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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

tea

Why is the Mosi Mobile Tea Brewer and Thermos Killing It on Kickstarter?

Mosi Tea, a portable tea brewer plus thermos, launched on Kickstarter recently with the lofty goal of raising $15,000. As of this writing, Mosi has blown past that and raised more than $325,000. My first reaction upon discovering this was… why?

To be fair, from the promotional video, Mosi Tea looks like a nice product. It’s a clear, double-walled insulated thermos with a food-grade silicone infuser built in. Pour your loose leaf tea in the infuser, add hot water, and flip it upside down to steep. Once it’s done, pop on the lid and enjoy your fresh tea. Yum.

Early backers can shell out $32 and get their Mosi Tea shipped to them in December of this year.

Or — and this is the part where I have a hard time understanding Mosi’s success — someone could just head over to Amazon and order a different tea infuser + thermos right now for around $25 and have it arrive in two days (if they have Prime shipping).

Perhaps it’s Mosi’s silicone — as opposed to steel — infuser, or the BPA-free Tritan plastic which feels like glass, or maybe the folks at Mosi are just really popular and have a lot of friends willing to fork over $32 a pop for a tea tumbler. Mosi’s founder wrote on the products Kickstarter page, “Although there are tea infusers out there, they had their limitations and just didn’t feel or work right. So, I decided to make my own.” He doesn’t say what exactly those limitations are, but evidently, enough people out there agree with him and are willing to pay for something different.

To be clear, I’m not begrudging Mosi, it’s just that crowdfunded hardware projects have a spotty record at best (See: Rite-Press, Cinder, etc.). There is a big jump between building a prototype that works and manufacturing at scale. But, given that Mosi still has 16 days to go on its campaign, the company has been infused with enough cash to make an (hopefully) honest go of it.

Cheers to the Future: Five Cool Beverage Startups at CES’ Eureka Park

Sure, the towering installations, self-driving cars, and elaborate smart home setups at CES are fun to see. But my favorite part of the show is wandering through Eureka Park, the gigantic open room filled with over 1,200 startups all hoping to make a name for themselves. Meandering up and down the aisles of this room is one of the best ways to discover companies that are hidden gems.

Interestingly, some of this year’s coolest startups involved beverages. From coffee alarm clocks to wine sensors, here are five that caught my eye amid the chaos of Eureka Park.

Capsulier
Making your morning espresso with a coffee pod is super convenient, but those plastic pods are a blight on the environment (unless you mail them back to Nespresso), not to mention, expensive. Atom Xquare Limited’s Capsulier device is out to free you from the pod with their countertop machine which lets you make your own custom coffee pods for Nespresso machines. Just put a scoopful ground coffee (or loose-leaf tea) in the top of the device, pop in the reusable stainless steel pod, and pull the lever to pack your own pod. You can use it in your Nespresso machine, then wash it out and then reuse.

There are already refillable Nespresso capsules on the market, but Capsulier promises to precisely measure and pack your coffee so there’s no mess or guestimating. As of now the Capsulier only makes pods that fit into Nespresso machines, so if you use a Keurig you’re out of luck. The device retails for $99 on Atom Xquare Limited’s website, and you can purchase additional pods for $36 each.

 

TeaRado
TeaRado Tech‘s smart, self-heating tea tumbler can brew up to two cups of tea on the go. To make the tea, fill the interior basket with loose leaf tea, pour room temperature water into the tumbler, and set the brew time and water temperature on the TeaRado app. In 12 to 15 minutes, the water will heat up to 170 °F and brew the tea via an automated French Press-like movement. You can either brew by setting the tumbler on a charging pod and plugging it into the wall, or attaching it to a battery pack to brew on the go.

TeaRado’s brewer will retail for $150, and users can also purchase tea through the connected app. TeaRado will launch on Kickstarter on April 15 and is expected to ship in December of this year.

 

Photo: Catherine Lamb

MyOeno Scan
Unless you’re a sommelier, figuring out the composition of wines — and which types you like — can be a daunting challenge. MyOeno Scan has a small device (roughly 4 inches long) which, when inserted into a glass of wine, will display a breakdown of its levels of tannins, acidity, and strength on the MyOeno app. Afterwards, you drink and rate the wine, so the app learns what type you like. Once you’ve established your taste profile, you can search for compatible wines on the MyOeno app and see where they’re available to purchase.

The device retails for €89 ($102 USD) and is available on the MyOeno website and through Amazon. Fun fact: MyOeno can also be used in milk to detect if it contains any water or detergent, a service which the team told me is mostly used in Asia.

