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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

spices

SpiceHero’s Creator Wants to Modernize a Stone Age Tool To Help Make Tastier Spices

If you’re a chef or a spice aficionado, there’s a good chance you use a mortar and pestle to crush your spices. But for the rest of us who are happy to buy our spices in the form of pre-ground powders from the grocery store, we’re missing out.

That’s at least according to Thomas Weigele, who is currently running a campaign on Kickstarter to get his invention – an automated mortar and pestle called the SpiceHero – funded. So why would someone want to create a modern version of a tool that has been in use since the Stone Age?

According to Wiegele, the idea came back when he was on the APAC consumer insights team for B/S/H Appliances, where his team would conduct ethnographic studies on markets in Asia. During one study about cooking behaviors across all socioeconomic groups in India, Weigele says one insight came up over and over: “Preparing spices with a mixer-grinder is good, but taste was much better when my mom or grandma prepared it with a Mortar and Pestle.”

He and a colleague soon realized it wasn’t just nostalgia. When they ran tests, it became clear this ancient tool for smashing and grinding spices brought out flavors in ways other methods did not. Electric spice grinder/mixers slice the spices into a uniform dust, while a mortar and pestle would result in a pleasing “mix of coarse and fine particles for dry spices and pastes have more texture and can extract the oil from the seeds, herbs and vegetables.”

Those insights resulted in B/S/H approving a project led by Wiegele to make a prototype for a semi-automated mortar and pestle machine. Unfortunately, the device, which ground the spices by rotating the stone inside the bowl, did not provide the same results as a traditional mortar and pestle. Weigele and others proposed a fully automated (with pounding motion and all) version, but B/S/H management did not give the green light.

When Wiegele left B/S/H and decided to head to school to get his masters degree in 2019, he couldn’t shake the idea of an automated mortar and pestle, so he soon hired a freelance engineer and started working on a prototype. Two iterations later, he was ready to launch his device on Kickstarter.

The SpiceHero looks a bit like a small stand mixer, only instead of beaters or mixing blades, the machine featured a pestle that pounds the contents of the bowl (mortar) at the rate of once a second. Wiegele hopes the machine, which starts at €140 as one of the reward tiers, will be ready to ship to backers in about a year.

First, though, the campaign needs to get funded. Wiegele has capped the amount for industrial design in the campaign at €20 thousand ($23.4 thousand), and after that, the rest will be used for tooling and inventory. With about three weeks to go, the campaign for the Spice Hero stands at about 50% funded around about €10 thousand.

If you’d like to back a project that could up your spice game with this modernized take on an ancient tool, you can check out the SpiceHero Kickstarter page here.

SKS 2019: IBM and McCormick Use AI to Make the Best Possible Barbecue Chips (and More)

Say you’re developing a new barbecue potato chip. You’re using spices from McCormick, which has not one, not two, but over 100 types of garlic flavoring. How do you decide which garlic(s) to use, and in which combinations, to make the best product for your target demographic?

That’s where artificial intelligence (AI) can help. Last year, McCormick, the largest flavor company in the world, went public with its five-plus-year partnership with IBM to build a flavor platform using machine learning. We dove deep into this partnership at SKS 2019, when The Spoon’s Chris Albrecht spoke with McCormick’s Chief Science Officer Hamed Faridi and IBM Principal Researcher Richard Goodwin about how AI can help make better, tastier products in less time and with fewer dead ends.

Check out the video below to watch the entire panel (it’s super nerdy and cool).

Hamed Faridi on the SKS 2019 stage. (Photo: The Spoon)

To whet your appetite, here’s a quick overview of what Faridi and Goodwin discussed in the session.

“The [CPG] iterating process is a very time-consuming, old system,” said Faridi during his onstage presentation. “But that’s the only thing the industry has.” All of that changed when Faridi was driving home and heard an NPR interview with a scientist from IBM’s Chef Watson, a program that develops bepsoke recipes based off of chemical flavor affinities (for example, leeks and chocolate.) Immediately, he was struck: this was the missing piece of the puzzle to develop better products in a smarter way.

Computers can’t taste or smell, so how do they know which flavors taste well together? That’s where data comes in. McCormick has kept all of its data from various flavor development processes and product experiments since the 1980s. IBM’s machine learning algorithms can take those data points and make suggestions about new ingredient combinations without having to go through all the trial, error, and staff training that a human R&D team requires.

The result is a 70 percent reduction in product development time and increased stickiness in the market. Faridi said that the IBM partnership is working so well they expect all of their labs will be using AI by late 2021.

This session was a fascinating look into how a flavor giant and a technology giant have teamed up to make better everyday products. Watch the full video below and get ready for more SKS 2019 content coming your way over the next few weeks!

SKS 2019: Case Study: McCormick & IBM Build an AI-Powered Flavor Platform

TasteTro Connected Spice Dispenser Launches Indiegogo Campaign

Whenever we get pitched a smart appliance here at The Spoon, the first question we always ask is “Does making this device connected improve upon what we already use?” In the case of the TasteTro spice dispenser, which launched its Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign, the answer to that question looks like a “yes” — with one big, pod-based caveat.

TasteTro is a Bluetooth connected countertop spice dispensing appliance. Using the touchscreen and the TasteTro pod-based spice system, and it will pour out specific quantities (tablespoons, teaspoons, etc.) of 20 different pre-loaded herbs and spices, or you can have it create one of more than 50 pre-programmed spice blends like “Zesty Italian” or “Spicy Creole.”

For someone like myself who typically only uses salt and pepper, this actually sounds like a useful gadget to get me to try new flavors. The folks behind the TasteTro have been working on a prototype of the device for the past four years and are looking to raise $50,000 to help bring it to market.

TasteTro Spice System Interface

You can pre-order a TasteTro for $299 USD, which includes the dispenser, 20 spice pods, six signature blends and four replenishment pods. The estimated delivery date is February of 2019.

I saw the TasteTro in person at the International Housewares Show in Chicago this past March, where it was selected as a Global Innovation Awards finalist for Product Design Excellence in the Smart Home Category. So unlike many crowdfunding projects out there, TasteTro is not just a dream, it is very real (TasteTro even has a couple of patents).

What I didn’t realize when I saw it, though, was that TasteTro relies on Keurig-like spice pod system. The TasteTro pods have unique RFID tags, and will alert you when you’re running low, but they are sealed, so you can’t refill them with your own spices. You have to purchase replenishment pods through TasteTro, which cost between $7 and $12 a pop, depending on the contents. A Q&A on the Indiegogo page explains this decision by saying:

“In the numerous in-home research interviews we conducted, we consistently found people using old spices. To have people expect mouthwatering spice blends from loading their old spices into the appliance would lead to disappointment and not the experience we want to deliver.”

If my kitchen is any indication, then yes, old spices (which only have a shelf life of six to eight months) are still in rotation. But if the TasteTro came pre-loaded with spices, and I could taste the difference, I’d be motivated to freshen up my spice rack. I just don’t want to get locked in an ecosystem for herbs de Provence.

While this razor/razor blade business model is nothing new, it gives me pause. Three hundred bucks is a chunk of change, and I’m relying on the company to stay around long enough so that I don’t wind up with device — but no spice.