Close Ad

The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

sous vide

Lisa Fetterman Is Reinventing Nomiku As a Sous Vide Powered Food Delivery Business

When Lisa Fetterman started Nomiku, all she wanted to do was get the word out about sous vide cooking.

“When I first saw these machines in Michelin-starred restaurants,” said the CEO, book author, and mother of two, “I was like ‘Woah, this is it.'”

By ‘it,’ Fetterman is referring to the technique employed by the world’s top chefs and how it was responsible for some of the best food she’d ever tasted. She figured if consumers had a way to cook sous vide that didn’t involve expensive equipment made exclusively for professional chefs, they would.

It wasn’t long before Fetterman (then Lisa Qiu) and her soon-to-be-husband Abe Fetterman decided to make a consumer-friendly sous vide appliance themselves. The result was the immersion sous vide circulator, something they would later patent and build a company around after a successful Kickstarter campaign.

Lisa Fetterman in Nomiku’s first Kickstarter video

At first, she thought that would be enough.

“How hard would it be to convince people to put food inside a bag and put it in the water, especially when the results are so amazing?”

They did eventually convince people, but it wasn’t as easy as she’d anticipated.

“They didn’t know the time and temperature, they needed help with recipes,” Fetterman said of her initial customers. “They treated it as a totally new way of cooking.”

Which it was. To help, Nomiku built another sous vide appliance which was smaller and more powerful than the company’s first product. Another difference from the first generation product was this one had Wi-Fi.

“I made the Wi-Fi Nomiku so you can send recipes directly to the machine,” she said.

The result?

“There was still friction,” said Fetterman. “People kept asking me, ‘Hey is this the right bag?’ and ‘Can you make me a vacuum sealer next?'”

Abe Fetterman working on the Nomiku Wi-Fi

The reality was that for a generation who grew up on frozen food and microwave ovens, the idea of vacuum sealing food in a bag, submerging it in water for hours and then searing it seems like a lot of steps. The problem was they need more help, and Nomiku’s CEO now knew that she couldn’t solve it by simply building a new sous vide appliance.

What she did know was that consumers liked the quality of the food cooked with the precision heating technique, but it wasn’t enough to convince them to commit to cooking sous vide. What they wanted, she realized, was more convenience.

So Fetterman started to rethink her company; not just the hardware that heats the food, but the entire experience of cooking sous vide. She knew by now that for most consumers, asking them to bag, sous vide and sear their food was too much. She also knew that while the quality of microwave food wasn’t as good, it did have one major advantage: the experience was super easy. That’s because not only does the microwave heat food up fast, but it also has an entire ecosystem around to deliver a streamlined cooking experience that goes something like this: pop in a frozen meal, zap it, eat.

Eventually, Fetterman decided to recreate the entire experience for her consumers,  one which included not only a sous vide circulator, but the food itself. She had decided that Nomiku would make the act of creating a meal easier by offering pre-packaged, pre-portioned, and pre-cooked sous vide meals. All the consumer would need to do is scan the RFID tag on each component of a meal – usually a main course and a couple of sides — and drop them into the water. In thirty minutes, food is ready to eat.

Nomiku’s new RFID-scanning circulator

The shift was a big one. Not only did Fetterman develop a new Nomiku with an RFID scanner to recognize the meals and set the timer on the circulator, but she also had to set up an entire supply and delivery chain around food.

That do that, Nomiku would not only need more funding (which they got from Samsung) but would also need to start working with copackers and logistics companies to create an end-to-end food delivery business.

She decided to start small, initially shipping products in beta to just 100 customers in May of last year, and expand from there.

So where has this new direction taken Fetterman and Nomiku?

In short, it’s completely changed the company. Nomiku has gone from primarily selling hardware to offering a complete food solution for consumers. All one has to do is go to the company’s website and try to buy a sous vide circulator to see the shift in focus: If you enter in a zip code that’s not within the area where Nomiku sells their meals, you’re told to check back later. In other words, they’ve become a meal-first company — that also sells a sous vide circulator to help make it all possible.

Nomiku’s website is primarily focused on their meal service

The good news is if you don’t live in one of the eight western states where Nomiku sells their meals, there’s a good chance they’ll get to you soon. According to Fetterman, they plan to hit profitability in their current region over the next two months and to ship nationwide by the end of the year.

While the shift for Nomiku was something Fetterman saw as necessary to expand the addressable market for sous vide cooking, it just so happened to also align well with the current thinking in Silicon Valley, where nowadays a VC’s first piece of advice for hardware startup founders is usually about the necessity of creating a recurring revenue business model.