 

Photo: Catherine Lamb

Barisieur
Dragging yourself out of bed in the morning is way easier if coffee is near. U.K. startup Barisieur‘s coffee brewer alarm clock brings the cup of joe to you while you’re still in bed. The night before, fill the drawer on the front of the device with ground coffee (or tea), then set your alarm and indicate whether you want your coffee to start brewing before, during, or after your alarm sounds. It takes 2 to 3 minutes for the water to boil, and a few more for the coffee to brew. There’s even a small chilled compartment where you can keep a wee container of milk or half-n-half.

Barisieur retails for $445 (zoinks!), and is available online and in several large department stores in the U.K. and U.S.

 

DrinkShift
No one likes running out of beer. And while keeping track of your bottle count isn’t exactly rocket science, the new smart beer fridge from Tokyo-based DrinkShift manages your stock for you. The fridge’s server monitors your drinking pace and uses an algorithm to figure out when to re-order more brewskies so you never run out. You can customize beer packages to indicate which ones you want, and they’re delivered to your door via a third party retailer.

DrinkShift debuted their fridge this April; it was immediately bought by Panasonic. It’s not on the market yet, and also doesn’t yet have a retail price — but one of the booth workers told me it will first roll out in Japan.

Eureka Park is huge and I am but one person — did I miss any cool, under-the-radar startups? Let us know in the comments or tweet us @TheSpoonTech!

Teamosa Wants To Make A Better Cup of Tea With Ultrasonic Extraction

Want to make a great cup of tea? Try using ultrasonic extraction.

That’s the plan at least for the tea entrepreneurs behind Teamosa, a new high-tech teamaker currently raising funds on Kickstarter. The Teamosa campaign, which still has a month to go, has already surpassed its funding target of $100 thousand with $167 thousand raised from 610 backers as of September 27th.

If you’re not familiar with ultrasonic extraction, it’s the application of high frequency sounds in rapid cycles to agitate particles in order to accelerate chemical reactions in a variety of compounds. Also called sonification, the technique is used in a variety of industries ranging from cannabis to petroleum and usually requires specialized equipment.

And now, Teamosa wants to use this process to create a better cup of tea.

Making this story of a new approach to an ancient drink all the more intriguing is Teamosa is the brainchild of Dr. Catherine Liu and Irven Liu, a brother and sister team who spent their childhoods on a tea plantation in Taiwan. Both went on to become engineers and are now leveraging their tech backgrounds to bring the company into the new century.

The Teamosa tea brewer isn’t the first modern tea machine to attempt to use modern technology to create a better cup of Tea. The Tê was unveiled in 2013, but never made it to market. The Teforia, which has raised a total of $17 million, has struggled to break through with tea lovers despite early critical adoration from tea influencers for its high-tech tea infuser.

Not all that surprisingly, the Teamosa team hopes to build a recurring revenue with their next-generation tea maker by also selling their own capsules. This business model, also known by within the industry as the “Keurig model”, is attractive for obvious reasons, but also has risks.  Consumers can feel captive to one company with this model, which may be fine if it’s a Keurig or Nespresso – both large companies with a wide set of industry partners who produce coffee capsules for their systems – but not with a startup you are not sure will be here next year.

While companies like PicoBrew are proving that a startup can create a recurring revenue model, others like Juicero were challenged (although one could make the argument Juicero’s challenges were specific to the company). Teforia, which requires users use their capsules (called Sips) for their lower-cost machine (the classic machine, priced at $999, allows you to use your own loose leaf tea), has found the subscription model a source of some consumer annoyance. Perhaps because of these challenges, Teamosa has smartly enabled their machine to brew both capsules and a consumer’s own loose leaf tea with its baseline machine.

The Teamosa team is part of Hax, the well-known hardware accelerator with locations in Shenzen and San Francisco. The Teamosa appliance, is available starting at $259 on Kickstarter and expects to ship to backers starting in September of 2018.

You can see the Teamosa Kickstarter intro video below:

Chime Wants To Make You A Cup of Chai With Its Connected Brewer

Some say it’s important to be focused when you’re a startup. Chime is planning to put that theory to a test with its first product: an app-controlled chai brewer.

How does the connected chai maker work? The Chime makes chai tea by using individual chai tea pods (called caps) and allows the consumer to adjust the milk ratio and the strength of the brew.

You can watch the Chime in action here:

In a way, this kind of focus makes sense. There are hundreds of nearly indistinguishable coffee makers on the market but exactly none – at least that I know of – push-button chai brewing machines. Chai also requires a little more work than your traditional Earl Grey type of cup, which means some might be willing to pay for the convenience of a chai-bot.

