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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

sous vide

Mellow Turns to Equity Crowdfunding to Raise $1M in Seed Funding

The saga of Mellow, the company behind the eponymous sous vide cooking machine, continues, as it has launched an equity crowdfunding campaign to raise $1.07 million dollars in seed funding.

The Mellow, for those who may not remember, was a combination cooler/sous vide cooker. The hook with the Mellow was that you could put food in a water chamber in the morning and the machine would keep it cold until it was time to cook, so you could have dinner ready for you when you got home.

The product started as a self-hosted crowdfunding project back in 2014. But a series of delays, the departure of Mellow’s original CEO, and a brutal review in WIRED that called out the machine as “too risky” because it didn’t actually keep food at a food safe cold temperature seemed to spell the end of the device and the company.

But Mellow found a new owner, kept going and successfully crowdfunded a second iteration of its device last year called the Mellow Duo. The company raised more than $200,000 on Kickstarter for the Duo, which will feature two water reservoirs so people can cook multiple items to different temperatures at the same time.

In a Kickstarter update on April 6, Mellow said that the Duo was significantly delayed because of the coronavirus, a common issue for crowdfunded projects. So perhaps Mellow is turning to equity crowdfunding to help keep the lights on until it can ship. Mellow launched the equity crowdfunding campaign on SeedInvest, looking to raise a seed round of slightly more than $1 million.

The minimum investment is $1,000 and as part of its pitch, the company released some interesting information. According to Mellow, “Over 6,400 Mellow V1 units have been activated, with the average household using it to cook 1.7+ times per week.” That’s…. not a ton of devices in use or a sizeable market to build on.

Mellow is conducting this campaign at a time when more companies are turning to equity crowdfunding. GoSun, GOffee, Winc, Small Robot Company and Miso Robotics have all shunned traditional VCs in favor of potential everyday investors over the past year. Bypassing institutional investment does mean there is less pressure on companies to scale, but they also give up the institutional knowledge and connections VCs bring.

Of course, any investment carries risk, but it seems like Mellow is trying to raise money at a time when the home consumer sous vide hardware has been largely commodotized and the market itself seems fairly limited in size. ChefSteps laid off staff and dropped product lines before being acquired by Breville. Nomiku shut down completely. And Anova is looking to expand beyond sous vide into a forthcoming smart oven.

Of course, part of the problem with home sous vide cooking was the amount of time it takes to make your meal. First you have to bring a water bath up to temperature and then once you put your food in, you have to that up to the right temperature, which can take more than an hour. Then, if you’re cooking something like steak, you have to sear it.

The Mellow promises to do most of that (sans searing) automatically for you behind the scenes, so you can set it and forget it. Assuming they fixed the cold storage issue, we wonder how big that use case is as most people don’t typically know what they want to eat for dinner until a few hours before they actually eat.

Will Mellow’s saga continue? For now, that’s up to the crowd.

With Consumers in Quarantine, Connected Cooking Companies Spring Into Action With Tailored Content

With a good chunk of the world’s population currently in quarantine, most of us are cooking at home a lot more nowadays.

Along with all this home cooking has come a massive spike in demand for information for culinary how-to, ranging from recipe suggestions to tutorials on how to do everything from making rice to baking bread. While many are simply searching Google for recipes, others are settling in to learn cooking skills to help them learn to get food on the table.

This sudden hunger for cooking-related guidance has led some tech-forward cooking startups to ramp up the content as they look to both satiate newfound interest in cooking skills while also giving quarantine bound consumers something to do with their time.

Here are a few ways in which kitchen tech startups have ramped up their efforts to serve homebound consumers:

Hestan Cue

While the Hestan Cue already walks users through recipes with step by step instructions, the guided cooking startup has launched Hestan Cue Cooking School, a series of virtual classes to help users of the connected cooking platform build up on their cooking skills during quarantine.

Built with the virtual class platform Teachable, the initial classes cover techniques for cooking beef, eggs and vegetables. The cool thing is that while the classes suggest you use your Cue for certain steps, you can use the classes even if you don’t have the Hestan device.

According to Hestan Smart Cooking managing director John Van Den Nieuwenhuizen, about one third of the Hestan Cue users have signed up for courses.

