technology to established brands like a Whirlpool or Electrolux and Pleasants seemed open to it … in time. But first, he thinks the company can build a brand.

“I think everyone in this company believes we can be a multi-billion dollar company that is changing the way we cook and eat at home,” he said.

If you want to hear Brava CEO John Pleasants tell the story of Brava, make sure to be at the Smart Kitchen Summit. 

Amazon Brings Cooking Capabilities To Alexa Smart Home Skill API

While over 50% of Echos end up in the kitchen, a lack of cooking-specific commands and categories within the popular voice assistant’s smart home API has meant few people actually prepare food with Alexa today.

But that could soon change.

That’s because today Amazon introduced built-in cooking controls for cooking appliances into the Alexa smart home API. Initially rolling out in microwaves from Whirlpool and others, the new cooking capabilities will let users define time and temperature parameters and will eventually use the Alexa voice interface to walk through cooking a meal.

From the Alexa developer blog:

Customers are increasingly using voice user interfaces (VUIs) as a hands-free way to manage their lives, and hands-free control is especially valuable when cooking. With the built-in cooking device controls in the Smart Home Skill API, you will make it easier for your customers to control your cloud-connected microwave. Instead of pressing multiple buttons to enable advanced microwave features, your customers can now use their voices. For example, a customer can say “Alexa, defrost three pounds of chicken” or “Alexa, microwave for 50 seconds on high.”

Initially, there are four new capability interfaces in the Smart Home Skill API – Alexa.Cooking, Alexa.Cooking.TimeController, Alexa.TimeHoldController, and Alexa.CookingPresetController. You can leverage these interfaces today for microwaves and for appliances that support preset cooking. The interfaces are designed for future extensibility as support for more cooking devices becomes available.

The new Alexa cooking capability understands food categories (for example, Alexa will take a food term from the Echo user – such as “sockeye salmon” – to categorize food in the “Fish” category) and cooking modes.  Appliance makers are able define their different cooking modes that are discoverable within the Alexa app, which means users will be able to access modes such as “defrost” in products such as Whirlpool’s line of connected microwaves. The new cooking capability from Amazon also allows appliance makers to make their presets libraries available through Alexa.

While Whirlpool’s expected to be the first to launch the new Alexa cooking capability for its connected microwaves (no exact date has been given), Amazon also announced Samsung, GE, Kenmore and LG are all working to bring the new Alexa cooking capability to market.

And finally, one last piece of news embedded in the announcement: The company has invested in June, high profile maker of the June connected oven, via the Alexa fund. This means, of course, you can expect the June oven to work with Alexa’s cooking capabilities sometime in 2018.

Enjoy the podcast and make sure to subscribe in Apple podcasts if you haven’t already.

Smart Kitchen Appliances: What If “Smart” Means Superior Instead Of Connected?

One of the core discussions around the smart kitchen at SKS over the past three years has been the function and usability of smart devices in the kitchen. What devices will actually help us cook better food more easily and what are just silly attempts at connectivity for connectivity’s sake?

Breville has a different take on what makes an appliance smart, and it goes well beyond the ability to connect to its devices via a smart app. The new Breville Smart Oven Air has unique technology that allows for incredibly precise temperature control and can actually change how the heat is distributed. In other words, depending on the requirements of the specific dish you’re cooking, you can make the oven hotter at the front, top, bottom, or back of the chamber.

Allen Weiner of The Spoon sat down with Scott Brady, General Manager of Global Marketing at Breville at the 2017 Smart Kitchen Summit to talk about how Breville’s smart oven makes life easier in the kitchen. According to Brady, “this precise heat distribution lets you complete a lot of simple cooking tasks a lot better.”

For example, if you’re baking a cake, you’ll want the heat focused on the bottom of the oven to prevent it from cracking; whereas, for a pizza, you’ll want the heat evenly distributed throughout. Both are possibilities with the Breville oven, so that you can get the perfect finish no matter what you’re cooking. And the guesswork of how to heat and at what temperature isn’t left up to the user – the oven will course correct and heat to perfection no matter what the dish.

