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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

smart oven

Drop’s Recipe App Platform Now Will Control GE Wi-Fi Ovens

Drop isn’t wasting time transforming itself into a recipe platform for connected appliances.

In the space of three months, the company has announced its second major appliance manufacturer win with GE, who the company announced would adopt its recipe platform with GE’s Wi-Fi enabled ovens. This news follows their September announcement of a partnership with Bosch to power a similar control of settings like temperature from within their recipe app.

For GE, who is taking a fairly open approach with their Wi-Fi product lineup, it’s another of a growing list of partners. They’ve also integrated with IFTTT as well ad added an Alexa skill by the name of Geneva that connects with 70 GE Wi-Fi connected appliances. Since the company’s acquisition (in June Chinese company Haier acquired the appliance division from General Electric), they have been extremely aggressive in adding new capabilities.

Drop continues to make a smooth transition from a company that makes consumer hardware (their first product was the Drop smart scale) to a platform company. The “kitchen guidance” platform space is looking to heat up in 2017, with Innit, Drop, SideChef and others continuing to partner and grow capabilities.

2017 Is Going To Be A Year Of Crazy Innovation For The Oven

When you ask people what device in the home is ripe for a technology refresh, the oven usually isn’t at the top of the list.  That’s because most of us use our ovens almost every day, without complaint, for years and decades at a time.

Why change something that works so well?

Except that it doesn’t, and the only reason so many of us think things are fine is, unlike with phones or cars, we don’t know any better since we aren’t regularly exposed to any noticeable innovation in those boring cooking boxes sitting in our kitchen.

But things are changing. Just as Nest showed us a few years ago it’s possible to rethink those white boxes in our homes like thermostats, a slew of companies are now forcing us to reconsider the oven.

June was the perhaps the first, announcing their June Intelligent last year. Today they announced their oven will ship next month, which could mark the beginning of a new wave of innovation in the oven market over the next decade.  Below are some of the technologies which will change the way we think about the lowly oven in coming years:

Precision Cooking: One of the early success stories in the smart kitchen has been sous vide cookers, mostly because of the ability to apply precision cooking techniques to get chef-like results. The thing is, you can do that in an oven too, and that’s exactly what Anova plans to do with its new precision oven.  Others like June and Jenn-Air are thinking the same thing, which should address one of the biggest problems with modern day ovens: wide variability in heating from brand to brand and model to model.  Precision also means optimized cooking depending on the food itself. The reality is 350 degrees in one oven means a very different thing in another oven, and using the same parameters to cook in your Jenn-Air could give you very different results than cooking something in your Samsung. With more precise cooking and temperature control, both appliance makers and food brands can create very tailored instructions for the food type, quantity and for the cooking device itself.

Guided Cooking: One of the most interesting trends in the smart kitchen this year was the explosion of interest in guided cooking. While companies like Hestan and Cuciniale created countertop guided cooking systems that use a pan and induction heating surface, others like Innit want to apply a similar fusion of app-guidance, sensors, and precision cooking to create guided cooking experiences with bigger built-in appliances.  What could make things even more interesting is Innit could extend the guided cooking experience further back towards prep and storage, since their platform also will be used in refrigerators and pantry systems.

AI/Machine Learning: One of the most fertile fields in machine image recognition has been food. Google and a bevy of startups have invested in research to enable a better understanding of food through image recognition, while June and Innit are working specifically to apply AI within the cooking experience itself. In addition to image recognition, the ability of devices to learn and optimize their behavior based on past cooking behavior, user preferences and contextual understanding of the consumer’s needs will lead to significant advances in intelligent cooking systems in the coming years.

New Heating Technologies: One of the biggest changes coming to ovens over the next few years will be the way in which they heat food.  Traditional ovens use electric or gas heating, and in the last few decades, convection heating has become a standard feature on most consumer ovens. But soon we will see a variety of new and interesting heating methods, ranging from the new RF cooking technology from NXP to the steam cooking included in ovens from Anova and Tovala.