All you have to do is look at the early returns on Nomiku’s new food efforts to see why: In the company’s early days, they’d make the business work by selling a $300 device and snagging whatever margin they could walk away with after parting with hardware costs, retail margin, and ongoing support expenses. With their new business, Fetterman says the company now has a $144 average food order and a retention rate of 81% for food customers who order their third box of food from Nomiku.

All that adds up to what is perhaps the biggest sign of change for the company: According to Fetterman, just a year after launching the food business, Nomiku now derives the majority of its revenue from food, not hardware.

Nomiku isn’t alone in trying to pair cooking hardware with food delivery. Tovala, a smart kitchen startup from Chicago, sells a smart oven with a food delivery service. Suvie, a Boston-based kitchen startup started by Reviewed.com founder Robin Liss, also plans to offer food delivery with its “kitchen robot.”. Belgium’s Mealhero has created a steamer to go with its frozen food delivery services. Chefsteps, another startup selling a sous vide circulator, has experimented with food delivery in the past and has hinted it will do more in the future.

However, despite Nomiku’s early success in the shift towards food delivery, it’s probably too soon to say how things will shake for them out in the long term. Meal delivery business models are still in the early stages, consumers are notoriously fickle when it comes to committing for the long term, and the big guys like Amazon continue to expand the types of food they’re bringing to consumers.

That said, Lisa Fetterman remains committed to the same goal today that she had when she first started Nomiku.

“We are here to eradicate every obstacle between a person and a delicious plate of food.”

$99 Anova Nano Sous Vide Circulator Hits Amazon On June 30th

In January of 2017, Anova unveiled the Nano, a $99 sous vide circulator.

The Bluetooth-enabled, smaller form factor appliance gave Anova its first sub-$100 entry in what has become an increasingly price-competitive marketplace over the past couple of years. The Nano, which was announced at the same time as a new higher-end pro edition of the Anova circulator (the Pro 2.0), was expected to ship in October of last year, but the company announced in September that the Nano would not ship in 2017.

While some early preorder customers were understandably bummed, the company offered the early birds a full refund or the option of an exchange for the higher-priced Bluetooth circulator.

Those who chose to wait it out saw their patience rewarded these past couple weeks, as the company started shipping the Nano to preorder customers. The Spoon also learned this week that the Nano will be available via the Anova website and on Amazon.com starting tomorrow, June 30th.

A company spokesperson told The Spoon that there is still no word on when we might see the updated Anova Pro or the Anova Precision Oven, which the company unveiled at the Smart Kitchen Summit in October of 2016.

Editor note: You can read our review of the Nano here.

Sous Vide Pot Is Just a Pot… For Sous Vide

Sous vide fiends, gadget lovers, and devotees of the perfectly-cooked steak, listen up.

Tuxton Home recently launched their Sous Vide Pot on Kickstarter, which is a pot… that holds your sous vide wands in place. The pot is essentially a large stockpot with a 2.4 inch sous vide adapter hole, which they claim will accommodate most sous vide products on the market — or at least any one that is less than 2.4 inches in diameter. (Which notably excludes the Chefsteps Joule, though the Kickstarter page says they’re developing an adaptor to fit it.)

There are some quantifiable advantages to the Sous Vide Pot. Compared to an open Triply pot, it is 31% faster to reach goal temperature, and it requires less water and energy. The Kickstarter page also touts the silicon-rimmed lid as a replacement for clips you typically need to keep sous vide packages in place. The lid prevents evaporation, so as long as you completely cover the meat (or whatever) you’re cooking with water, you should be good. Tuxton Home also offers a custom-fitted rack to ensure that your food pouches stay fully immersed. Whether or not that makes it worth a buy depends on the frequency you sous vide and how much you value convenience.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2024375030/sous-vide-pot-here-we-cut-the-hole-in-the-lid-for?ref=category_newest&ref=discovery

The cool and not so cool part of this product is that it is basically just a nicely made large pot. Which means it is a versatile piece of kitchen equipment, but also means it’s not especially groundbreaking. But if your kitchen is teeny tiny (like mine), every gadget has to have multiple uses — and the Sous Vide Pot does, at least, seem to be relatively high quality. Though it might have made more sense for Tuxton Home to have designed a variety of sous vide-adaptable lids to fit pots that are already in your kitchen.

Tuxton Home will start shipping Sous Vide pots to early backers in May 2018. Which seems ambitious — but the company is confident they’ll hit their goal ship date. This is because they control every aspect of the production, from design to manufacturing to distribution. Tuxton Home’s parent company Tuxton also has 20 years of experience manufacturing and distributing cookware, so this isn’t their first rodeo.

