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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Thermomix

Thermomix Head of Product Talks Community, Kitchen Gadgets, & Broccoli Salad

If there was ever such thing as an all-in-one kitchen gadget, Thermomix would be it. Over the last few years, it has attracted a cult-like following with its promise to replace over 12 kitchen appliances. From mixing and kneading to chopping, weighing, and steaming, the device lets users create restaurant-quality meals in a fraction of the time it would take with the usual arsenal of kitchen tools. Its German parent company Vorwerk is edging further into the smart home space by adding connected recipes and guided cooking accessories for step-by-step kitchen assistance.

We recently chatted with Dr. Stefan Hilgers, Vice President of International Product Management at Thermomix, to learn more about the appliance’s secret to success, its struggle to enter the U.S. market, and his favorite dish to whip up in his Thermomix at home.

Head over to the Smart Kitchen Summit Europe blog to read the full Q&A with Dr. Hilgers. 

If you want to hear him speak in person about what Thermomix is doing to further the future of food and cooking, make sure to get your tickets for SKSEurope in Dublin June 11-12th!

Why Do Some Smart Kitchen Companies Succeed While Others Fail?

Teforia, the maker of a $1000 (originally $1500) connected tea infuser, announced this week that they would shut down immediately.

In a letter to customers, Teforia CEO Allen Han wrote: “we simply couldn’t raise the funds required in what is a very difficult time for hardware companies in the smart kitchen space.”

I’m not entirely surprised the company couldn’t raise funds. High-priced consumer product startups with a business model that feels even vaguely similar to that of Juicero have experienced pushback from potential investors ever since the high profile juice startup went under. While the two companies are certainly different in many respects, there were enough similarities (high price point, subscription business, easily replaced with alternative methods) to warrant the comparison among a jittery investor class.

But as I read Han’s letter, I started to wonder if what he said is true: are smart kitchen companies having a hard time? Or, as I started to suspect, are some having difficulty while others are flourishing?

On the one hand we have seen companies like Juicero and Teforia struggle and go out of business. But then there are companies like PicoBrew, Perfect Company, and InstantPot, all of which have thrived as they’ve brought new products and approaches to the kitchen.

As I thought about this, I started thinking about the differences between the companies that are succeeding in this space vs. those that go out of business. As it turns out, I think there are some lessons we can learn from observing companies that have had success in this market.

Here are a few characteristics of those companies who are succeeding in the smart kitchen market:

A product should give the consumer new capabilities that would otherwise be too difficult or time consuming without it

A good example is PicoBrew. If you’ve ever wanted to make beer but didn’t want to the mess of traditional home brewing, the PicoBrew is a game changer. By applying precision brewing, pre-proportioned ingredients and the ability to brew famous recipes for well-known microbreweries, the startup from Seattle has created a reliably successful model of creating new products every year as they march down the cost curve with each product.

Teforia, on the other hand, made tea, something billions of people do everyday in their home without much effort.  While the concept of adjusting flavor notes and antioxidants is an interesting concept for a tea aficionado, as it turns out tea is something that you can make rather easily.

A product should be either affordable or provide immense value 

The Thermomix TM5 is one of those products you’ve probably heard about but very likely don’t have. That’s because the 12-in-1 multicooker commands a pretty penny and has only recently become available in the US.

Normally one would not put the words  “$1500 countertop appliance” and “popular” in the same sentence, but Thermomix has seemingly cracked the code by creating an uber all-in-one appliance that slices, dices and cooks you dinner. The company continues to evolve the product as well, adding a connected recipe community and an associated app that continues to gain traction.

While the Teforia critical acclaim showed its value relative to the status quo, the value wasn’t differentiated enough from low-cost knock-offs like this Gourmia tea diffuser which sells for about a tenth of the price.

Smart Kitchen products need a community

Want to sell lots of product? Create an active and passionate community.

Perhaps the best example of this is the Instant Pot. The popular connected pressure cooker has an extremely active social community which includes a Facebook group of nearly three-quarters of a million Facebook users who share recipes and cooking tips online. Independent Facebook Instant Pot communities, each numbering in the tens of thousands, have also sprung up to facilitate recipe sharing.

