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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Tetra Dishwasher

The Golden Age of Tiny Dishwashers? Bob and Tetra Begin Making Their Way to a Countertop Near You

Ever since we first stumbled upon the diminutive dishwasher named Bob in the basement of the Sands convention center at CES 2019, we’ve been wondering when the little guy would arrive stateside.

The answer is this year. Daan Technology, the French startup behind the Bob, started shipping the small footprint dishwasher in Europe in 2020 and had originally slated the Bob to arrive in the US the same year. While that model Bob stayed in Europe, an updated global version is finally set to start shipping this year.

The company started a Kickstarter campaign this month and has bundles featuring Bob starting at $379 with an expected ship date of September 2022. For those who don’t want to buy through Kickstarter, my guess is the company will begin up selling Bob on its own website later this year.

Order options include a hose to connect the dishwasher to a faucet (Bob also has a one-gallon water reservoir that can be filled manually) and a range of colorful faceplates. The Bob Premium also includes an interesting UV-C ultraviolet option that allows the user to disinfect items (like phones) that can’t get wet.

While Bob’s Kickstarter backers get a starter pack of the company’s proprietary detergent cartridges (called cassettes), they’ll also want to order extras. Like the Tetra dishwasher, Bob’s small size necessitates special detergent cartridges to get the dosing right.

Speaking of Tetra, when we caught up with the dishwasher’s manufacturer Heatworks late last summer, they had just opened up preorder with a target ship date of May 22nd of this year. The company made the rounds at CES in January (see my interview with Heatworks founder Jerry Callahan here) and is still on track to ship this year.

While countertop dishwashers have been around for years, this new generation that includes the Bob and Tetra features smaller footprint sizes (both in terms of countertop size and resources) and puts a greater emphasis on aesthetics, with design touches like Bob’s colored faceplates or Tetra’s Frog studio driven design.

So if you’re in a small apartment, RV, or a cabin in the woods and would like to ditch the sponge, you’re time has arrived as we seem to be entering a new golden age for tiny dishwashers.

Four Food Tech Gadgets We’re Excited to See at CES 2022

We’re prepping our floor walk plan for CES 2022, figuring out what food tech gadgets (other than robots, that is) we want to check out. We thought we’d share four of them with you.

CES 2022 Preview: Four Food Tech Gadgets We're Excited to See at CES

The products previewed are The Fresh Portal home delivery storage locker, the Bru smart tea maker, the Keddle baby milk warmer from Bisbee Baby, and the Tetra dishwasher from Heatworks.

The Spoon will be here all week reporting on all the food tech innovation we can hunt down, so make sure to check back often and follow us on Twitter, Instagram and Linkedin.

You Can Now (Finally) Preorder The Tetra Countertop Dishwasher

Tetra, the small countertop dishwasher that made a big splash when it debuted almost four years ago at CES 2018, is finally ready to ship take preorders.

Heatworks, the maker of Tetra, said that dishwasher will be available for a pre-order price of $399 ($499 MSRP) and will ship the product on May 18th, 2022, which apparently is No Dirty Dishes Day.

So what took a dishwasher originally expected to ship in mid-2019 an extra three years to get to market?

According to CEO Jerry Callahan, it had to do with a couple things, both related to getting the detergent just right for the small dishwasher.

The first was dosing.

“What we find out early on was that the dosing of its detergent was really critical,” Callahan told me in a phone interview this week. “We use a little bit of water, so if you overdosed it, the cleaning process wasn’t as good. If you underdosed the cleaning process wasn’t as good.”

Add in that each type of detergent brand has its own potency and efficacy, Callahan soon realized things would get out of hand if they tried to tell the consumer how much of each soap to use when running a load.

“I woke up in the middle night thinking about this matrix that we’d have to give everybody so that they put the right amount of detergent in. I said ‘guys that we can’t do that to people.'”

