Close Ad

The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

tv

Doordash & Roku Want You to Order Dinner Before You Stream That Next Episode of ‘The Last of Us’

Want to order dinner before watching that next episode of your favorite streaming series? Pick up your Roku remote, click on that special offer, and you’ll have piping hot food sitting in front of you before Ellie surprises or infuriates Joel once again.

That’s the hope anyway for the streaming company and Doordash, who together just announced a new multiyear partnership that makes Doordash a key promotion partner on the Roku platform.

Here are the specifics of the deal:

Complimentary Dashpass: New and existing Roku account holders with a linked streaming or smart home device can get six months of complimentary DashPass.

For those unfamiliar with Dashpass, the delivery company’s subscription plan allows customers to order food without being charged a delivery fee (which ranges from about $2-$5 nowadays). The Dashpass offer is a big win for Doordash since Roku has a massive subscriber base (65 million accounts as of November 2022), and converting just a percentage point or two of the streamer’s subscribers into paying Dashpash subscribers will be a big boost for the delivery company.

Shoppable Ad Offers: DoorDash will be the exclusive marketplace ad solution partner for DoorDash US restaurants and grocers that buy interactive shoppable ads on Roku for the first year of the partnership.

Today Roku gets the bulk of its revenue through advertising (and less every year from streaming hardware), which is why Roku customers (like myself) are seeing more ads pop up on the streaming device nowadays as they navigate their way to shows.

And now, the chances of those ads featuring a special offer for a restaurant down the street have gone up. DoorDash merchant partners can run ads directly on Roku, and if a customer decides to bite, they’ll get the TV ad promotion offer via SMS/email. From there, the customer is led to the storefront directly in the DoorDash app to redeem the offer.

Food delivery promotion via streaming isn’t anything new – Just Eat launched an Apple TV app in 2016 – but it’s getting easier to do as platform players like Roku bake partners like Doordash more tightly into the platform. But even after the attempt to make it easier to order food on our TVs has been going on for almost a decade, the integrations are still mostly about retrieving special offers.

I’d really like to see Roku or other platforms make it possible to see content from local restaurants and food makers I’m interested in. For example, imagine learning more about how the buzzy new pizza place in your town makes pizza or hearing from the chef about the latest item on the menu.

While It might not be smell-o-vision, it would still be pretty darn cool.

Binge Netflix’s The Final Table While Bingeing on Leftovers

We aren’t big into football in my house. But we are big into food shows. And yesterday, the Albrechts, filled with delicious Thanksgiving leftovers (pumpkin pie for breakfast FTW!), sat on the couch in sweatpants and binged our new obsession: Netflix’s The Final Table.

Even if you’re unfamiliar with the show, you’re familiar with the concept: teams of world-class chefs compete in a stadium to earn a seat amongst master chefs at… the final table, yada yada. But there are some tweaks to the tired food competition formula that make this show bingeworthy.

First, it is beautifully shot and produced. It’s almost like Iron Chef by way of Chef’s Table. Cameras on wires float above the action like a sporting event. Expertly crafted film vignettes provide backstories of the contestants as well as the prerequisite slow-motion shots of them preparing meals at their restaurants.

Each week, the remaining contestants “visit” a new country and cook a meal using that nation’s ingredients and style. Judges are actually from that country and are a mix of celebrities (often ones starring in other Netflix shows) for the first part of the weekly competition. The bottom three teams from that portion of the show then must cook for a famous chef from that region, who decides who must leave.

What really sets the show apart from other cooking competitions are the contestants, who work in teams of two for most of the season. Some teams are friends who have worked together and it’s this camaraderie that becomes compelling.

In most cooking shows, the chef contestants work alone and typically “aren’t there to make friends,” as the old trope goes. But when they are working with friends, the sum is greater than the parts, and an almost third entity is conjured up out of their collaboration. They form a bond and communicate without speaking, performing a controlled, chaotic dance around fire, whipping up eye-popping dishes in under an hour.

They don’t always work well together or agree (which sinks them), but it’s fun watching teams advance and learn to work and collaborate better as they get to know each other in the kitchen.

I had the pleasure of talking with Eli Holzman, Founder and CEO of Intellectual Property, the production company behind Project Foodie, at our recent Smart Kitchen Summit. We talked about what it takes to make cooking/food shows that stand out in a world packed with so much content. A winning formula right now, anyway, seems to be… kindness.