While some might say a sizable community is the result of a viral product, Instant Pot’s case suggests the opposite where a product’s success was fueled by the community. Early on, the team behind the Instant Pot worked to actively build a community of Facebook influencers who would spread the word. Word got around, and the product started gaining traction. Eventually, the product moved up Amazon’s sales charts, and the combination of a strong community reinforced by sales momentum created a virtuous circle that continues to this day.

There are others ways to build and leverage communities to sell connected kitchen products. ChefSteps created a community around high-quality video content before they launched their first hardware product in the Joule, while Anova started its community with crowdfunding campaigns and the company continues to water and feed the #anovafoodnerd community even after they were acquired by Electrolux.

Smart kitchen companies need to experiment with multiple business models

Smart kitchen product success often relies as much on business model experimentation as it does on cool technology. The Perfect Company is a good example of this since the company has not only created a successful line of low-cost connected scales like the Perfect Bake and Perfect Drink, but they’ve also actively worked with large appliance brands to create a separate line of licensing revenue for their technology. Last year the company announced a deal with Vitamix for their tech, while this year they announced a new deal that provided the technology foundation for the newest generation of the Nutribullet. The company has also created a new business line that creates insights around consumption metrics tied to their scales.

I don’t know if Teforia was actively looked at other models (the company pointed us to their statement on their website), but I would have been surprised if they hadn’t at least looked for licensing partners for their tea brewing tech.

Of course, it should be noted that often times a fate of a company is due to a number of factors beyond their control. The Juicero news no doubt added strong headwinds for Teforia as they searched for more funding and, if Juicero never happened, we might not be talking about Teforia.

Lastly, while every segment, including the smart kitchen, has their share of Juiceros or Teforias, anything more than a casual look around shows there is no shortage of companies innovating and succeeding in the future kitchen space.

 

Thermomix Reaches New Milestone: One Million Connected Appliances

Thermomix, the popular all-in-one multicooker with a high price tag (~$1500), has reached a new milestone: one million of the Thermomix cooking appliances have connected to the company’s online cooking platform, Cookidoo.

The milestone was reached this month when the one millionth TM5 – the company’s latest generation cooking appliance – connected to the Cookidoo platform using the Cook-Key, a Wi-Fi enabled recipe platform accessory that replaces the standard recipe cookbook “chip” that comes with a TM5.

As can be seen below, the Cook-Key started shipping last August and hit the one million milestone this month.

Cook-Key units connected. Source: Vorwerk

The Cook-Key and Cookidoo represent a significant new strategy and revenue opportunity for Thermomix. The Thermomix TM5 ships without built-in connectivity and the customer is limited to those recipes on a given recipe chip. With the Wi-Fi enabled Cook-Key, the customer can connect to the Cookidoo recipe portal and access thousands of recipes from other Thermomix users or through curated collections of recipes from Thermomix at $4 a pop. The Cook-Key itself is about $112 dollars and the customer subscribes the Cookidoo recipe platform for $39 a year. A back of the envelope estimate puts the Cook-Key and Cookidoo revenue today at approximately $150-$200 million a year.

And the company isn’t done. While there is no official word of how many TM5s are in the field today, one can assume that the company has sold anywhere between one and two million since the end of last year when they last updated their numbers. At the end of 2016, the company revealed that a total of 3 million TM5s are sitting in customers homes, and I would guess that number now sites between 4 and 5 million. Assuming a total of 5 million Thermomix TM5s, the company would only be at 20% adoption for its online recipe platform.

Those numbers could also grow as the company expands its reach into the potentially lucrative US Market. The Thermomix made it to the US this year, but it still remains to be seen if the company’s traditional direct sales model will translate to the US. As a hedge, the company has been trialing other sales channels such as Williams-Sonoma.

The company envisions the Thermomix Cookidoo platform as a shopping and recipe platform as well. You can see an illustration of this in the video below where a family utilizes the Cookidoo recipe service with a Thermomix app to manage their food shopping.