Another reason the Tetra took a while was the company wanted to make sure the cleaning detergent chemistry was just right. Typical dishwashing detergents have a mix of building agents, enzymes and surfactants, and while the varying composition and age of these different components may be fine in traditional dishwashing detergent, the cleaning cocktail needed to be pretty precise for a small machine that makes economic use of water like the Tetra.

This effort to get the dosing and chemistry right led them to a partnership with BASF. In a partnership announcement made last year, the two companies announced they would work on developing a detergent cartridge system for the Tetra. According to the announcement, each cartridge will be good for about 20 washes. Callahan told me that each wash would be an equivalent cost to a good detergent at a grocery store, or “about 35 cents a wash.” That puts cartridge pricing at around $7 per unit (pricing for cartridges were not announced in the release), but Callahan said each Tetra comes with a cartridge and preorders get an extra one thrown in.

Looking at the Tetra, I couldn’t help but notice that while the close-to-final product looks pretty close to the original design, there were a few differences.

Tetra in 2018
Tetra in 2021

One is the Tetra just looks like it has a bigger footprint. This is not surprising since the while original’s tiny design looked cool, the super small prototype didn’t seem all that practical with room for only two place settings (that’s if you didn’t have a silverware basket). The bigger Tetra of 2021 changes that with room for up to three place settings.

The current Tetra also is taller, which makes sense since, at some point, the self-contained washing system needed to make room for the dishwashing machinery as well as have a clear water chamber, a grey water tank and the cartridge system.

While big brands like Midea have been building countertop dishwashers for years, the Tetra – and those that followed like the Bob and the Capsule – are more self-contained and put a greater emphasis on sexy design. The Tetra still stands out compared to both the Bob (which is currently shipping) and the Capsule (expected to ship next year), in large part due to the all-glass top.

And it’s because of this unique design I think there will be some pent up demand for the Tetra, even three years after its debut. Callahan thinks so too, in part because of the 25 thousand or so who have signed up to be notified when the product is ready to ship.

Hopefully we should know by next year. In the meantime, you can check out what the Tetra 2021 looks like in action below.

The Tetra Dishwasher 2021

Heatworks Partners With BASF to Bring the Tiny Tetra Dishwasher To Market in 2021

When Heatworks introduced the Tetra at CES 2018, I imagine they were just as surprised as anyone when it became one of the most buzzed about new products at the annual tech show.

The tiny countertop dishwasher, which promised to clean a few settings of dishes with just half a gallon of water in 10 minutes, appeared on dozens of top of CES lists and the product’s small form factor, sexy design and estimated price point ($299 at the time) had many of us signing up to be notified when it was available.

All of that buzz was probably new for a company that had focused on making tankless water heaters to that point, which probably added a bit of pressure when the original ship date of end of 2018 slipped by.

When I asked them about it last year, Heatworks said the reason for the delay was they were primarily focused on bringing their latest generation water heater, the Model 3, to market. It turns out they also had another reason, which is they would ultimately need a partner to build the sophisticated detergent dispensing system required for such a small form factor device.

That partnership, announced today, is with German conglomerate BASF.

According to the release, the Tetra cartridge system “will be designed to deliver custom solutions and dosing, dependent on the selected wash cycle, ensuring each cleaning cycle is optimized. Tetra’s cartridges will last for multiple loads and consumers will be able to sign up for a subscription, so that cartridges are shipped to them automatically.”

Obviously a subscription based detergent system is a new wrinkle for the Tetra, one that might be a cause for reconsideration for those still waiting for a Tetra. Another potential concern might be the slightly higher price tag ($399) for the new device.

Still, unlike many of the other countertop dishwashers on the market, the Tetra doesn’t require plumbing or hoses and uses less than half of the water. Because of this self-sufficiency and the product’s attractive design, I imagine the 25,000 or so customers the company says have signed up expressing interest in the Tetra might still pull the trigger.

Hopefully soon they’ll have a chance: According to Heatworks and BASF, the Tetra will be available in the second half of 2021.