Suvie, a maker of smart automated cooking appliances for the home, has debuted its second generation appliance, the eponymous Suvie 2.0.
So what’s different about the first and second generation Suvie? A whole bunch.
First things first: Suvie 2 is a heck of a lot smaller. That’s mainly because the second generation appliance has reduced the Suvie from being a four-chamber cooking appliance to a two-chamber machine. This change is made possible because each cooking chamber is now multifunctional, which means instead of having chamber specifically for sauce, protein or veggies, each of the two chambers can broil, steam, sous vide, slow cook as well as roast and bake (these last two cooking modes are new to the Suvie 2).
And just like the first machine, the Suvie 2 has a built in compressor-based refrigerator that chills the food until is is ready to cook. This was one of the draws of the original Suvie — being able to store your food safely in the machine while you were out all day, until it was time to cook it.
While the Suvie 2 has a smaller countertop footprint, the cooking capacity per chamber has actually gone up. According to Suvie CEO Robin Liss, cooking pans are 21% larger than in the previous generation.
To help slim down the new appliance, Suvie also removed the “starch’ chamber and created a separate, optional Starch Cooker. The new add-on, which Liss affectionately called “starchie” (but insisted is not the official name), features the same “patented” autodrain capability and can cook rice, pasta, beans and other starchy foods.
The new Suvie will be available for a pre-order price of $399 for the main unit, and $300 for the starch cooking add-on. MSRP for the core unit will be $800. According to Suvie, the company will also offer a significant discount to customers of the first gen Suvie who want to upgrade.
Just as with the first gen appliance, the user will be able to cook Suvie-originated meals or their own food, but with the addition of quartz broiler heating elements (the same type of heating elements used by the popular Breville toaster ovens), which enables more consistent heating and allows for the user to bake and broil food.
To fund the rollout of the new Suvie, company Liss told The Spoon the company has raised a $11 million in seed funding (they previously has raised $725 thousand on Kickstarter). That funding will also help the company continue to expand its associated meal service.
The new funding and the debut of a second generation Suvie is a bright spot in a kitchen tech market that has seen some consolidation over the past few years. Since Electrolux’s acquisition of Anova for a quarter of a billion in 2017, the few exits for venture-funded kitchen tech startups have relatively quiet (like ChefSteps, Brava and June), while others – like Nomiku and Sansaire – have shut their doors.
Interestingly, the two startups still making a go of it in this space both eyed the pairing of cooking appliances with meal delivery, a business model that has the potential of long-term recurring revenue for companies also competing in what is a highly cost-competitive hardware market. For its part, Tovala announced a new $30 million funding round this month, less than a year after its previous round.
If you’d like to buy the new Suvie, you can pick it up now and, according to Liss, the product will begin shipping in twelve to fourteen weeks.
You can see the Suvie in action below.