Another trend in kitchen appliances seems to be more all-in-one functionality. The future kitchen will likely not have a slow cooker, an oven, a toaster, a microwave and a sous vide machine but rather one or two devices that does most of that with ease. Breville is trying to pull that off with the Smart Oven Air. For one, it’s bringing in air-frying, which is a much healthier way to prepare your favorite fried foods. Instead of using hot oil, the oven uses fast-moving convection heat to mimic the effect of a traditional deep-fryer. Precise temperature control and regulated air movement mean that this oven can also dehydrate fruit, as well as act as a slow-cooker.

The question is: The Breville oven may be smart, but where does the company stand on connectivity?

For Breville, Brady says, “We don’t want to be connected for connected’s sake.” Instead, their goal is to create products that offer unique, new technology that’s truly helpful—not cumbersome. The future of smart kitchen devices is creative technology that actually makes culinary tasks easier for the user when combined with the convenience of an app, a built-in recipe database and intelligence baked into the device itself.

Brady says Breville is working on products that meet this promise, and you can expect them in 2018.

Beyond The Countertop: June Introduces Intelligent Wall Oven For $1,995

June, the company behind the intelligent countertop convection oven, has introduced its first wall oven, the June Pro.

The June Pro, available for sale today on the company’s website for $1,995, comes in a 24″ wall model, with other sizes to be made available soon. In addition to being the company’s first wall oven, the June Pro will have the same features which made the original June stand out, such as in-oven HD camera, fast-heat carbon fiber heating elements, app control, and automatic software updates. The June Pro’s internal dimensions are the same as the countertop model, with a height of 12.8 inches, 19.6 inches wide, with a depth of 19 inches. The June Pro, which is expected to ship within 30 days, comes with “white glove” installation service.

I caught up with June’s CEO, Matt Van Horn, by phone to talk about their new product. When asked about the biggest difference between the June Pro and other ovens, he didn’t hesitate.

“The best feature of the June is it’s the first appliance to get better over time instead of worse,” said Van Horn. “All the learning we are able to collect from consumers that make it available to us, all that gets pushed into software updates.”

The June Pro wall oven

While some Wi-Fi capable ovens from other manufacturers such as GE have added new software features in the field such as Alexa compatibility, June takes it to another level. Van Horn pointed to a recent software update that June rolled out a few weeks ago that added slow cooker and warming drawer capability to existing June countertop ovens.

“We literally build new appliances in software,” said Van Horn. “We researched slow cookers and figured out how to do that with our current hardware.” The new slow cooker and warming drawer feature will be available in the wall ovens as well according to Van Horn.

One of the selling points of the June countertop oven was its ability to identify foods using an internal HD camera, which provided the necessary information for the oven to initiate an adaptive cooking program as well as monitor the progress of a cook.  When it first shipped last December, the original June could identify up to twenty-five food types, a number that was expected to increase over time.  While Van Horn wouldn’t tell me how many foods the original June could now identify over half a year after shipping, he did point to how continuous changes to the June OS allows the company to make improvements to the June’s adaptive cooking programs.

“One of the biggest complaints from customers was our bacon cook program,” said Van Horn.  When the company analyzed the data, they realized one of the most important variables when cooking bacon was the number of slices.  Cooking one slice of bacon required a completely different cook program than when cooking nine slices of bacon. Eventually, they adapted the program, so the oven automatically accounts for the number of slices (the internal camera will identify this) while also allowing for the user to input variables such as desired crispiness in the June app.

“We turned one a one sized fit all bacon program into 36 bacon programs,” said Van Horn.

One big positive with June’s new product is it is much more in line with pricing for its product category. While the first June oven had many features which set it apart from others in its general category, it was hard for many to accept a price point that was five to ten times more than other countertop convection ovens. At $1,995, the June Pro is a bit more pricey than some other 24″ wall ovens but doesn’t induce the same kind of sticker shock as the original June (which will, for now, remain priced at $1,495).

I’m also interested to see if and when the June Pro becomes available through brick and mortar retail. Like the June countertop oven, the June Pro will first only be available through the company’s website (the original June can now be bought through Amazon). While I realize going to brick and mortar retail would require the company to give up significant margin, I still think many consumers want to see how an oven looks built into a kitchen, even if that kitchen is a display unit in a Home Depot.