Anova

Sous vide specialist Anova has always been active in creating cooking content for their user community, and over the past month they’ve gone quarantine cooking focused by creating content to help consumers with everything from making pantry staples to batch cooking. And for the parents with bored kids, Anova suggests enlisting them to help with the brisket.

Thermomix

Thermomix is known for its in-person sales model for the high-end multicooker, but in the age of COVID-19 they’ve gone virtual with a “quarantine kitchen” series of cooking demos and are also allowing potential customers to book online cooking demos with the TM6 sales team.

You can see one of their latest episodes of their quarantine kitchen series below:

SideChef

SideChef is also ramping up its quarantine specific content. In early March they created a quarantine cooking recipe collection. A month later, and with virtual happy hours firmly planted in the stay-at-home zeitgeist, they’ve created a guide for virtual dinner parties.

Instant Pot

The massively popular pressure cooker is famous for leaning on its Facebook community to create content for them. Still, the company seems to have recognized our new shared reality and is letting people know that Instant Pots can help you cook bread while you’re cooped up during quarantine.

Food Network Kitchen

While the Food Network Kitchen app doesn’t seem to have created any tailored content for quarantine bound consumers, they have seen a big jump in usage and consumers look for more ways to cook. Company spokesperson Irika Slavin told me via email that Foodnetwork.com has seen “double digit increases” in page views and the Food Network App, the guided cooking premium offering launched in October, has seen what Slavin describes as a “triple digit increase” in visitors.

ckbk

ckbk is a ‘Spotify for cookbooks’ app that puts pretty much any cookbook or recipe just a click away.

Since ckbk only offers access to existing cookbooks, the company isn’t creating any quarantine specific content, but they do have a good idea of what people are cooking. Company founder Matthew Cockerill told me he’s noticed most of his subscribers, and the world in general, seem to be moving in sync over the past month through what he calls the ‘seven stages of cooking grief.’

“So first of all it was about the prepping – stockpiling durable good – beans and pasta,” said Cockerill. “Then came the “staff of life” basics bread and baking. And after that, I think, there’s a need for some comfort, yes, but also some relief from the monotony. Which is where I think chocolate and dessert cravings are kicking in. It’s either that or alcohol. And in many cases both!”

“Lastly,” he continued, “we’ve also seen a trend of interest in ways to use the new found time which people see stretching out ahead of them, with longer-term projects” like baking bread.

Cockerill told me that new subscriptions are up 250% over pre-COVID times. If you want to cook your way through grief, the company is giving away 30 days free access to their app to help you cook through your pantry items.

Firstchop Abandons D2C Sous Vide Proteins for B2B Microwavable Meals

When Firstchop first launched towards the end of 2017, it was at the center of a couple of different trends then sweeping the food tech world. It was a direct to consumer mail order meal kit, kinda, it only provided vacuum-sealed frozen proteins (that were actually quite tasty). Those proteins were meant to be reheated at home with a sous vide machine wand, the hot kitchen device at the time, which Firstchop gave away as part of a customer’s subscription.

My oh my, how a couple of years can change an industry. Meal kits are still around but most of the growth is at retail, not mail order. And the consumer sous vide market has basically collapsed. Chef Steps laid off a bunch of staff before being acquired by Breville, Nomiku shut down, and Anova is expanding beyond sous vide wands and into a new steam oven.

Ajay Narain, Co-Founder of Firstchop told me by phone this week that he saw the the big sous vide collapse coming. “We knew by the end of 2018 that the D2C was dead and the luster of sous vide was gone,” Narain said.

“Sous vide really caught fire and then collapsed,” Narain said. “Unrealistic expecations were built around what sous vide could do. People thought it would be great for all of these different use cases, but it has a lot of limitations.”

So in January of 2019, Firstchop decided to abandon almost everything it started out doing. It was getting out of the direct to consumer business and out of the consumer sous vide game. Firstchop pivoted into refrigerated prepared meals sold through office vending machines. The company added veggies and carbs to its proteins and each meal is re-heated with a microwave.

Narain said that during an initial customer pilot of its new meals at the beginning of 2019, Firstchop sold three times as much product in the first month than it had the entire previous year of selling D2C.