You can get a Sous Vide pot for $115 with the Early Bird deal. Which is kind of a lot for a glorified stockpot, but if you’re a sous vide fiend who wants to be able to make perfectly-cooked steak slightly more quickly than you already do, it might be worth the investment.

Stasher’s Silicone Storage Bags Snap Up $400,000 from Mark Cuban

Companies like ChefSteps and Anova have pushed home sous vide more into the mainstream. One drawback to sous vide, though, is the one-time use of either a vacuum-sealed or Ziplock bag. It just feels wasteful. Which is why I’m excited to try out Stasher‘s re-useable, re-sealable silicone bags that can be used for many things including storage or sous vide.

Stasher founder and CEO, Kat Nouri, dove into ABC’s Shark Tank earlier this month to pitch her wares. After some serious back and forth about product positioning, Mark Cuban bit, and put $400,000 into Stasher for 15 percent of the company as well as a $400,000 line of credit. You can watch Nouri’s episode here (Stasher’s pitch is at the 32-minute mark).

According to Stasher’s FAQ, it’s bags are made from sand (silica), oxygen and “natural resources” that the company claims make it “safer, more flexible and more sustainable than plastic.” The Stasher FAQ goes on to say that “there are no fillers or petroleum-based products” in its bags as well as no BPA, BPS, lead, latex or phthalates.

I’m not enough of scientist to confirm the claims, and it looks like the Food and Drug Administration hasn’t studied silicone since 1979. But the Canadian government says “There are no known health hazards associated with use of silicone cookware”

Providing a safer sous vide experience is definitely a selling point. I’m not thrilled with the idea of wrapping my steak in a cheap plastic bag and bathing it in 130-degree water for an hour. Plus, the Stasher bag is re-usable, so there’s less waste, and dishwasher safe, so its easy to clean. And, of course, when not being used to cook, the bags would be a great alternative for general food storage and packing kids’ lunches.

All those benefits don’t come cheap, though. Stashers range in price and from $9.99 for a snack size, to $11.99 for a sandwich bag and $19.99 for a half gallon. On Shark Tank, Nouri said that Stasher did $1.6 million in sales last year.

With a shark like Mark on board, it will be interesting to see if Stasher can now move the needle and people off of plastic and into a new silicone-based solution for sous vide and storage.

A First Taste of Firstchop’s Sous Vide Meat Delivery Box

I am terrified of cooking meat. I worry so much about giving someone food poisoning that I overcook my chicken or steak until it is leather. Which is why I was so excited to try out firstchop’s chef-prepared meats, and even more thrilled that it produced two of the best meals I’ve eaten in a long while.

Launched this month, firstchop is a meat-box subscription service that sends you a selection of chef-prepared, vacuum-sealed, fully cooked proteins. Store them in your freezer and when you’re ready to cook one, you simply dump the bag into a sous vide bath and re-heat. The company even sends you a sous vide wand in their starter box.

Firstchop sent me a box to try out earlier this week. Based on that experience, here’s what you can expect.

PACKAGING
The starter box comes with everything you need: a firstchop-branded sous vide wand and a selection of four proteins. All of the meat arrived frozen (which was good because the California wildfires had caused shipping delays) and labeled. The company also offers a larger and smaller box, neither of which come with the sous vide wand.

SOUS VIDE WAND
Smart kitchen aficionados will notice that the firstchop sous vide wand looks a lot like the Anova. Firstchop’s wand, however is not WiFi enabled, so there’s no smartphone app to control it.

THE FOOD
I was sent Spicy Green Curry Chicken, Peruvian Style Chicken Breast, Peppercorn Beef Medallions, and Boneless Osso Bucco Lamb Shoulder with Root Vegetables (you don’t get to pick your proteins). Each were in their own sealed pouch with heating instructions on the paper sleeve. The portions are plenty for two adults.

COOKING
When I initially talked with firstchop, they said the meals were perfect for busy people because they could be prepared in about forty minutes. This is technically true, but there are a few caveats. If you keep your meat frozen, the reheat time is about 45 minutes, however, that doesn’t take into consideration the amount of time it takes to bring the water to temperature. So people using the service should budget in at least an hour if not an hour and half.

The firstchop wand works remarkably well. I actually cooked two proteins at the same time, one with the First Chop wand and one with the Anova. The firstchop was a little wonky in setting the timer, but it was actually a little easier to use than the Anova because of the lack of WiFi. The Anova kept buzzing my phone with temperature notifications because it wanted me to use one of its preset guides.