That may seem odd and not very technically innovative, but watching The Final Table reminded me of what I like so much about The Great British Baking Show (the latest season of which, IMHO, is the best season yet). People work together and speak to each other respectfully. Judges are there to provide constructive feedback, not destroy contestants — and you can see which master chefs are interested in not just critiquing, but teaching.

It also doesn’t hurt to have a Netflix-sized budget and cinematographers who make dishes pop off the screen.

The show isn’t perfect. It could benefit from more diversity in the contestant lineup, the actor/model/former footballer judges don’t provide that much insight, and there is a weird thing where the show reuses the same two audience reaction shots for each episode.

But these issues don’t distract from the overall artistry and addictiveness of the show. If you’re still on the couch, comatose from all that good gravy, fire up The Final Table, and settle in. You’ll be in front of your TV for a while.

Lazy Sunday: Four Food Shows to Binge After the World Cup

Yes, it’s the summertime and you should probably be spending your weekend grilling various meats (and meat look-alikes) or sipping Pina Coladas on the beach. But there’s a chance a good chunk of you will be watching the World Cup Final on Sunday morning. (Team Croatia for the win!)

So when you’re done watching men with absurd hairstyles run hundreds of miles on a field, keep the tube on and queue up some top-notch food television to while away the day. Be sure to have some snacks on hand, because you will get hungry.

[Full disclosure: I know I should be telling you to watch deep-dive documentaries that teach lessons about food and make you realize how f&#*-ed up our food system is, but we get enough of that during the week. It’s Sunday — let’s just let our brains relax, okay?]

 

Chef's Table | Official Trailer [HD] | Netflix

Chef’s Table

This one’s for all your aesthetes, you food porn-lovers, you aspirational diners. Chef’s Table is the crème de la crème of luxurious food shows, what with its slow-motion shots of the world’s best chefs elegantly plating food with tweezers and doing radical things like making sugar balloons or creating a dish around ants. It makes your most elegant dishes made with a sous vide circulator and a smart oven look like child’s play.

If you have a sweet tooth, be sure to check out Chef’s Table: Pastry. It only has four episodes so you can blow through the whole season, from the maestro of Italian gelato to an American ex-pat making dessert tastings in Bali, in no time.

 

Mind Of A Chef, Season 2: April Bloomfield | Extended Trailer

Mind of a Chef

This show centers around celebrity chefs and the food that made them what they are. Each episode explores one theme near and dear to their heart (noodles, smoke, New York, etc), and is peppered with acid trip-worthy graphics, nerdy science tidbits from author Harold McGee, and wry narration from the late, great Anthony Bourdain.

I personally love the second half of Season Two with April Bloomfield (the first half follows Southern chef Sean Brock, and is also aces). Despite the recent controversy around the British chef’s restaurant partner, she’s utterly unpretentious and charming on the show. Watch her make food with the Italian cookery legend Marcella Hazan, or explore Britain’s obsession with curry.

 

Great British Baking Show

Known as GBBO to its fans, this is the show to watch if you’re feeling that the world is a burning garbage heap and you just need something pure and hopeful to light your spirit. And you like hearing the word “sponge” a lot. Mary Berry and Paul Hollywood are delightful as the judges of this baking show, which takes place in a tent in the middle of the idyllic English countryside. The competitors are adorably supportive of each other, the hosts are wonderfully cheesy, and everything is gingham-covered. Be sure to only watch one of the first 7 seasons — in Season 8, most of the original cast has been replaced. It is just not the same.

Ugly Delicious | Official Trailer [HD] | Netflix

Ugly Delicious

One of the newer food tv shows, Ugly Delicious rolled onto Netflix screens this February with its irreverent, “let’s get real for a second” attitude — and plenty of sexy food scenes. The series stars David Chang, the Michelin star-awarded celebrity chef behind the Momofuku Restaurant Group (who was also the star of Season 1 of Mind of a Chef).

It’s funny, it’s star-studded (hey, Aziz Ansari), and it has darn beautiful footage of Chang eating food around the world. Ugly Delicious also admirably tries to tackle issues like race, gender, and authenticity in the food world — though it doesn’t always push the envelope as much as it likes to think. (One admirable exception is the episode about fried chicken.) At the very least, this show made me really, really want to try Viet-Cajun crawfish, so there’s that.