Since that initial test, Firstchop has been developing its products and the company officially launched its menu of meals today, which include Chicken Tikka Masala, Korean Barbecue Beef, Grilled Chicken Breast, and Chicken Chili Verde. The company is in talks to sell its meals through different large foodservice companies that operate vending services for various companies.

Firstchop hasn’t completely abandoned its sous vide roots however. Narain said that the sous vide cooking just moved from the consumer to the back end, and that’s how all of its meals are prepared. “At a manufacturing level, sous vide cooking process on the backend is essential,” Narain said. “It delivers moistnenss and tenderness, and the microwave is like magic.”

What’s almost more impressive is that Firstchop has held on this long just by bootstrapping. While it survived the consumer sous vide implosion, we’ll have to see if this latest pivot will be Firstchop’s last.

Scott Heimendinger Leaves Modernist to Launch New Cooking Tech Startup: “We Haven’t Conquered Improving the Kitchen”

Longtime cooking technology entrepreneur Scott Heimendinger announced today he was leaving Modernist Cuisine to launch a new startup where he will develop kitchen technology.

Heimendinger made the announcement about leaving his employer of the last four years via tweet:

I decided to catch up with Heimendinger to discuss his plans post-Modernist Cuisine. While the founder of Sansaire and kitchen tech hired gun is keeping his plans under wraps for the near future, he did give me some hints about the general direction and also shared his thoughts on the need for innovation in the kitchen tech space.

Answers have been edited for brevity.

You’re starting something in kitchen tech. Is it hardware?

Yes.

Can talk about the idea or do you need to protect the IP first?

Like so many products, protecting IP is necessary to ward off competitors.  I will be really vague about what it is. I still need to invent my way through the idea. Once I do and the patents are filed and my attorney says it’s ok, I can’t wait to scream from the mountaintops about it.

Is it cooking equipment?

It’s in the kitchen. It’s something that you will use in the kitchen. A physical product that you can use in the kitchen that will improve your experience of cooking.

Is this an idea that came to you in the middle of the night or over years?

It’s a little of both. For better or worse, I get flashes of ideas over time. Most of them are silly or throw away. Every now and then there is an idea that sticks in my head. When I knew I was feeling the gravitational pull of wanting to go entrepreneurial again, I asked ‘What will be something I want to do and something that is feasible for me to do?’

You can rule out tons of stuff because it’s a cool idea, but it requires a ton of money. Or, it’s a cool idea or there’s no way to defend from competition. Eventually I ran out of reasons to rule out the idea.  It was a pretty deliberate process to convince myself this idea was worth taking a leap for.

Did you learn anything from Sansaire experience?

Sure hope so (laughs).  As you know, the end of my story in consumer sous vide was not the happiest story.  I walked away from Sansaire and the company shuttered. 

What Sansaire did do is help me understand why people are serial entrepreneurs. There are all these things you have to figure out.
It’s a big scary monster. It’s in the dark. But once you shine a flashlight on it and look it in the eye, you realize it’s hard but not scary.

The biggest thing I have now compared to when I started Sansaire is the confidence of having done it once and knowing what to expect.

Have you gotten funding?

No, and I hope I can bring this idea to life without outside funding. When I was at Sansaire, we did a Kickstarter and that’s how the business got going. But at some point, we tried to raise money because we were outgunned by bigger players with more money.

I had a very bad experience trying to raise money. It was emotionally taxing, hugely time consuming. And, frankly, if I get to choose, I’d rather focus my time on trying to make good products or make happy customers than do all the things you have to do to fundraise. 

Are you starting this company solo or with partners?

Solo. If I can get away with it, that is how I hope that it will continue to be, at least for a while until it requires more people. 

That is an intentional choice. I have a lot of OCD tendencies, tend to be a perfectionist and very tidy about things. When it’s just me, there’s no one to say “that’s enough”. I get to be the last word on perfection.

Anything you learned from your time at Modernist Cuisine?

When I left previously, there was a project I always wanted to bring to life which was in turn the content of the Modernist Cuisine books into a TV show. Basically Planet Earth for food. I was never able to do that the first time. I got a call when I left Sansaire,  saying hey, ‘Nathan is really interested in doing this. Do you want to come back and make a show?’

Sadly, it hasn’t worked out. For one reason or another we were never able to land it.  I hope someone else in my absence can do it. A TV show that really explains the science of how cooking works in a visual and scientific way is something the world needs, but it was time for me to move on.