My biggest critique of the June Pro is its small internal dimensions. At the same exact size as the June countertop, it’s one cubic foot interior is much smaller inside than traditional 24″ ovens, which usually come with a five cubic foot cooking chamber. Consumers used to multiple oven racks or cooking tall items will probably pass on this device. Based on this, it will be interesting to see if future ovens offer a larger internal capacity.

Despite this, I think this is a big announcement for June. Simply having a built in oven product opens the company up to a whole new set of consumers.  Discriminating cooks who want access to high-end cooking features often available only in professional ovens that go for $10 thousand or more can now access some of those in an oven for two thousand bucks while not having to give up counter space to do it.

Hear June CTO Nikhil Bhogal speak at Smart Kitchen Summit in Seattle on October 10-11, 2017. Use the discount code SPOON to get 25% off of tickets. 

A Kickstarter Backer’s Review of Tovala’s New Smart Oven and Meal Service

Some people buy the latest new kitchen gadgets because they’re into cooking and want to exploit new technology for a better culinary experience. Others because they’re into the technology itself. Still others don’t really enjoy cooking, and this is the camp I fall into. So last Spring, armed with a lack of interest and time for kitchen adventures, I found myself an early backer of the Tovala oven.

Tovala launched in early 2016 with a Kickstarter campaign. The “smart oven that makes home cooking easy” sounded perfect for me—not just because it might enable me to escape the unhealthy Lean Cuisine rut I’d been in for workday lunching but because part of the Tovala equation is a subscription service for fresh, prepared meals, shipped weekly. They had me at “prepared.”

Tovala’s campaign funded in under 24 hours. Following just a few months’ delay, the ovens shipped to early backers roughly a year after launch (not bad by Kickstarter standards), and now it’s available for the public to order.

Unpacking

After negotiating for counter space [“but I’m writing a review of it…”], I excitedly unpacked and set up my new magical cooking box. The oven arrived with no documentation other than a small card instructing me to download and install the Tovala app, which was at the time also devoid of anything even remotely resembling operating instructions beyond some onboarding panels. Tovala has since added a multi-page quick start guide to the package and significantly bolstered its knowledgebase content, optimized for mobile as an in-app “user guide.” Including a QR code that directs consumers to the app in Apple’s and Google’s respective stores would be a nice addition to the standard packaging.

The oven shipped with a rack that’s a little tricky to slide into place around an extrusion that’s designed to keep the rack from falling out, a tray (which I still don’t really know where to place in the oven, a detached water reservoir, and a branded pot holder as a gift for the Kickstarter backers.

A look inside the Tovala oven.

The water reservoir is a unique and important component of the oven, since this is technically a countertop combi-oven that can cook with heat, air, and steam. The reservoir lets you easily add water to produce steam by filling it at the sink then sliding it into your oven. Unfortunately, a number of the reservoirs shipped to early backers have leaky valve stops, so I discovered I was trailing water across the kitchen as I took mine over the oven. The flaw does not impede proper operations, since it doesn’t leak once it’s seated in the oven, and Tovala’s co-founder and CEO, David Rabie, indicates that new reservoirs will be sent to customers experiencing this issue.

A leaky valve.

The oven is sizable—it fits fine on a standard-depth kitchen counter, but it slides under my upper cabinets with just four inches to spare and sticks out beyond the 12” cabinets above it. Adding to this depth, the oven has a heavy cable that terminates at a standard 3-prong plug, sticking straight out from the wall outlet. A flat plug with a side-angled cord would allow you to push the oven closer to the backsplash and hide the plug.

The Tovala sitting on my counter

The design of the oven is fairly contemporary. Its sturdy door encompasses the entire front face of the oven, surfaced in black glass with a window into the oven. A curved stainless handle spans the front, and a plastic control panel is literally bolted onto the front surface of the door. This is a change introduced after the Kickstarter launch, both to address usability concerns and to protect the electronics from excessive heat exposure (original designs had the readout and touch controls built onto the top edge of the door). Extremely bright LEDs on this panel indicate connection status, mode, progress, and water level. Three buttons and a knob give you some limited control of the oven locally—anything else requires the app.