Thermomix TM5 and Cookidoo Ecosystem

Podcast: The Thermomix Interview

If you live in the US, chances are you haven’t gotten your hands on a Thermomix TM5. That’s because the latest generation of Vorwerk’s hugely popular multi cooker that has sold over 3 million units in Europe has only been available in the state of California as part of a limited test market rollout.

But that’s all about to change. Thermomix’s parent company Vorwerk plans to expand the product’s US footprint in 2017, first in New York and then to other markets. This expansion comes as the company rolls out its new connected recipe platform, the Cook-Key, which gives Thermomix users access to thousands of recipes that can automatically be downloaded and used as part of multicooker’s guided cooking system.

As CES in Las Vegas I caught up with the head of Thermomix’s North America, Kai Schaeffner, and Stefan Hilgers, who is head of product for the Thermomix.

Listen to the podcast by clicking play above, subscribing on iTunes or downloading here.

Why Top Chef’s Ilan Hall Loves the Thermomix

When Top Chef season 2 winner Ilan Hall told me he’s been obsessed with the Thermomix for as long as he can remember, I had to learn more. Hall says he uses the Thermomix—a combination mixer, blender, oven, and more—almost daily at home and often at his restaurants in Los Angeles and New York as well. Here’s why he loves it.

How He Discovered It: Ever since culinary school, long before the Thermomix became available in the United States, Hall was “playing around” with the machines at other people’s houses and restaurants in Europe and mastering the art of combination ovens and thermoimmersion circulators here in the States. When the Thermomix came onto the market here, he got one immediately.

What He Loves About It: Hall said he appreciates how you can do so much in one space with the Thermomix, noting that it’s “pretty advanced” in its capabilities, with a great display and high functionality as well as excellent safety precautions (for example, it won’t let you blend hot soup too quickly, which would create pressure and make it spill over the sides).

He’s also a huge fan of the Thermomix’s Recipe Chips, a digital cookbook with step-by-step instructions. “There are certain things that I want to play with and certain things I don’t want to mess up,” he explained. “The preprogrammed recipes literally make it foolproof.”

Favorite Way to Use It: “At home I use it as a general all-purpose tool,” he said, explaining that he’s made soup, consommé, and bread. In particular he likes to use it to make herb purees, noting that it allows you to heat the herbs “at a delicate temperature” and puree them at the right speed (plus you don’t lose any of the puree to the bottom of the machine, like with some blenders).

That leaves him more time to experiment with his own creations. For example, at his Los Angeles restaurant Ramen Hood, he’s made small batches of vegan dashi broth with kombu and shiitake mushrooms, “changing the texture of the purees by implementing heat” in the Thermomix (think caramelizing onions while keeping them in constant motion, then pureeing sunflower seeds into them), giving the vegan dish “more depth and the mouthfeel of a [decidedly nonvegan] kampachi broth.”

What He’d Change About It: “I would make a pocket-size one,” he said, “one that’s smaller and more affordable.”

Other Kitchen Technology: He’s playing around with a new sous vide device called the Mellow, which is an all-contained gadget completely controlled by an app and doesn’t even require an additional vacuum sealer. He said he loves its design as well: “It looks like a gentle white fish tank.”

June Gets A Brutal Review. Here’s What The Author Got Right And Wrong

Back in the 90s and early 2000s, whenever a company wanted to get early buzz for a product, they’d send it over to Walt Mossberg of the Wall Street Journal to give it a test run.

Of course, doing so always came with a certain amount of risk since Walt always tells it as it is, and if your product didn’t meet with his stringent requirements for useability and utility, Walt’s review could be the death knell for a product. Conversely, if he liked it, more often than not it would catapult a product into the must have category and holiday buy lists.

Nowadays with the proliferation of blogs and technology journalists, there are a thousand Walt Mossbergs (including Walt Mossberg), and while the technology reviewer may not have quite as much sway in the era of crowdsourced reviews on sites like Amazon, a critical review of a new product can still be painful for a company trying to convince consumers to buy its product.