Once the bath was at temperature, I dropped the food in and let it alone. When the timer beeped, I pulled the bag out of the water and removed the protein. Unlike sous videing raw meat, there wasn’t a need to sear the firstchop meat after. I just sliced it up and served it to my family.

TASTE
I made two proteins: the lamb and the beef, and both were remarkable. Incredible. Fantastic. The meat was tender and perfectly seasoned. At the risk of sounding fanboyish, it was like a restaurant meal from my kitchen. My whole family loved both the beef and the lamb, and we devoured it all.

OVERALL
My first firstchop experience made me a convert. My wife immediately wanted to know how much a box was and how big of a “problem” this was going to be for our family. I can definitely see myself ordering, at the very least, the small box to supplement our weekly routine.

My only complaints right now are around the sourcing of the meat. Firstchop describes their meat as “restaurant quality,” which means nothing to me. I eat and enjoy meat, but am also conscious of where it comes from. The firstchop FAQ says it will roll out grass-fed and organic meats in the future, and I hope they do so soon. I’d pay extra for sustainably and humanely sourced animal products.

A firstchop starter box comes with ten “servings” of meat and a sous vide wand for $79, and there’s no monthly commitment. The company is basically giving the wand away to get you to try the service. And based on my experience, you definitely should.

UPDATE: After we published this article, firstchop changed their pricing. This post has been updated to reflect that change.

Going Beyond The Stick: New Options Emerge For Sous Vide In 2018

While the ultra-early sous vide enthusiasts among us started their precision cooking journeys with water ovens like the Sous Vide Supreme, the last few years in home sous vide have been all about “the stick.”

That’s right, as sous vide enters the zeitgeist, immersion circulators from the likes of from Anova, Nomiku, and ChefSteps are the default option for everyone from Modernist Cuisine types to those dipping their toe into the precision heated water for the very first time.

But, as 2017 draws to a close, there are some new sous vide products coming to market that gives consumers an option beyond ‘the stick.’

Here’s my look at some of these new products:

Mellow Smart Sous Vide

After a long delay, the Mellow smart sous vide machine is shipping. This unique-looking cooking machine, which features a cooling system that allows you put your bag inside throughout the day, is now available for general purchase on the company’s website for $399 ($299 through cyber Monday!).

I’ve been testing the Mellow for the last few weeks, and I must say this: If anything, the Mellow is by far the most interesting looking sous vide appliance. That’s because unlike sous vide immersion circulators, with the Mellow you drop your plastic bag into the large transparent tank which allows you to watch your food suspended in water while it cooks. While it may seem strange to say it, watching a ribeye cook in a water bath can be surprisingly mesmerizing.

Here’s a video I took of the Mellow cooking a ribeye:

Like the immersion circulators mentioned above, the Mellow has an app that serves as the primary control interface for the device. The app is pretty solid, with a decent support/FAQ section, a limited selection of cooking guides and a good looking design.

And of course, the built-in chiller for sous vide is a nice benefit for those who want to program a cook for a specific time such as when they get home from work.

All this said, the Mellow has one downside: It’s fairly big. Not only does it have a large footprint, but it’s tall. Really tall. Like most, my storage space is at a premium, and I don’t have the space to store a device with the dimensions of the Mellow.

The Mellow is also a bit more expensive than immersion circulators (again, the company is selling it for $299 through Cyber Monday), but if you’re looking for the latest in sous vide gadgets, you might find the regular price of $399 well worth it.

The Cinder Grill

Want to move beyond the bag? The Cinder Grill might be for you.

The Cinder Grill allows you to cook sous vide without the water or the bags. The device, which looks like the love child of Tesla and the George Foreman Grill, has two precision heating surfaces that allow you to precision cook meat, vegetables or other food and also lets you finish the food with searing functionality.

The two-in-one sous vide and sear capability is an obvious benefit of the Cinder. I also like the idea of cooking without plastic, not so much because I am afraid of toxins within the plastic, but I feel bad about throwing away plastic after every cook.

Like the Mellow, the biggest downside of the Cinder is its size. I’ve been testing it out for a few months, and while it’s become probably one of my favorite ways to cook meat, the device has a really big footprint. And while it does have the benefit of being a dual-tasker (cook and sear), even with multifunction capability I would find it a struggle to stash the Cinder on one of my shelves.