Interfaces: One of the biggest changes in ovens will simply be the way in which we interact with them. The old way of programming a cook through a number of often confusing buttons was ripe for a refresh, and most of the new entrants in this space are creating compelling new industrial designs and interfaces. Whether it’s the physical dial on the June or Amazon’s Alexa, we can soon expect that we will be interacting – and talking – to our ovens in vastly different ways in the future.

Kitchen Tech Must Balance Longevity With Extensibility According To Appliance Execs (VIDEO)

One of the biggest challenges in bringing new kitchen technology to market is ensuring that appliances like smart ovens last a really long time.

How long?  Up to 20 years, according to Paul Bristow, Sr. Product Manager at GE Appliances, who along with other appliance execs spoke recently at the Smart Kitchen Summit on a panel entitled ‘The Self Driving Oven’.

The reason for such longevity is simple: Because that’s the expected lifespan of an appliance like a wall oven in a traditional home. That’s a tall order for appliance makers, particularly as they start to transition product development cycles to more closely resemble those dictated by the technology industry, where it’s not unheard of for a product like a smartphone to become obsolete in just a couple of years.

But according to Steve Brown, head of Whirlpool’s Jenn-Air business unit, adding new technology features such as Wi-Fi may allow appliance makers to future-proof their products through remote software upgrades.

“The exciting thing about having the oven connected is it will stay more relevant over time,” said Brown. “When we launched our connected oven last December, it didn’t have any integration with Nest and now it does. We will be adding voice recognition very shortly.”

But ensuring longevity goes beyond simply adding connectivity like Wi-Fi. According to June CTO Nikhil Bhogal, it also means making sure the hardware can grow over time as new features come to market, which means taking a more forward-looking approach than many of today’s consumer electronics.

“If you look at today’s consumer electronics, they’re built to today’s OS (operating system) stack,” said Bhogal. “Within 2 years when the OS starts adding additional functionality, the OS starts adding new functionality, it slows down and it becomes obsolete in 3 years.”

According to Bhogal, this often means over-building the hardware capability to ensure that it can take on new features over time.

“Part of the approach should be building with headroom to grow,” said Bhogal, who went on to detail how June has utilized powerful components such as the Nvidia K1, a processor that powers some of today’s high-end mobile gaming devices, when building the June Oven.

David Kender, the VP of Editorial for USA Today’s Reviewed.com, asked the panel if appliance makers are starting to shift their product planning approach to factor in newer, more cutting edge technologies.

The answer is yes, according to Jenn-Air’s Brown. “There’s been a change in the sense of urgency in the last 15 months.”

When Kender asked why things have shifted in the last 15 months, Brown pointed to the reduction in cost of components and the realization among appliance makers that the kitchen has fell behind other parts of the home.

“The kitchen is one of the least connected parts of the home today, oddly enough, because its one of the most important parts,” said Brown. “When people ask ‘why would you connect them’, I would flip around and ask them ‘do you really think these expensive electronics will be the only things in our whole house that are not connected?'”

Tovala Raises $1.6 Million To Bring Smart Oven To Market

Tovala’s ambitious plan to combine a smart oven with a curated meal delivery service just got some validation in the form of a new seed funding round.

The company, which was one of 15 startups for the Smart Kitchen Summit’s startup showcase, announced a seed round raise of $1.6 million from Origin Ventures, which is the VC firm’s second investment in the company after dropping $500 thousand into Tovala in a pre-seed investment early in 2016. The company also garnered $255 thousand on Kickstarter earlier this year.

Given how ambitious Tovala’s product vision is, they’ll need every penny. The Tovala smart oven is essentially a consumer-priced combi-oven which combines bake, broil, convenction and steam heating.  The “smart” part includes a barcode scanner that automatically programs the cook based on pre-programmed guidance. The ‘auto-pilot’ cooking will be applied for the curated meals through Tovala’s own meal delivery service.

The meal service itself is Tovala’s biggest differentiator and also likely its biggest challenge. The company expects to launch a meal delivery service alongside the oven, an audacious plan given the struggles of food delivery startups.  While Tovala CEO David Rabie indicated on an interview on the Smart Kitchen Show that he would be open to partnering with others meal delivery services, the company is definitely intent – for now – to come to market with their own.