Which brings us to the recent review of the June Intelligent Oven over at FastCo Design, a popular site which often has thoughtful reviews on new products. The review’s headline is the cringe-inducing (if you’re June, at least) “This $1,500 Toaster Oven Is Everything That’s Wrong With Silicon Valley Design”.

Ouch.

Of course, there were more positive reviews, but the review by Mark Wilson hits the June on a number of fronts, including some apparent bugs – “the June was texting messages like “NOTIFCATION_ETA_PESSIMISTIC” – as well as not performing as promised when it came to things like cook time.

But there are also bigger critiques in the piece, including Wilson’s belief that the June has overpromised on the simplicity of cooking with the device:

“‘[The] salmon’s incredible,” Van Horn had bragged earlier. Which seemed a stretch to me: “The salmon’s incredible” is what a waiter tells you when somebody at your table can’t eat gluten. Objectively, the fish was cooked to temperature and still moist enough—which you could have done in any oven, really.’

This salmon had become more distracting to babysit than if I’d just cooked it on my own. This salmon had become a metaphor for Silicon Valley itself. Automated yet distracting. Boastful yet mediocre. Confident yet wrong. Most of all, the June is a product built less for you, the user, and more for its own ever-impending perfection as a platform. When you cook salmon wrong, you learn about cooking it right.”

And perhaps the biggest problem Wilson had with the June was the very fact it was trying to automate the process of cooking itself.

“June is taking something important away from the cooking process: the home cook’s ability to observe and learn. The sizzle of a steak on a pan will tell you if it’s hot enough. The smell will tell you when it starts to brown. These are soft skills that we gain through practice over time. June eliminates this self-education. Instead of teaching ourselves to cook, we’re teaching a machine to cook. And while that might make a product more valuable in the long term for a greater number of users, it’s inherently less valuable to us as individuals, if for no other reason than that even in the best-case scenarios of machine learning, we all have individual tastes. And what averages out across millions of people may end up tasting pretty . . . average.”

So what are we to take from all of this? Are Wilson’s points that technology can get in the way of cooking and make things more complicated, and that by using the June a home cook is essentially foregoing the process of learning and the multisensory experience of cooking valid?

Yes, to a point. While we should note this is just one review, the reality is that the June Oven is an early attempt at using advanced technology to improve the experience cooking by making the process easier.

But what the reviewer misses in his despair about how automation will sacrifice the craft and experience of cooking is that there are many different types of consumers and cooks, including some who would gladly forego the complexity and effort required to get a tasty meal on the table.

And while June’s first attempt at using advanced image recognition and automated cooking may not yet be perfect, it’s an interesting first try that will improve over time. As Nikhil Bhogal, the CTO of June, said at the Smart Kitchen Summit, “Part of the approach (of building a new product) should be building with headroom to grow.”

In other words, one advantage a product like June has is an ability to improve in the field. Other less technologically advanced products are what they are; once they land in a consumer’s home, their problems likely won’t go away.

Of course, Wilson is not reviewing a future product, he’s reviewing the current June Oven, a $1,500 countertop oven with some useability issues and one that comes with lots of promises.  He’s completely right to review the product as it performs today, warts and all.

But I would also suggest before he dismisses the idea of advanced technology like automation in the kitchen, he try products like the Joule from ChefSteps or the Hestan Cue. These products are simpler than the June (and also much lower priced, which helps), but they also do what good tools should do: add simplicity while also elevating a person’s skills. Both use light guidance mechanisms in the form of helpful videos and sensory awareness to make cooking easier, but also only take partial control of the process and allow the home chef to not only experience the act of cooking, but also learn while they are doing it.

And he might also try a Thermomix, the closest thing I’ve used to a really useful “cooking robot” (even though they wouldn’t describe it that way), in that it can almost fully automate a meal like risotto or pasta for you. There’s a reason why the Thermomix has sold millions of its generation 5 multicooker in Europe and that’s because some of us, on some nights, just want someone – or some thing – to make us a tasty meal.

And I imagine a good meal is something even cantankerous product reviewers like Walt Mossberg may even enjoy from time to time.