So what have I learned? I’ve become a much better engineer. While I’ve been here, not only have I gotten to learn about cinematography. I’ve also become a much better electrical engineer and software engineer. I’ve become much better at a bunch of disciplines.

Did consulting for Anova on their smart oven contribute to getting your entrepreneurial juices flowing?

Yes it did. It reminded me how much I love working on problems where we put ourselves in the mind of the user. I love working with the team at Anova because we’re all focused on how do we make the best design decisions to create the best experience for someone using this product. That turns out to be something I didn’t know I was missing so much. 

There have been some struggles in kitchen hardware. Why are you optimistic?

Part of the reason I’m optimistic is circular logic. I am optimistic because I have to be. I wouldn’t decide to take the plunge into the space again if I weren’t optimistic.  I am making a bunch of assumptions and have to hope they work out.

The most substantive answer to your question is the smart kitchen industry has gone through a phase where being smart meant adding Wi-Fi and a mobile app. In some cases, that was really useful and delivered value to the customer. In other cases, it wasn’t. It was for the sake of doing it, or it was maybe to satisfy an investor.  That makes me sad.

We haven’t conquered improving the kitchen. It is not a solved problem. There are a thousand things that can be done better that could lead to a better experience cooking.

I also think there is a lot of opportunity to make things smart that is not just adding Wi-Fi or an app to it.  There is an opportunity to improve all sorts of things we are doing in the kitchen.

My favorite type of technology in the whole world is technology that is invisible. I have a Samsung Frame TV and when you turn it off, it doesn’t become a big black rectangle, but instead it shows art. It disappears and becomes art. I love that.

What are some things you think are exciting in terms of how cooking can change over the next couple of years in cooking innovation?

It seems like there is sustained excitement and enthusiasm about cooking. For the segment of the population that does cook at home, that seems like it is a lasting part of their identity and it makes me excited that someone wants to do something because they love the craft of it.

Is there any space in cooking that is particularly ripe for innovation?

Think some of my favorite surprises comes out of material science. Cooking is intrinsically linked to the materials we use. Look at how silicone has transformed what we are doing. At the International Housewares Association (IHA) there is this little corner of companies experimenting in materials and it makes me excited because it’s science fiction. 

Thanks for taking time today to talk about what’s next.

You’re welcome.

Podcast: What Does Nomiku’s Demise Mean For Consumer Sous Vide?

Last Friday, Nomiku announced it was closing its doors.

Alongside Anova and Sansaire, the San Francisco based startup founded by Lisa and Abe Fetterman was part of an early class of consumer sous vide startups looking to democratize the high-end cooking technique through technology. Now, nearly a decade after the publication of Modernist Cuisine, only Anova is left standing (after being acquired by Electrolux) while Nomiku and Sansaire are no more. So what does it all mean?

No spoilers here! You’ll have to listen to The Spoon editor podcast to find out.

In addition to discussing the end of Nomiku and the broader meaning of it all, the Spoon editor team also discuss the following stories:

As always, you can listen to this episode of the Food Tech Show on Apple podcasts or Spotify, download directly to your device, or just click play below.

Newsletter: Why Blue Bottle Coffee is Like the Tesla Cybertruck

This is the web version of our weekly newsletter. Sign up for it and get all the best food tech news delivered directly to your inbox each week!

The new Tesla Cybertruck is a polarizing vehicle. People seem to either really like or hate the triangle-shaped truck. (I’m squarely in the like side because I’ve always wanted a vehicle from Megaforce.) Tesla CEO Elon Musk is definitely a polarizing figure in his own right, but between electric cars, solar powered roof tiles, and hyperloops, Musk isn’t waiting patiently for the future to arrive. He’s shooting it full of harpoons and trying to drag it towards us right now.

I thought of Mr. Musk when I read about Blue Bottle Coffee’s big announcement last week that the coffee company was trying to make its locations have zero waste by the end of 2020. Not 2024 or 2022. But twelve months from now.

As my colleague Jenn Marston wrote, Blue Bottle is achieving this by having people bring in their own containers for coffee beans, their own reusable cups for coffee (or pay a “modest deposit” for one of Blue Bottles reusable cups), and packaging grab and go items in reusable containers.