Connecting

Like many “smart” appliances, the Tovala oven connects to your Wi-Fi network, and getting it connected is easy enough. You need to set up an account, which, if you subscribed to Tovala’s food service, you’d have already done. Like some other Tovala customers, I either didn’t remember already setting up an account or didn’t realize they were the same until the app wouldn’t let me set up a new account with my email address.

The app easily found my wireless home network and connected with my oven after prompting for my wireless password and sending network info to the oven. A green LED network indicator on the front panel of the oven lets you know it’s connected.

The Tovala oven uses its connectivity for a few key functions—updates, recipe programming, control, and notifications among them. I’d argue that one of the greatest benefits of device connectivity is the ability for companies to improve or change product functionality over time. Already, Tovala has delivered two over-the-air updates to early customers to change the behavior of some of the front panel controls, indicators, and cook cycles.

One of the things that makes Tovala’s solution so simple is the ability to automatically program the oven for Tovala’s own meals by scanning a QR code on each meal pack using a scanner hidden under the front panel. A typical cook cycle might go through four or five bake/broil/steam phases, but all you have to do is scan the code to start it all. The oven gets the proper cooking program over the air and does the rest for you.

Tovala’s app also has some (few—very few) recipes built in and allows you to build and save your own. Co-founder Rabie says more pre-defined recipes are coming, and you’ll soon be able to share recipes with the Tovala community.

The app can also send notifications to your phone when cooking is complete and when the oven encounters any problems. In my testing, the notifications have been inconsistent. After encountering a bug in the initial app release, I uninstalled the app and re-installed, but I still don’t get most notifications when cooking is complete.

Eating

The gem in the Tovala solution is the prepared meal subscription plans. Tovala offers two meal plans—one that allows you to pick three meals a week and another that doubles your selected order so you can prepare meals for two. Each week, you make your meal selections online or in the Tovala app from around half a dozen offerings that are constantly changing (perhaps with the exception of Miso-glazed Salmon, which doesn’t ever seem to fall off the menu).

Most meals comprise a protein, or main dish, with vegetable and grain sides. The mains are commonly boneless chicken, fish, or tofu, while the sides are typically a vegetable or green paired with some sort of whole-grain rice. This past week’s ordering options included Teriyaki Chicken with Fried Rice Pilaf, Roasted Pineapple & Sesame Coleslaw and Sunflower Satay Tofu Steak with Sesame Ginger Brown Rice & Garlic Green Beans; and this week’s Miso-glazed Salmon sides are Edamame Brown Rice and Charred Citrus Broccoli. You’re not going to find traditional starches like white rice and mashed potatoes (although they’ve occasionally offered fingerlings).

Tovala’s food is fresh—not frozen—and meals are shipped out to customers each Tuesday, arriving the next day. They’re bundled together in packets that are then packed in foam-and-mylar-lined boxes containing ice packs. It’s a lot of packaging, intended (but not always succeeding) to keep the meals protected and adequately chilled until you can properly refrigerate them.

A look inside the Tovala shipment

A Tovala meal pack

An unpacked Tovala meal pack

Meal preparation is quite simple. Each pack contains one or two plastic-covered foil trays and a caddy containing garnishes and accompaniments clearly labeled to add before or after cooking. Tear off the plastic; sprinkle, spread, or pour the “before” items (often oils or Miso glaze) as directed on the meal pack, scan the QR code, put the trays in the oven, and push the knob to start. In 15-20 minutes you may or may not get a device notification to let you know that your meal is ready. You may want to ask Alexa to set a timer for you, because you likely won’t hear the nearly-inaudible electronic chirps the oven makes when the cooking cycle completes.

Tovala mealpack ready to cook

The meals are delicious, and the portions are generous. I’ve ordered chicken, fish, turkey, pasta, and vegetable meals, and every single one of them has been flavorful and filling. Rabie says their intent is to provide clean ingredients with bold flavors and no preservatives. Meals are typically 400-800 calories and are high in protein. I’ve never been able to plate a meal to look anything like a professional chef would intend, but it typically looks colorful and appetizing. My plates don’t look as beautiful as in Tovala’s photos, but the food tastes as good as (often better than) I’d expect. Tovala plans to eventually expand the menu, offering plans to accommodate different palates and diets.

