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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Versaware

The Smart Cutting Board is the Latest Kitchen Gadget to Make Its Way to CES

Over the years, there’s been no shortage of kitchen gadgets at CES. But next week, a new category will join the smart ovens, connected thermometers, and AI-powered fridges on the floor of the world’s biggest tech conference: the smart cutting board.

Yep, there will be not one but two on display in Vegas next week, each with a very different focus. First is Versaware, a company that makes a connected cutting board that works in tandem with a bowl as part of a system that helps users calculate and track calories and nutrition. According to Versaware, when a user prepares a meal, they scan the ingredient barcodes (for packaged food) or query an item (for fresh produce) on the touchscreen display before they drop it onto the cutting board. Then, the app takes the weight of the added ingredient and calculates the incremental calorie count and macronutrients (protein, carbs, fat) as you build your meal.

The other smart cutting board on display next week is BLOK, which its creators bill as a ‘Peleton for the kitchen.’ The idea with BLOK is users will learn to be better cooks through access to live and on-demand cooking classes viewable through the device’s video screen. When the cutting’s all done, the BLOK’s wooden cutting board detaches from the video screen and is washed. The assembled BLOK (wooden cutting board and video screen) is stored in a wireless charging station that fits on the countertop. The company will monetize through – what else – a subscription service for access to cooking videos.

Both devices beg the question of whether consumers will embrace technology being inserted into the most basic of kitchen mainstays, a category that – at least up to this point – has excelled in being nothing more than a reliable surface on which to slice and dice our food. While I think both companies will have an uphill battle selling the idea to consumers, I am more skeptical about the BLOK, primarily because I’m not convinced of any Peleton-for-kitchen business model. I’m also not sure the cutting board is the most logical place to put video playback, especially with most consumers’ easy access to smartphones, Alexa video screens, and tablets.

I plan to swing by and see both products next week. If you’re at CES and want to see a smart cutting board up close, you can find Versaware at booth 53414 and BLOK at booth 61706.

Versaware is Building a Smart Kitchen System to Help You Stick to Healthy Eating

If you’ve ever tried to closely monitor the calories and nutrients of what you’re eating, you know it requires a lot of work. Once you’re done reading labels, estimating portion sizes (often incorrectly), weighing ingredients, and then adding things together, you may need an extra helping to replenish all the energy you’ve expended.

And sure, there are meal-logging apps like MyFitnessPal, but often you still have to use best guesses as to portion sizes and manually enter lots of data.

The creators behind Versaware want to make the whole process less messy and more precise with a smart kitchen system that can estimate the total calorie and macronutrient makeup of a meal as you make it.

How does it work? The system centers around two connected kitchen products – a bowl and a scale – and the Versaware app. As a user makes their meal, they scan the ingredient barcode (for packaged food) or query for the item (for fresh produce), then drop it in the bowl or onto the scale. The app takes the weight of the added ingredient and calculates the incremental calorie count and macronutrients (protein, carbs, fat) as you build your meal.

Company cofounders Jacob Lindberg and Creed McKinnon decided to build their smart kitchen nutrition system after finding existing solutions to monitor calorie and nutrient intake disjointed and cumbersome to use.

“We said, ‘why don’t we consolidate all of this data collection and these tools needed to understand what you’re eating and bring them into one device?'” Lindberg said on a Zoom call with The Spoon. “And we realized that if you tethered the data corresponding to an ingredient’s weight straight to the phone, and just prompted the mobile application for the query of what that ingredient was, then you would solve the entire solution around building a meal from the ground up.”

According to Lindberg, showing the calories and nutrients in a meal in real-time allows the user to easily adjust as they build a meal.

“You can alter the portions of each ingredient that goes into your meal by visually seeing the macronutrient composition of that entire meal,” said Lindberg. “You can, for example, add more flour or reduce the amount of sugar based on however many calories, grams of fat, or grams of protein you want to ingest.”

The current product prototype can scan barcodes and has access to a database with 10s of thousands of products via an open API. Lindberg says they will continue to add features over time, including computer vision capabilities that will scan a food item and estimate its nutritional makeup.

Last week the company started taking preorders on its website and had already sold over $50 thousand in presales. To help gear up for manufacturing, the company’s founders have been working closely with the Centropolis accelerator and plan to start raising seed capital in March. The company plans to start shipping to early backers by the fall of this year.

While many early smart scale products have had mixed success, Versaware hopes to set itself apart by focusing the system and app on a health and fitness use-case. We’ll be watching to see if this will help the company succeed where others haven’t.

If you’d like to pre-order a Versaware bowl and cutting board, you can do so here.

You can watch the Versaware intro video below.

Introducing VersaWare - Nutritionally Driven Meal Creation