This is a bold move that even Blue Bottle’s CEO concedes is risky. In a blog post last week announcing the change, Bryan Meehan wrote: “We are proud to announce an experiment that may not work, that may cost us money, and that may make your life a little more complicated.”

Good for him for not sugar-coating this experiment. Also kudos for pushing the plastic-free movement forward. Big companies have been doing little things to reduce their plastic waste output over the past year: Burger King phased out cheap toys in kids meals in the U.K., Live Nation banned single-use plastics at music festivals, and Ben & Jerry’s eliminated single-use plastic cups and spoons.

But Blue Bottle is going one step further and actually “inconveniencing” its customers by pulling them out of their normal routine. As Jenn wrote, the result could wind up being that busy people get pissed and take off for Starbucks. But I’m hopeful that people and other businesses will be inspired by Blue Bottle’s actions, and buy a Cybertruck-load of coffee from them.

Nomiku’s new RFID-scanning circulator

RIP Consumer Sous Vide?

Spoon Founder Mike Wolf broke the news last Friday that Nomiku, one of the early pioneers of the home sous vide movement, was shutting down all operations.

Last year Nomiku had pivoted from a hardware company to become a meal delivery service that used the company’s sous vide technology. But while growth in that sector was strong, it wasn’t enough.

As Mike pointed out, Nomiku’s demise isn’t an isolated incident:

The exit of Nomiku from the market marks the end of what has been a fairly rough of couple years for the first wave of startups in the connected cooking market. Sansaire, which started around the same time as Nomiku, shut down in February of 2018. Hestan Cue, maker of a guided cooking system, downsized its team in April, and just a few weeks later ChefSteps, another sous vide startup, had to layoff a significant portion of its team before it got acquired by Breville.

The bloom is definitely off the consumer sous vide rose at this point. The only question is whether the carnage will continue and expand into other parts of the connected cooking appliance market in 2020.

The Year in Kitchen Tech Crowdfunding

Speaking of hardware: If you are an entrepreneur looking to crowdfund an idea, may we suggest creating some gadget around beverages? I took a look back at our 2019 coverage of Kickstarter projects and there were five drink-related projects that crowdfunded more than $100,000 this year:

Mosi Tea mobile tea brewer – $458,200
uKeg Nitro cold brew coffee maker – $643,498
Stasis Glycol homebrew chiller – $184,369
Travel Decanter cocktail tumblers – $377,071
Ode coffee grinder – $609,094 (with 55 days to go in the campaign)

However, it hasn’t been all good news for the companies that made a bunch a moola on Kickstarter. Mosi Tea will miss its Dec. ship date, Stasis has encountered production issues, and some people who have received their Travel Decanters have complained about it leaking.

Crowdfunding food tech will surely continue through the next year. Hopefully those inspired by the Kickstarter successes will learn from the crowdfunding failures.

Consumer Sous Vide Pioneer Nomiku is Shutting Down

Nomiku, a pioneering kitchen tech startup that helped bring sous vide to the consumer market, is shutting down operations effective immediately.

In an email sent to customers this morning, Lisa Fetterman, Nomiku founder and CEO, wrote that the company will be shutting down all operations, including both its sous vide appliance business and its sous vide ready meal business, Nomiku Meals.

In an interview with The Spoon, Fetterman said that while the company saw strong growth in their meal delivery business after the company pivoted one year ago – she said they doubled revenue since the launch of the food business – it just wasn’t enough.

“We just couldn’t get the company to a sustainable place,” said Fetterman.

Fetterman indicated that for long term survival, the company would need to raise capital and that that was going to be challenging in today’s environment. She said that while being a hardware company made it hard to raise additional capital, it was going to be even tougher as a “food tech” startup focused on food delivery.

The demise of meal kit companies “have put a chill on the market when it came to raising funds,” said Fetterman.

The exit of Nomiku from the market marks the end of what has been a fairly rough of couple years for the first wave of startups in the connected cooking market. Sansaire, which started around the same time as Nomiku, shut down in February of 2018. Hestan Cue, maker of a guided cooking system, downsized its team in April, and just a few weeks later ChefSteps, another sous vide startup, had to layoff a significant portion of its team before it got acquired by Breville.