A plated meal cooked by Tovala

Meatballs cooked by Tovala

As with other food delivery services, Tovala’s early backers have reported a number of common shipping problems that the company is still working to resolve. Some packages have arrived damaged. Some customers have reported that the ice packs are fully melted on warmer days, and the delivered food is no longer cold. Some shipments have arrived after the FedEx delivery window for standard overnight service, which is already 8:00 p.m. And a combination of breached ice packs and condensation has caused many meal packs to arrive soaking wet. Unfortunately, I have experienced all of these issues. Happily, Tovala’s customer support, available by phone, email, and chat, is extremely friendly and helpful. They’ll promptly credit your account if your food arrives damaged or spoiled.

The company’s also had some packaging and labeling issues over these initial few months, including three separate labeling “mix-ups” on meal nutrition information, garnish instructions, and even one regarding an expiration date. They’ve followed each of these up with email correspondence to customers, but these problems suggest a highly manual process with quality review and control issues that are concerning when we’re talking about perishable food packaging.

Cooking

OK, so the Tovala oven does a great job cooking Tovala meals. Perhaps that’s not a surprise; arguably, it’s a necessity. But how is the Tovala oven at cooking other stuff? It turns out that’s a little more complicated—both figuratively and literally.

Tovala’s oven features two built-in cooking cycles—Toast and Heat—and they both have issues. Let’s look at Toast first. Since the Tovala product is a countertop oven, you might expect that this oven might take the place of your toaster or toaster oven. I did…that seems reasonable (and it was part of my argument for putting this thing on our kitchen counter). Not so fast.

Tovala offers a Toast cycle, but even after recent updates (again automatically delivered over the air), this oven doesn’t toast bread anywhere near as evenly, quickly, or consistently as pretty much any toaster I’ve ever used. I’ve spoken with David Rabie about making toast more than I’ve probably ever discussed toast with anyone. He’s explained the complexity of carmelization across bread types and temperatures, stepped through their multi-phase toasting cycle, and patiently listened to my complaints. I just want to make toast, and it strikes me that companies have made products that can do this successfully for years.

Initially, my Tovala oven overcooked (burned) the top side and undercooked the bottom of nearly any bread product I tried to toast. The recent update refines the toasting process, offering five toast settings (expanded from the original three). While I’m no longer burning toast, I’m no less disappointed with the results. The browning is still uneven between the top and bottom sides, with the bottom remaining undercooked. And now it all takes longer—anywhere from five to nearly ten minutes. My partner put our toaster back on the counter.

The toaster is back

Tovala’s other built-in function, Heat, is a timed cycle with a mixture of broil, steam, and convection bake, cooking at a range of temperatures between 400°–475° F. It seems specifically designed for reheating. You don’t need to adjust the temperature—it handles all that for you. Just press the Heat button, turn the front knob to select the desired cooking time, and press the knob to start. Tovala recommends 9:15 as a good starting point to reheat a meal and 15 minutes to cook something frozen. While it’s convenient and somewhat magical, the black-box nature of the cycle can be a bit frustrating. It’s all about experimenting to find the right cook time, but you can’t just add time to a heating cycle in progress, and you can’t pause the cycle if you open the oven to inspect your food.

For anything more specific or complicated than these slightly flawed Toast and Heat functions, you need to pull out your phone and use Tovala’s app.

…to use your oven.

If you want to, say, broil something for 6 minutes, you need to use the app. If someone in your household wants to heat something at 375° for 25 minutes, they’ll need to use the app. If your house-sitter or visiting in-laws want to cook someth—oh, let’s face it…they’re out of luck.

This is where it all falls apart for me. And to make matters worse, the app doesn’t just let you set the temp/time and go. To start cooking at a particular temperature, you need to select an existing or create a new cook cycle…or meal…or recipe—the same thing has different names depending what screen you’re on. Adding time or increasing the temperature while the oven is already in use is equally cumbersome. You can’t just change it from the cooking status screen. Instead, you have to find the recipe in use and edit the appropriate steps, which changes your saved recipe, too. And like the Heat function, you can’t pause the cycle if you open the oven to check on things.