The price for this Swiss army knife of an oven is $289 for pre-order, and the company expects to deliver them to backers by spring of 2017.

What Do We Know About Stealth Smart Kitchen Startup Brava?

About a week ago, news broke that True Ventures, the early stage venture firm behind such well-known tech brands as Automattic (the company behind WordPress), Fitbit and Ring, has recently taken a shine to the smart kitchen.

True made a healthy $12 million A round investment in Brava which, according to its founders, is building a connected kitchen appliance. While it isn’t Juicero or June money, $12 million is a big chunk of change for a connected kitchen appliance, which made us wonder what exactly the company has cooking.

Media CEO Enters The Kitchen

A quick survey of Brava’s founders and employees on Linkedin tells us they’re a collection of executives with lengthy resumes in the media, gaming and consumer IoT spaces, but not a whole lot of appliance or culinary experience.

The company’s CEO is John Pleasants, a long-time entertainment and content CEO that has spent the majority of his career in interactive entertainment, including stints at Disney, Electronic Arts and, most recently, heading up Samsung’s content group. Just two months ago Variety wrote about Pleasants departure from Samsung and how it signaled the effective end of company’s media ambitions.

Brava’s other co-founders include Thomas Cheng, Brava’s COO, who previously helped lead hardware for smart home startup August, and Dan Yue, the company’s Chief Product Officer, who had worked at Playdom, a social gaming group within Disney, under Pleasants. Yue also was a co-founder of an organic meal kit delivery service, Green Chef, which makes him the only cofounder with food on their resume.

The rest of the team includes a mix of folks who either worked with Pleasants in the past at such stops as Playdom and other folks who cut their teeth at consumer IoT brands such as August Home.

What’s Brava Got Cooking?

While Brava has been cryptic on its website and in comments to reporters, they have given some hints.

First, they have made it clear they are on their website and through statements from Pleasants they are making a product for the kitchen.

We also know from Techcrunch’s interview with Pleasants the product could be more affordable than some of the other high-profile connected kitchen products from the likes of June and Juicero. According to CEO Pleasants, the first Brava product is “…for everyone. We’re aspiring to [produce something that is] well-regarded and high-quality but not for the superrich.”

Pleasants’ comment also indicates that Brava will most likely debut with a single consumer-facing product rather than coming out of the gate with something more industry facing “platform” or a suite of products.

And then there are the clues so obvious when you see them, you should probably just go with it: When we emailed Brava to see if we can talk to them, the response came from an email address with the domain name “bravaoven.com.” In fact, bravaoven.com redirects to the company’s website bravahome.com.

So, is Brava making a smart oven?

Possibly. In fact, probably. If you put together the concept of mass-market pricing and something resembling an oven, a safe guess would be the company’s first product is some sort of standalone countertop device that features connectivity and other advanced tech.

The last clue is an important one, and it comes from Jon Callaghan, who in his introduction post about Brava at the True Ventures blog asks, “The whole home can be connected, but does every part really need to be?”

This is an important question that also serves as a potential clue as to what Brava is doing. As we’ve seen with the June Oven, the biggest advances with what they are doing have to do with things like image recognition and new heating elements, things that could be paired with connectivity to create a useful product, but these are not advances that derive their primary value from a Wi-Fi connection.

Chances are Brava’s first product could and probably will have connectivity, but as we’ve learned following the smart kitchen pretty closely, the reinvention of cooking and the kitchen is something much bigger and broader than just adding Wi-Fi or Bluetooth.

Ultimately, what direction Brava’s product takes is just pure guessing at this point. Given co-founder Dan Yue’s relationship with meal kit delivery company Greenchef, this could feature a Tovala-like pairing of a meal service with hardware, or it could just be a consumer grade combi-oven or something similar to the June.

No matter what Brava is up to, we shouldn’t have to wait too long to find out. The company has indicated they plan to ship sometime in 2017, making a CES reveal in January likely.