According to Fetterman, the company has been in discussions with potential acquirers, and while she hasn’t ruled out a potential deal, nothing has evolved to the point where she could move in that direction yet.

So for now, at least, Nomiku is no more.

I asked her what that means for existing customers, both for owners of the Nomiku sous vide circulator and of the meal delivery service, and this is what she told me: For food delivery, anyone who has been charged will receive their food. For any new orders in the last week or so that haven’t been charged, those will be cancelled. For those with a circulator, they will continue to support those still under a year warranty “as long as supplies last.”

Fetterman said that those with the circulator can reach out via email to info@nomiku.com for updates and continuing support.

For me, the news of Nomiku’s demise is a real bummer. Fetterman has been one of the industry’s most outspoken and innovative entrepreneurs, and her absence will leave the space just a little less interesting.

For her part, Fetterman is still sorting through how to feel as she shuts down the company she spent the last ten years building with her husband, Abe Fetterman.

“I started the company when I was 22,” said Fetterman. “I’m 32 now. I’ve grown up as an entrepreneur and a person, publicly. It is very easy to feel a huge of sense of defeat failing publicly as well. That’s par for the course.”

When Fetterman started her company a decade ago, she was among the first to see the opportunity in bringing sous vide to the masses. Over time, others entered the market and the competition wasn’t always friendly. At times, the elbow throwing between Nomiku and competitors even spilled into public view.

“When I started Nomiku, I always knew the tremendous risk it held to invent a category and then fight against really cut throat competitors,” said Fetterman.

Despite the outcome, Fetterman said she’s still very proud of what she and the team have accomplished, including centering the company’s manufacturing in the US.

“There were things I couldn’t control, but I feel proud of the way we have run the company, that we always tried to do the right thing and not cut corners. I feel proud that we moved the manufacturing back to the States.”

Fetterman doesn’t know what’s next for her and is planning to take a little time off after ten years of running a startup. When I asked her if she plans on starting another company in the food space, she said it’s too soon to say, but she did think there is still lots of opportunity for innovation in cooking.

“People will always need a simple solution for dinner. That is obvious to everybody. I think the next great food tech company is out there, even in the next year, but it’s hard to say what that looks like right now.”

The Mellow Duo, a Sous Vide Appliance With Built-in Refrigeration, Surpasses Kickstarter Target

That Mellow Duo has had a good week.

The dual chamber sous vide appliance with integrated cooling started a Kickstarter campaign on Monday and by Tuesday had surpassed its $30 thousand crowdfunding its target. Three days later, the campaign stands at $67 thousand.

“We are super excited with how the campaign has started,” Zalmi Duchman, company CEO, told me via a Linkedin message. “While I knew we would hit our goal early I didn’t think we would surpass it within the first 24 hours.”

Interestingly, the second generation Mellow is on roughly the same pace as the original Mellow, which crowdfunded through a self-hosted campaign on its site in 2014. As some readers know, that first generation product was ultimately late to market and had something of a rocky start. With the Mellow Duo, the company’s new ownership is hoping to turn the page.

With the exception of a radically different form factor and modern features like built-in refrigeration and connectivity, the Duo is something of a callback to the early days of the sous vide market, where water baths like the Sous Video Supreme were the only game in town. While most consumers nowadays go with svelte circulators that spend most of the time in the kitchen drawer, the Duo almost demands real estate on the kitchen counter, which may be just fine for a subset of sous vide diehards who want to cook every day with precision heating.

For Duchman’s part, he’s just hopeful the campaign’s early momentum will continue.

“Having almost 300 backers already shows the excitement around the new product but my real goal is at least 1000 backers and I’m confident we will hit that before the campaign ends”

Anova Launches New Smaller, Lighter Sous Vide Precision Cooker

Anova announced a new version of its Precision Cooker sous vide wand via a corporate blog post yesterday.

The new version of the Anova Precision Cooker is two inches smaller and 20 percent lighter than the older version and unlike the Anova Nano, it has wifi connectivity. The company also claims the device is more durable and provides better connectivity than the previous version. The new sous vide wand is available for pre-order right now for $129 (which the company says is $70 less than the retail price).

The first Anova Precision Cooker launched in 2014 and was among the initial wave of devices, along with ChefSteps and Nomiku, that kicked off a sous vide mini-boom. With the advent of a circulating wand that could attach to any pot of water and be controlled via mobile app, a full-fledged countertop sous vide machine was no longer necessary.