Tovala app “cook cycle”

Tovala app recipes/my meals

Tovala app “Bake” cook step

 

There are also some preset recipes you can choose from in the app that give you pre-programmed cook cycles for a select few proteins and vegetables (five when it first shipped; eight at the time of this writing). Tovala plans to expand this library over time, but this feels like a huge missed opportunity and gap, particularly considering this type of combination cooking is likely new to most consumers and how otherwise tedious it is to just set it like a plain, old oven.

How do you cook baked potatoes, tater tots, or other foods you might heat in a traditional oven? What’s the best way to reheat pizza, rolls, or croissants? I find it hard to imagine that the folks working at Tovala don’t already have some of these cycles pre-programmed for their own ovens. Even Tovala’s Kickstarter campaign featured example cook cycles for some popular foods, but most of them aren’t yet in the app.

I’d also like to see some assistance with cooking packaged foods. Imagine if the scanner could read the bar code on select packaged products and set the oven accordingly. Now that would be useful.

If you’ve never cooked with steam before, there are some aspects of the Tovala oven that may surprise you. For example, I wasn’t expecting the water drippings that form in the oven during and after cooking. I’m also constantly forgetting to keep my hands and face away when I open the oven door after cooking, as a waft of hot steam usually needs to escape before you can grab your food. I’m forgetful enough about it that I kind of wish the device had CAUTION: Hot Steam! permanently printed on the top edge of the door frame. I’m also concerned about the long-term effects the steam may have on the finish of the cabinets above my oven.

Finally, while this isn’t an issue that appears to affect functionality, the oven seems to have some engineering or manufacturing flaws that cause it to make occasional unsettling noises. Several Tovala customers, including me, have reported that as the oven is heating, it occasionally makes a loud bang as the interior oven wall buckles. As the oven cools, it bangs itself back into place. Additionally, there’s an occasional whistle inside the oven when it’s heating—usually on longer cook cycles. Rabie acknowledges these as known issues but notes that they don’t impact the oven performance or pose any danger (short of, perhaps, startling you). Still…how did that get through testing?

A slightly warped oven wall

Cleaning

Like all ovens, this thing is going to get dirty. Crumbs from bread products and splatter from meals create a soupy mess on the bottom as it mixes with residual water condensation. But unlike a toaster with a removable bottom panel or a microwave oven with smooth surfaces, this box has permanently attached top-and-bottom heating coils that you need to clean around. It’s kind of a pain. I’ve sadly given up on maintaining an always-shiny oven interior.

Inside the Tovala, pre-cleaning

Tovala recommends wiping down the interior of the oven when it’s cool with soapy water and traditional oven cleaner. The oven has a clean cycle you can run it through after the cleaner has been sitting for a while. You run that using the app, of course.

Reflecting

So how much does all of this cost? Meals are $12 apiece, including shipping, and you can subscribe to receive either 3 meals a week for $36 or 6 meals a week (two each of the 3 selected meals) for $72. That’s a lot—slightly more than other food delivery services, but Tovala has the added benefit of the meals being already prepared for you (if, like me, you want that added convenience). And if you like Miso-glazed Salmon as part of your weekly diet, that regular offering alone may be worth it to you.

The oven itself costs $399. That’s $70 higher than the estimated retail price projected during the Kickstarter campaign. For now, you can only order it online, but Rabie says they’ll be considering retail channels in the future.

As a stand-alone countertop oven, Tovala promises a lot but doesn’t yet live up to its full potential. Toasting bread is still problematic, even after recent updates, so it’s not going to replace your toaster yet. Heating food is more reliable, but in that mode your oven is literally a black box that you just have to trust. If you want more control, you’re relegated to using the app, which only supports iOS and Android phones, isn’t optimized yet for tablets, and can’t be controlled through voice assistants like the Echo or Google Home (all of which, according to Rabie, are under consideration for Tovala’s roadmap).

The Tovala app has not been optimized for tablets yet

Tovala makes no bones about the fact that the company’s focus has been on using the oven to cook Tovala meals—and clearly they’ve spent significant time and effort making that convenient and reliable. In my opinion, the Tovala meals are the best part of the offering, but that’s marred somewhat by a still imperfect fulfillment process. The company needs to further improve the reliability of its meal packaging and delivery, perhaps even offering an “express” option for customers in warmer climates who can receive packages earlier in the day.