You can see how the Cinder looks in action here:

Like the Mellow, the Cinder also has an app, which allowed me to set time and temperature and also notified me when a cook is finished. But unlike the Mellow (or even more so with sous vide immersion circulators like the ChefSteps), the Cinder app doesn’t go very deep with the cooking content itself, something I am sure the company plans to build out over time.

If you want to get a Cinder Grill, you can order one on their website, but it might take a little while before you see your Cinder. The company has started shipping to some of its backers, but is still in the process of ironing out some production kinks, and likely won’t reach wide availability until early next year.

Still, if you like the idea of precision cooking without the water and plastic, you might want to put in an order. The Cinder costs $499.

Sous Vide Supreme Touch+

And any mention of home sous vide appliances should include the new Sous Vide Supreme Touch+, the latest generation Sous Vide Supreme water bath. And while the idea of precision water baths are hardly new, with this product the company has completely remade their flagship product complete with a touchscreen, a see-through lid, Wi-Fi, an app (of course) and Alexa voice integration.

If you want to get in on the new Sous Vide Supreme Touch+ at a significant discount, you can buy it for $200 off the retail price at $399 on Indiegogo.

Anova Precision Oven

While 2017 has been an interesting year for the oven, 2018 is likely to be even better. One of the products I’m most intrigued about is the Anova Precision Oven. The device, which includes a steam oven, convection, and connectivity, also allow you to sous vide. The device, which was originally slated to ship in 2017, now looks on track for a mid-2018 ship date.

There’s no doubt that immersion circulators are easy to use, but by giving consumers more options to cook sous vide, will open it up to a wider audience.

In short, nowadays sous vide is more than the stick.

You can hear an audio version of this post here on our Daily Spoon podcast (add the Daily Spoon Alexa Skill here to get this podcast on your Echo device):

Two New Thanksgiving Uses for that Sous Vide Circulator

I don’t need to tell you about the benefits of sous vide immersion circulators. Devices like the Anova, Joule or Nomiku transform just about any pot of water in a temperature controlled, water circulating, precision cooking machine.

I mainly use my Anova for meats – it’s a fantastic way to bring up the internal temperature evenly without under or over cooking. But given that it’s Thanksgiving, it’s unlikely (and perhaps impossible?) that you’ll sous vide an entire turkey.

However, I came across two other unique uses uses for your sous vide wand that can help make your Thanksgiving even more awesome.

Mashed potatoes
First, if you are hosting, what are you doing reading this? Go prepare, you’ve got people coming over! But wait! Before you do, cook your mashed potatoes today. That’s right, get all that mashing and mixing and mess out of the way before the big day. Here’s a trick to re-heating the potatoes without scorching or ruining them.

On a recent episode of the Milk Street radio podcast, J. Kenji Alt-Lopez explained how you can keep your cooked and mashed potatoes in a ziplock bag, store them overnight in the fridge, and then place them in a sous vide machine at something like 150 degrees for an hour to re-heat them without scorching or drying the potatoes out.

Pumpkin pie
And while we are making things in advance, if you are more adventurous and willing to think outside the box and perhaps get a little more deconstructionist with your holiday meal, ChefSteps (maker of the Joule) recently included a recipe for sous vide personal pumpkin pies.

No, it doesn’t involve placing an entire pie in ziplock bag and submerging it. It does involve placing the pie filling in small, individual mason jars and sous vide-ing those. After they are done cooking and chilling, top them off with crumbled graham cracker streusel and some whipped cream. This way everyone gets their own individual dessert.

With a little bit of creativity the sous vide wand can help make your Thanksgiving easier and open up new avenues of creativity. And we’d love to hear about your creativity! How do you use the sous vide for holiday meals? Leave a comment and let us know.

FirstChop Flips the Script on Sous-Vide Meal Delivery

We are firmly in the second wave of prepared meal kit delivery. Companies are specializing, doing more of the work for you, and are even built around specific devices. Which is what makes FirstChop intriguing, as it combines all of these new wave trends in its forthcoming service.

Launching in December, 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.

For $109 (during pre-order, then it goes up to $139), customers can order the Starter Kit, which includes a sous vide wand and 9 servings of protein. There’s also the Family Box for $119 ($129 post pre-order), for 24 servings, and Co-Founder and CEO Ajay Narain told me that a third option with 14 servings will sell for $79. There is no monthly commitment.

The sous-vide wand is a third party device from a “reputable” manufacturer that FirstChop is just putting its name on. When asked about the sous-vide prepared meal delivery players already available like Nomiku and ChefSteps, Narain told me, “We’re the reverse. We’re starting with food and giving away the sous vide machine.”