But this year that mini-boom has given way to turmoil. ChefSteps went through layoffs and product cancellations before finally being acquired by Breville. A spat between Nomiku CEO founder Lisa Fetterman and Anova CEO Steve Svajian over idea theft went public earlier this summer.

But Anova, which was bought by Electolux, carries on. In addition to new hardware, Anova also recently released a new version of its mobile app, which controls its devices.

With the introduction of the new Precision Cooker, Anova is no longer making the older version of its device. The blog post said that the company would still support it, but it was putting remaining inventory on a fire sale. But when we went to check out the price, the devices were already sold out.

Cinder Launches Chef Partnership Program

Cinder, the precision countertop grill that was saved from extinction by Desora, announced today that it is launching a new Chef Partnership Program, which will make Cinder-specific recipes available through the Cinder mobile app and website.

The Chef Partnership Program will feature recipes developed by Michelin starred chef John Critchley, who is Head Chef of Culinary Innovation at Chew (which Spoon readers might remember as the company that was going to — but then decided not to — take over the shuttered PilotWorks location in Brooklyn).

The Cinder is a unique device in the connected kitchen world that combines sous vide and conductive cooking. It’s a big machine that looks like a George Foreman grill on steroids that cooks food with precise temperate control. But unlike a typical sous vide circulator, the Cinder can also ratchet up the hot plates to sear as well.

According to the press announcement, the recipes “are meant to highlight Cinder’s unique Sous-Vide and grilling capabilities.” Critchley’s recipes have been designed exclusively for the Cinder grill, and users can expect a new recipe every week. The company will also be adding recipes from more chefs to the program throughout the year.

Access to these recipes will be free to all existing Cinder customers. Michel Maalouly, Co-Founder and CEO of Desora, told me via email that eventually the “recipes and resources” from the Chef Partnership Program will become a paid subscription service. All existing Cinder customers will be grandfathered into the program free of charge.

As part of today’s announcement, Desora also said that the company has released an all-new Android app for the Cinder that “now guides users through every step of the cooking process, from ingredient selection to food preparation.” An iOS update will arrive in the next few months.

Both Spoon founder Mike Wolf and I have tested the Cinder and found it to cook steaks perfectly. It’s bulky and heavy, and because it’s using precision cooking it’s not a fast way to prepare a protein, but the results are tasty. Now we’ll have to try the new recipes to see how easy they are to prepare.

Breville Acquires ChefSteps, Maker of the Joule Sous Vide

Kitchen appliance giant Breville announced today that it has acquired ChefSteps, maker of the Joule connected sous vide wand. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

From the press release:

Breville’s acquisition of ChefSteps will enhance the long-term R&D capacity that brought the Joule product to market, allowing for continued and sustained focus on innovation, while increasing global commercial scale to further maximize the value of the ChefSteps content platform and portfolio of fast-growing connected Joule products. It also forms a natural consumer-focused extension to Breville’s existing commercial sous vide range of products following its acquisition of the PolyScience Culinary division in 2014.

The privately funded ChefSteps started out as an online culinary community and recipe site and went on to become an early pioneer in the sous vide space through the company’s well regarded (and well designed) Joule.

In April, ChefSteps laid off a significant number of its staff. At that time Spoon Founder Mike Wolf wrote:

There are still not many details beyond what’s been reported, so it’s hard to tell exactly what happened and why ChefSteps was forced to downsize. I can only speculate that sales of the Joule (or their related Joule Ready sauce business) wasn’t substantial enough to fund the ongoing business and that they had exhausted funding provided by early backer Gabe Newell.

Newell, a billionaire who made his money in the video game business as the founder of Valve, had given the company a low-interest loan early on. While Young had described Newell’s support as giving the company the financial flexibility to push in new directions (such as with the Joule), it looks like Newell’s generosity has its limits. It’s unclear if ChefSteps had sought funding from other outside sources (or is still seeking funding).

Less than a week after that ChefSteps shut down its premium content offerings and shuttered its relatively nascent sauce-selling business. At that time, ChefSteps CEO, Chris Young posted to Facebook:

As you’ve heard, there have been some changes at ChefSteps in the past week. Our funding situation unexpectedly changed (emphasis mine) and we’ve had to make the incredibly difficult decision to let a significant fraction of our amazing team go. This truly sucks.