That focus on the meal subscription service is also the likely reason Tovala’s industrial designers ultimately felt they could delegate basic function and temperature control to an app, but that’s a potential liability for both Tovala and its customers. Tovala oven owners are taking a bet on this company, trusting it to maintain and update the apps and services that control the oven long after purchase.

What happens if smartphones no longer rule our lives in 5 years? What happens if Tovala abandons or degrades support for this first-generation oven when its focus moves to newer models. What happens if Tovala isn’t successful, or gets acquired, or pivots? Well…then you could be left with a large, not-so-great-at-toasting toaster oven. This clearly isn’t an issue specific to Tovala, but it’s one that we, as consumers, will need to consider as more products abandon physical controls and rely on third-party devices and cloud services.

As an early backer on Kickstarter, I paid about half the current retail price, and I’m happy with that price. I don’t know that I would have gone in at $399. I’m also very pleased with the meals and the convenience—I’m eating better now. I recognize that my oven is likely one of the first batch produced and shipped, and Tovala will refine the hardware and experience over time. But in its current form, I’m frustrated by the product’s quirks like the toasting, the banging and whistling, and the heavy app dependency.

Bottom line: this product is about convenience. If you’re interested in eating good, prepared meals at a premium price, then Tovala is worth your consideration. If you consider yourself an amateur chef, and you’re more interested in control and precision, then you’re in luck because this space is heating up [sorry…it was really unavoidable]. If you’re in that group, though, you may be better served by June’s or Anova’s anticipated offering. Either way, get out your wallets. This convenience and control doesn’t come cheap.

About the Author: Richard Gunther is the Director of Client Experience at Universal Mind, a digital agency in Denver, CO. He’s also the Editor of the Digital Media Zone and hosts Home: On, a podcast about DIY home automation products and technology.

Tovala Pairs Smart Appliance Innovation With Meal Kit Convenience

Last year at the Smart Kitchen Summit’s Startup Showcase, David Rabie stood next to a black box, one that resembled a microwave of the future or maybe even a toaster oven. Rabie’s company Tovala was making a smart steam oven that was connected to an app and able to perfectly cook certain meals with a catalog of food data and recipes. But the even bigger story behind Tovala wasn’t in the room at all; the company planned to launch an accompanying service designed to take on the meal kit delivery giants.

After a successful Kickstarter, Tovala is shipping to early backers and launching its flagship product offering to the masses this week. Tovala’s a smart steam oven comes with a ready-to-cook meal kit delivery subscription – focusing on drastically cutting down the time from food pickup to cooking to table. Using convection technology, a water chamber circulates heat to more evenly cook food and the oven is capable of steam, convection and broiling.

But the real innovation here is in the meal kit delivery service; unlike traditional meal kit delivery companies, Tovala sends customers their meals completely prepped and ready to stick in the accompanying smart oven. The customer scans the barcode using the connected app and tells the oven what you’re about to put inside, pulling the recipe down from the cloud to ensure your meal is cooked perfectly.

The meals might look a little like frozen dinners or airplane meals, but the results from early writeups like this one from Washington Post food writer Maura Judkis say otherwise.

Judkis writes, “I tried the Thai turkey meatballs with a hoisin glaze, served on cilantro brown rice with roasted asparagus, and was pleasantly surprised: The meatballs, studded with water chestnut, were crunchy and moist, the asparagus wasn’t overcooked, and a sambal sauce finish added a lot of kick. Another meal, miso salmon with roasted broccoli, delivered a velvety-soft piece of perfectly-done salmon”

Rabie spoke at last year’s Smart Kitchen Summit and described the target customer they are trying to lure – the ones who want even more convenience from a Blue Apron-style meal service. Perhaps the ones who stop using the service after just a few months – which according to the company’s S1 filings right before their IPO seemed to be a large majority.

“We’re trying to solve a common pain point – no time, want a delicious, healthy meal without the work. This seems to resonate across demographics.” – David Rabie, CEO, Tovala

Judkis also experimented with non-Tovala food, reporting that in general, the machine did well but (unsurprisingly) the ideal use for it was with the subscription service meals.