Narain, along with Co-Founder and Chef Marc Rasic are looking to avoid the pitfalls that have befallen some of the first gen meal delivery companies. Rasic worked as a chef for the royal family of Luxembourg, ran the kitchens at Google as the search giant went from 2,700 to 65,000 employees, and worked at Munchery as that company went to market.

What they learned from their own personal experiences with meal kits, as well as scaling up kitchen production is that FirstChop doesn’t need or want to ship items like broccoli. Fresh food spoils if you don’t cook it soon after it’s received. Plus, adding fresh food complicates the logistics of packaging and shipping, and most people already have easy access to broccoli.

What people don’t have access to, is braised short rib, cooked for 16 hours, or Black Garlic Pork Loin, Petite Beef Medallions, or Peruvian Grilled Chicken. Cooking such protein, Narain says, is the hardest part of making a meal. Additionally, Rasic learned from his time at Munchery that “A lot of people hate touching [uncooked] proteins.”

By pre-cooking and freezing the meats, FirstChop believes it can simplify the shipping process, while giving the user more flexibility as the ingredients last longer. Additionally, they can serve the whole continental United States at launch to introduce people across the country to new meals they normally wouldn’t get (and no touching raw chicken!).

FirstChop is privately funded and its service be available in early December of this year. We’re excited to try it, and see how this focused approach helps shape the next phase of meal kit delivery.

Hestan Cue & ChefSteps Integrate Apps, Show Us Glimpse Of The Future

Today Hestan Smart Cooking and ChefSteps debuted a deep link integration between their two cooking apps. What this means is the user can initiate a cook within the Hestan app, seamlessly transfer to the ChefSteps Joule to sous vide a protein like steak, and then finish the cook with the Hestan Cue smart cooking system.

This from Hestan’s app page:

“We’ve come together with the team at ChefSteps to bring you a new “Sous Vide” mode for Mix & Match with sear-only recipes. Each recipe links directly to the corresponding protein in the ChefSteps’ Joule app for seamless sous vide cooking. Our team of culinary scientists developed these recipes to give you the best sear and the crispiest skin to pair with all of your favorite Cue sauces (plus a few new ones from our friends at ChefSteps)!”

While this may seem like a relatively small piece of news, I think it’s an interesting glimpse at what a more fully evolved connected kitchen could look like.

Before I get to why I think that is so, let’s step back and look at the problems the smart home industry has had with broken and incompatible experiences in multibrand, multi-device smart homes.

The Smart Home Is Often Not So Smart

One of the biggest problems with the smart home is consumer confusion and frustration over the incompatibility of different products and consumer experiences. More devices often mean more apps and more connections to manage, the result of which for the consumer can be a growing number of disjointed experiences that often require more work than less technology-centric approaches.

When I surveyed smart home industry executives at the end of last year, they identified consumer confusion over technologies as the biggest hurdle preventing greater adoption in their industry.

Efforts to create widely adopted frameworks like HomeKit have helped, but these are still vendor-driven offerings that don’t eliminate a consumer’s exposure to incompatible apps and broken user experiences. Universal front-end interfaces like Alexa offer great promise and will no doubt play a big part in more seamless and unified experiences across a multi-vendor smart home environment, but today’s voice integrations are often shallow and usually don’t enable inter-product integration experiences.

Which brings us to the kitchen. While the connected kitchen is embryonic compared to the broader smart home, 2017 has seen strong movement among appliance makers, housewares companies and technology vendors who see an opportunity to make their products more connected. Of course, the danger here is the same as with the smart home, where consumers have a bunch of non-interoperable devices and apps and give up because trying to make it all work is just too much work.

In my kitchen, I have a variety of connected food appliances, none of which work together. This includes three sous vide appliances, a connected grill, a beer brewer, and coffee maker. All connected, but none to each other. And while I may not have much need for my coffee maker and my sous vide machine to communicate now (or ever?),  I can see an obvious reason for my sous vide app and my grill app to work together. Taking it a step further, it makes sense for my shopping app, food storage app (smart fridge), oven, countertop cooking apps (sous vide, etc.) to work together to hand off between stages.

But it goes beyond connecting the various cooking steps.  Take health and nutrition, where there are companies like Bosch who are working on food scanners to let us know instantly the nutritional makeup of food in our kitchen There would be tremendous value in allowing that info to instantly be shared with any of my cooking devices, my fitness wearable, and my fitness apps.  I also believe Apple’s HealthKit will someday incorporate info in realtime about the caloric and nutrient makeup of your food intake; that info is not nearly as valuable if it is not useable with a connected kitchen.