Following these closings, Mike Wolf followed up with another story, writing:

While it was always assumed ChefSteps was in a good financial place because of the backing of billionaire Gabe Newell, it’s apparent now that wasn’t necessarily the case. Most interestingly, it looks like the sudden change in the health of the company’s balance sheet was not anticipated, making me wonder if either Newell called in the loan or had changed his position somehow and didn’t want to extend more credit to the company. There’s also the possibility ChefSteps had been seeking other financing and had something fall through at the last minute.

ChefSteps will be integrated into the Breville Group business and will continue to operate out of its Seattle office.

The acquisition by Breville is good news for Joule fans everywhere, but given the tight times the company was in and the fact that terms were not disclosed, it probably wasn’t the exit the company was hoping for when they started.

We will continue to follow this story as it develops.

First Chop Pivots from Consumer Sous Vide to Prepared B2B Meal Service

Famed Silicon Valley entrepreneur and advisor Steve Blank has said that “a startup is an organization formed to search for a repeatable and scalable business model.” That’s why it’s not uncommon for a startup to pivot during its lifetime as it searches for that repeatable model.

So I wasn’t too surprised when I saw that First Chop, a company that started out selling protein-only consumer meal kits complete with their own sous vide circulators, had pivoted and moved towards selling more complete meals to businesses.

I originally covered First Chop back in November of 2017, writing:

FirstChop is looking to stand out in the competitive meal shipping space in few ways. First, it only does meal proteins: chicken, beef, lamb, etc.; no vegetables, no starches. Second, all those proteins are cooked, and then frozen and vacuum sealed, so you can eat them on your own schedule. And third, the Bay Area-based company is basically giving away a sous-vide wand so all customers have to do is put the frozen bag of meat in hot water to prepare it.

Turns out that “all customers have to do” was actually big ask.

I talked with First Chop Co-Founder and CEO, Ajay Narain, today who said that there were two big issues with his company’s original plan. First was that customer acquisition costs got too high and it unsustainable to go directly after consumers. The other big issue was that the sous vide element proved too much for most customers.

“Sous vide was too steep a hill to climb.” Narain said, “[Customers] had to understand the benefit of sous vide and buy into the premise that the food would come out better and pay a bunch of money to try it out.”

Spoiler: they didn’t.

It wasn’t just educating them on sous vide, Narain said. Even if they used the wand perfectly, customers still had issues with the cooking method. Sous vide cooking takes a long time. You have to heat the water to the right temperature, then slowly heat the protein, which, in the case of First Chop’s food, took even longer because it was frozen. All in, customers were looking at more than an hour before they got to eat a First Chop meal.

Plus, Narain said, while sous vide heats food to a precise temperature, that temperature often isn’t as hot as people want when they eat. “The food comes out the perfect temperature, but for most people it’s not hot enough. It’s 140 degrees, but you’re used to piping hot food in your mouth.”

Facing all these challenges, Narain and co. decided to pivot this past January, shifting from a direct-to-consumer model towards a B2B model. With the revamped meal service, the sous vide wand is out and carbohydrates are in. First Chop now still fully prepares, cooks and assembles chef-prepared meals, but they are now in two pouches that you re-heat in the microwave. Instead of an hour, meals take two minutes.

First Chop is now aiming to sell to food service companies like Aramark, but before they can do that, the company first has to show some ground level interest. As such, First Chop piloted its new service with an unnamed Bay Area company earlier this year. The company is preparing for a more full launch in the next few months, but Narain said that during its first business trial, First Chop sold as much product than it sold in its first year as a consumer play.

While that kind of initial return is definitely good news for the privately funded First Chop, the company is venturing into a crowded market. There are lots of companies looking to sell into offices through various innovative means. Byte Technologies licenses out smart fridges. Markov pairs its high-tech microwave with a meal kit solution. And the just-launched-in-the-U.S. Genie is a one-touch machine that cooks and stirs freeze-dried meals in a cup. Not to mention all of the office catering startups.

With its pivot complete, now we’ll have to see if First Chop’s pivot has paid off and whether it’s found its repeatable, scalable business model.