The Tovala Oven comes at a premium – $399 – but in theory could replace your wall oven if you subscribed to the meal service. It too has a higher sticker price than competitive meal kit delivery services, but not by much – charging $36 for 3 meals a week meals for a single person and $72 for the same amount for two people.

So far, Tovala is the only company combining a connected appliance with a prepared delivery service and is tapping into something core to our changing world. People have less time than ever but are more aware of the needs to eat healthy. For those willing to pay for convenience, the startup may be the answer.

Inirv Retrofit Kitchen Kickstarter Surpasses Goal

The 2016 Smart Kitchen Summit’s startup showcase was home to many exciting new companies showing off connected and high-tech devices for kitchens of the future.

One of those companies, Inirv, had a safety system designed for stoves that highlighted the importance of retrofit solutions in the smart home. While many are building connectivity and smarts into their ovens, stoves and fridges, the team at Inirv is tackling a common problem with an add-on system. With a wireless sensor that can detect the presence of gas, the absence of motion for prolonged periods of times and smoke coupled with retrofit stove knobs that can control your stove’s burners, Inirv is designed to prevent overcooking and fires from unattended food.

Credit: Inirv

The Inirv knobs give you remote control of your burners via the smartphone app so you’ll never burn your food – but the sensor will actually remind you if it senses a lack of motion around the stove for too long and left your food unattended. The product is designed to be less of a reactive solution (aka smoke alarm goes off because something is burning) and more proactive to prevent your food from turning into a house fire.

Inirv’s Kickstarter ends on Wednesday and backers can be pretty confident they’ll get a product as the campaign is fully-funded and already passed a few of its stretch goals, including adding Amazon Echo functionality. Alexa, turn off the stove! At $229 for four knobs and a sensor, it’s not the cheapest smoke alarm solution on the market, but it is much smarter than most.

The Inirv team plans to ship the product in December, hopefully in time for the holidays.

Yep, Brava Is Definitely Making A Smart Oven

Back in September, news broke of a new company called Brava Home. At the time, details about the new startup were scarce, but Techcrunch and others reported that the company had raised $12 million from True Ventures to create what they were calling a “kitchen appliance”.

I guessed the mystery appliance was an oven, mostly because…well…the company responded to my inquiry with an email using the domain name “bravaoven.com”.

Turns out our crack team of investigators (again, me) was right: Brava is definitely making an oven.

According to a trademark filing uncovered by The Spoon, the company is working on smart oven that has a number of interesting features:

“Digital thermostat that automatically sets cooking conditions based on packaged food cooking instructions.” The Brava oven will have auto-programmed cooking routines based on the oven reading packaged food. I wouldn’t be surprised if Brava is working directly with food manufacturers to create the optimal cooking routines for the food.

“Oven control system consisting of a digital thermostat that can be controlled wirelessly from a remote location; software application for use on computers and hand-held devices to control oven systems in homes and businesses from a remote location.” Translation: app control of the oven.

“Remote video monitoring system consisting primarily of a camera and video monitor for recording and transmitting images and videos to remote locations.” Looks like the Brava oven will have an internal camera like the June Oven.

“Electric sensors; computer software for monitoring oven temperature and food in the oven, controlling the functioning of the oven and the operation of automation systems of an oven.” The oven will use sensors, which will include motion, humidity, temperature and light, to essentially automate the cook. Again sounds June-like.

“Electric countertop food preparation apparatus for cooking, baking, broiling, roasting, toasting, searing, browning, barbecuing and grilling food, namely, cooking ovens.” In case there was any doubt, this will be a countertop device.

As I stated above, The Brava sounds a lot like the June. The biggest discernible difference will be price, as the company indicated early on their first product will be a product for “everyone” and not the “super-rich”. This tells me it will probably come in well below the June’s $1500 and possibly even sub-$500.

Finally, one last bit of intrigue: The trademark is listed as “Status: 774 – Opposition Pending”, which means that someone has opposed their trademark. The who and why of anyone opposed to Brava’s trademark application is a mystery.

Hopefully we should know more later this year, as the company has indicated it will ship product sometime in 2017.