So you can see where I’m going. The ability to connect devices, even at the app level, will ultimately reduce consumer frustration and likely result in faster adoption of these products. Longer term, there is great promise in better integration of appliances, and only through greater integration will we realize the promise of a connected kitchen.

Oh yeah, About That News

Still interested in the specifics of the announcement? I caught up with Hestan’s product software lead Jordan Meyer, who told me the three components of the latest version of their app:

The availability of new sous vide recipes. These recipes will walk you visually through cooking sous vide and will work with any sous vide circulator.

The ChefSteps integration. This is where the sous video recipes go next-level. Jordan said that Hestan recognized their smart pan and induction heating system would not cook a 2″ steak as well as a sous vide circulator, so they decided to work with the ChefSteps (he tells me the Hestan folks are fans of the Joule). Where the Hestan does excel, such as sauces and finishing a steak, the user can then use the Cue.

Lastly, Hestan also took some of ChefSteps recipes and added their step-by-step cooking guidance within the app.

Bottom line, this type of device and app integration makes these appliances more usable. If you are a cooking enthusiast who embraces modern tools as a way to put food on the table, eventually you’ll want to ensure your tools work together without suffering from app fatigue or a lack of interoperability.

Today Hestan and ChefSteps showed us what such a connected kitchen might look like.

Company Which First Made Sous Vide Affordable Reinvents Flagship Product With Wi-Fi & Alexa

Long before there were low-cost sous vide immersion circulators from companies like Anova, ChefSteps and Nomiku, there was the SousVide Supreme.

The SousVide Supreme, first available in 2009, was arguably the first consumer-priced sous vide appliance on the market.  And unlike today’s popular sous vide immersion circulators that are essentially long cylinders that combine with a pot full of water to create a sous vide water bath, the original SousVide Supreme “water oven” is a fully contained sous vide machine not unlike the expensive commercial water ovens first used by professional chefs

It’s easy to forget how instrumental this product was in its early days of sous vide, but consider what Kenji Lopez-Alt wrote after attending an early demonstration of the Sous Vide Supreme by Heston Blumenthal back in 2009:

“I’ll be getting one of these puppies in my kitchen some time in the next couple weeks, and I plan on putting it through some serious paces, so stay tuned to find out what it can do. If the Showtime Rotisserie taught us anything, it’s that kitchen appliances come and go. The difference here is that the Sous-Vide Supreme is more than just another well-marketed appliance. If it really does what it claims to do, it offers home cooks something that has never been offered before: the opportunity to cook their food in exactly the same way that every three-Michelin starred restaurant cooks. Not just a pale imitation of how they cook, but exactly how they cook.”

And while since the SousVide Supreme has seen companies like Anova since steal much of their early sous vide thunder, the company is hoping to steal some back with a complete revamp of their water oven. The company’s new product, the SousVide Supreme Touch+, launched this past week on Kickstarter and surpassed its funding target of $250 thousand in just four days.

So what features does the Sous Vide Supreme Touch+ have that earlier generations of the product does not?

Quite a few:

Touch screen.The old SousVide Supreme control screen, which had buttons similar to those of an Instant Pot or Crockpot, will give way to a new touch screen on the front of the Touch+ (though the video of the touch screen makes it seem the screen requires pressure similar to that of the old buttons)

Wi-Fi

This is the first Sous Vide Supreme model with Wi-Fi, which allows for remote cook enablement, alerts and app based control.

Speaking of app…

App

With Wi-Fi on board, the SousVide Supreme finally enters the app-control age. The app includes the usual remote on-off control features, but what is most intriguing is the new app will include the ability to program recipes.

Clear lid

This is the first Sous Vide Supreme model with a clear lid. A fairly obvious improvement, but a welcome one since who doesn’t want to see what they’re cooking?

Alexa

Finally, the new SousVide Supreme Touch+ will have Alexa. While voice control almost seems like a requirement for those of us who buy connected kitchen products, the company could have easily just added Wi-Fi and app control and called it a day. Kudos to the creators for future proofing their newest version with Alexa compatibility.

Overall, this new generation of the SousVide Supreme looks to be a major step forward for a company founded by Drs. Patrick and Mary Dan Eades, a married couple that first cobbled together their own DIY sous vide bath after tasting a room service pork chop that was cooked sous vide. The new machine, which is available for $349 on Kickstarter (early bird pricing of $249 and $299 have already sold out) will be available to backers in March of next year and will retail for $599.