Is the market big enough? Chime founder Gaurav Chawla believes so, pointing out that the US chai market is $1 billion. While that’s a fraction of the $90 billion global tea market it’s substantial nonetheless, especially if there aren’t any specialized pod-based chai brewers currently on the market.

Still, there will be challenges. I believe the biggest test for Chime will be getting consumers to trust a startup enough to be willing to bet on them as the sole source of their chai tea. Chime requires the end user to buy the chai caps – which will cost 90 cents a piece – from the company itself, not a big deal when you’re Keurig or Nestle, but a bit more of a leap of faith if you’re a startup.

Either way, I’m interested to see how Chime does later this year when they ship. I caught up with Chawla to ask him a few questions.

See his answers below.

Wolf: When is Chime expected to ship?

Chawla: Chime is expected to ship towards the end of the year.

Wolf: Do you have any retail relationships established?

Chawla: We do not have retail relationships currently. Our plan is to sell directly to the consumers initially.

Wolf: Can you tell us anything about the typical profile of the preorder customer for Chime?

Chawla: Our typical customer is tech savvy chai lover who knows what real chai is and cares about the taste of chai and the ingredients that go into making a great cup of chai. Our consumer cares about the quality of chai and wants to make their life easier by having a device that can make their chai without all the hassle. Our typical pre-order customer doesn’t shy away from new technology and believes technology exists to make their life easier.

Wolf: Your business model looks like it will depend on your own modules (Caps). How do you expect to raise awareness? I also expect some would have doubts about a startup as sole provider of chai – how will you overcome these doubts?

Chawla: We are doing online community building but we will also be doing events and taste testing from time to time. We have already started testing the tea blend and we will come up with a variety of tea blends. We chose from high quality tea and are working with tea suppliers who supply to big brands. We have already started establishing our tea supply chain and we will test it out before we launch.

Wolf: Have you raised financing and, if so, how much?

Chawla: We have raised angel funding of close to a million.

Wolf: What is your founder team background?

Chawla: The core team comes from varied background with a lot of experience in delivering consumer products, to enterprise hardware and software. Industrial Design, Mechanical Engineering, Software Engineering and Supply Chain management.

Wolf: How big is the chai tea market in the US? Globally?

Chawla: Globally the chai market is a big chunk of black tea market and in our estimate about $20B globally. The global tea market is estimated to be $90B. In the US our estimate is that the US chai market is over $1B. However, Chime is first of its kind product and we believe it has the potential to increase the chai market and make chai accessible to folks who don’t drink chai currently.

CNET Is Not A Fan Of The Teforia Infuser

As more smart kitchen products hit the market, we’re seeing more consumer-facing reviews of the pros, and of course the cons, of these connected devices. CNET has expanded their coverage into the smart kitchen and reviewer Brian Bennett took a closer look at the new tea Infuser from Teforia, the startup trying to revolutionize how consumers brew tea.

The one obvious thing about Teforia’s flagship product is the price point – $1500 is a lot of money to drop on a specialty beverage maker and CNET harps on this a lot throughout the review.

But price aside, Bennett does mention the sleek design (although complains that it is plastic) and enjoys watching the tea infuse and turn from leaf to liquid. But when it comes to the outcome, he’s generally unimpressed and points out that when he tried the same tea with the $200 Breville tea maker, the Breville came out on top.

When Bennett told Teforia his results, their response wasn’t super reassuring either.

According to Teforia, I’d need to run something truly exceptional through the Infuser in order to really appreciate it — something rare, handmade and close to $100 per pound.

Teforia’s move to elevate the tea business, an ancient beverage and an industry that hasn’t experienced much innovation is noteworthy, even if their first product fails to justify the high price point. Check out the full CNET Teforia review here.

A Conversation With AppKettle’s Robert Hill At CES 2017

After five years of working on his connected kettle, Robert Hill ready to bring the product to the United States in 2017.

The former project manager and civil engineer founded his company, AppKettle, back in 2011 and launched a crowdfunding campaign in March of 2015. Despite a valiant effort with over 400 backers and almost £65 thousand in pledges, they cancelled the campaign and soon found external investment.

Fast forward to late last year and the company shipped their smart kettle in the UK and Europe and is setting its sites on delivering the kettle into the US market. The product, which will be priced around $169, will ship in the US by this summer according to Hill.

We caught up with Hill on the show floor at CES and he had this to say about the coming US launch: “(We’re) looking for the right partners. We’ve had a lot of interest, but it’s a very complex area and want to pick the right people. As you can see here (pointing to AppKettle), these are American proven standards. It’s not getting getting logistics and distribution and pricing model correct.”

You can listen to our interview from the show floor with Hill above.