If you want to hear about the future of precision cooking and the connected kitchen, make sure to come to the Smart Kitchen Summit. Just use the discount code SPOON to get 25% off of tickets.

Anova Opens Pre-Orders For The Sub-$100 Nano

This week, Anova opened up pre-orders for their Nano, the company’s first sub-$100 sous vide circulator.

The device, which ships in October, is 25% smaller and a full pound lighter than the company’s Wi-Fi Precision Cooker. Perhaps more importantly, the Nano comes in about $70 less than the company’s flagship product. The full price for the Nano is $99, (if you move fast, you can preorder the Nano for $69), marking the first time Anova has dropped below the $100 mark.

The new lower-priced machine comes at a time when the sous vide market is getting more competitive. ChefSteps has been doing well with the Joule (and recently released a lower-cost version of their own), and low priced competitors like Gourmia have attracted budget conscious consumers. With the Nano and its $99 price tag, Anova hopes it can attract value customers looking for a low-priced sous vide circulator.

Later this year the company will ship its second generation Pro circulator for $299.  The company’s Precision Oven, a combi-oven that the company announced last year at the Smart Kitchen Summit, was originally expected to ship this summer, but the ship date has been bumped back to summer 2018.

Want to see Anova CEO Steve Svajian speak about building a smart kitchen company? Come to the Smart Kitchen Summit.  Also, make sure to subscribe to get The Spoon in your inbox. 

ChefSteps Expands Further Into Food With Launch Of Pre-Cooked Meals

Back in February, I  wrote about ChefSteps’ plan to create a meat ‘marketplace’ that would connect “independent ranchers with ChefSteps users, offering them direct access to high-quality meat and ingredients at great prices.”

As it turns out, this effort was part of a larger initiative to expand into food sales that is starting to come into fuller focus. The most visible part of this foray into food sales is the company’s growing business selling meat and fish sourced from local food providers in the Seattle and Portland markets. In the Seattle market, the company offers fresh meat and fish from four local providers (three for meats, one provider of fresh fish). The kits for sale on the company’s website range in price from $79 to $239. And yes – one package, the ‘Mountain of Meat,’ includes 30 pounds of steaks. (Holy meat sweats).

And now, the company has started selling pre-cooked, frozen meals.The pre-cooked meals are sold as what ChefSteps is calling, ‘Joule On-Demand BBQ.’ The meals are all single-serve portions and range in price from $7 to $12. Unlike the fresh meat and seafood, the pre-cooked meals from ChefSteps offer local shipping as a fulfillment option.  Deliveries are fulfilled by PostMates.

The Mountain of Meat meal kit from ChefSteps

These pre-cooked meals appear similar to those announced by Nomiku in April. As with Nomiku’s new meal kits, the BBQ meals are intended to be prepared in a shorter amount of time than traditional sous vide, usually less than an hour.

This move into pre-cooked meals by both ChefSteps and Nomiku shows the growing effort by both companies to expand the appeal of sous video to a broader audience.  Sous vide has traditionally appealed to foodies who are willing to invest more time in preparing chef-like meals, but with pre-cooked meal offerings, the companies believe sous vide becomes more appealing to those home cooks who prioritize convenience.

Of course, pre-cooked meals aren’t the only way to make cooking with sous vide easier for the home cook. ChefSteps and Anova have both been busy launching hands-free voice interface integrations this year, and in February ChefSteps became the first cooking appliance company to launch a chatbot for cooking with their Facebook Messenger bot.

So what became of the meat marketplace teased by the company’s February job listing? According to ChefSteps CEO Chris Young, the idea was to create a nationwide marketplace for “sous vide ready ingredients during the holiday season last year in partnership with the Snake River Farms brand.” As part of the effort, they sell meats nationwide to help ChefSteps customers get, as Young put it, a “center-piece protein for their holiday meal.”

As they worked on the plan, ChefSteps realized that costs of setting up a nationwide delivery system would be too high at this time, so for now the company is content to work out the kinks while selling meat and delivering pre-cooked meals in the Seattle and Portland markets.

“We’re continuing to experiment based on the positive feedback we’re getting from our Seattle and Portland customers, and we’re very aware that we have customers across the United States,’ said Young. “We definitely want to be able to serve those customers asap, but only when we think our service will deliver the experience and value our customers expect from us.”

Make sure to subscribe to the Spoon newsletter to get it in your inbox. And don’t forget to check out the Smart Kitchen Summit, where ChefSteps CEO Chris Young and many others will speak at the first and only event about the future of food, cooking and the kitchen.