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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

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Video: Can You Sell Things in the Smart Kitchen Without Being Annoying?

Most of us have heard the adage that the kitchen is the heart of the home. But it’s also a space that’s ripe for commerce, especially with all the new appliances, software, and services rolling out as the kitchen gets smarter.

In this video from the 2018 Smart Kitchen Summit, Richard Gunther of Digital Media Zone speaks with Iri Zohar of Freshub, Benton Richardson, of Amazon Dash, and Shawn Stover of GE Appliances about the future of in-kitchen commerce models: be that automated grocery replenishment, personalized suggestions, or shoppable recipes.

But how do you sell things to people in their kitchen in a way that, as Gunther put it, “isn’t annoying?”

Watch the full video below to find out.

Kitchen Counter Point of Sale: Analyzing In-Kitchen Commerce Models

Look out for more videos of the panels, solo talks, and fireside chats from SKS 2018! We’ll be bringing them to you hot and fresh out the (smart) kitchen over the next few weeks.

Video: Tyler Florence Advocates for “Choose-Your-Own-Adventure” Cooking through Tech

Last year at the Smart Kitchen Summit, chef Tyler Florence made waves when he proclaimed that “the recipe is dead.”

This year he returned to the SKS stage for a fireside chat with Michael Wolf to discuss the evolving role of recipes — and the home cook — in the tech-enabled kitchen.

His new take is that recipes aren’t dead, they’re just like vinyl records or paper maps — nostalgic and practical, but antiquated. Down the road cooking will be all about personalization and “choose-your-own-adventure” food experiences, which will give us, according to Florence, “a higher creativity rate than we’ve ever had.”

Watch the video below to hear this celebrity chef’s vision for the future of cooking.

The Connected Chef

Video: To Succeed in the Smart Kitchen, “You Have to Get Multi-Modal Fast”

Voice is becoming more and more present in consumer electronics. At the same time, appliances are also coming with a whole host of AI-powered, software-driven interfaces and interactions.

How do these components work together in the kitchen? In this video from the 2018 Smart Kitchen Summit, Stacey Higginbotham of the IoT Podcast moderates a panel with Shelby Bonnie of Pylon AI, Adnan “Boat” Agboatwalla of Samsung and Jason Clarke of Crank Software about the evolution of smart appliances and interfaces in the heart of the home.

There’s a lot to consider. As Clarke said, “there’s all these interfaces that I want to jump between depending on the task and the environment of the moment.” For example, if his daughter is being loud, he doesn’t want to rely on voice to turn on his oven; if his hands are dirty, vice versa.

In short: the smart kitchen can’t function just with video screens or voice, but both working together. “You have to get to multi-modal fast,” said Bonnie.

But for the ultimate user experience these appliances all have to work together, too. “There should be a platform that connects everything… multi-branded appliances should be able to talk and work together,” said Agboatwalla. Easy? Maybe not. But with conversations like these, we can pave the way to a more connected kitchen and a better cooking experience.

Watch the full video below.

Beyond The Dial: Exploring Voice and AI-Powered Interfaces For The Kitchen

Look out for more videos of the panels, solo talks, and fireside chats from SKS 2018! We’ll be bringing them to you hot and fresh out the (smart) kitchen over the next few weeks.

Video: Food Blockchain — Just Hype, Or True Path To Food Transparency?

Blockchain is everywhere, from currency to copyright protection. Many also see the decentralized ledger as the key to food system transparency — that is, an incorruptible record of where food comes from, which can help increase food safety and promote customer knowledge. Others are skeptical, but blockchain is nonetheless a hot topic on the (dinner) table.

Two companies betting on blockchain as the future of food transparency are Walmart and Ripe.io. The former recently announced they would be using blockchain to keep track of spinach and lettuce sold in their stores, and the latter has been working for two years to create “The Blockchain for Food” (and racking up funding, too).

Watch as Stacey Higginbotham of Stacey on IoT talks to Walmart’s Tejas Bhatt and Ripe.io’s Raja Ramachandran about the impact of blockchain on the food ecosystem.

Food Blockchain: Hype Or True Path To Food Transparency

Look out for more videos of the panels, solo talks, and fireside chats from SKS 2018! We’ll be bringing them to you hot and fresh out the (smart) kitchen over the next few weeks.

Video: Why We Should Care About Food Data

Why do we need a data structure for food?

It’s something that the consumer probably doesn’t know about it at all. In fact, if a company is doing their job right, they shouldn’t be aware of it at all. But this underlying layer of terms, analytics, and data plays a critical role in how we all find, cook, and consume food.

In this video from the 2018 Smart Kitchen Summit, Stacey Higgenbotham of Stacey on IoT moderates a deep-dive discussion into the “Internet of Food” with Matthew Lange of IC-Foods, Victor Penev of Edamam, and Kevin Brown of Innit. Watch below as the speakers get nerdy and tackle the importance of data standards to help us eat better food — and maybe live longer, too.

Food Data: Standards, Ontologies & Analytics

Look out for more videos of the panels, solo talks, and fireside chats from SKS 2018! We’ll be bringing them to you hot and fresh out the (smart) kitchen over the next few weeks.

Video: Smart Kitchen Perspectives from Japan, Europe, and the U.S.

More so than a living room, dining room, or even bedroom, kitchens — and their appliance lineup — vary dramatically region to region. In our global economy, how do companies in the smart kitchen space serve consumers across diverse geographies?

In this panel discussion from our recent Smart Kitchen Summit, ConnectSense’s Adam Justice moderates a discussion between Robin Liss of Suvie, Erik Wallin of Northfork, and Masa Fukata of Panasonic on the challenges of designing smart kitchen products and services which appeal to differing regions.

Smart Kitchen Regional Perspectives

Look out for more videos of the panels, solo talks, and fireside chats from SKS 2018! We’ll be bringing them to you hot and fresh out the (smart) kitchen over the next few weeks.

Video: Plant-Based, Cellular, and Sustainable — What is the Future of Meat?

Cell-based meat (also known as “clean” and “lab-grown” meat) is set to hit the market by the end of 2018, even though the FDA and USDA are still figuring out how to regulate it. At the same time, plant-based meat companies are seeing unprecedented levels of consumer interest and investment, even from Big Meat companies.

Watch as our panel from the 2018 Smart Kitchen Summit, featuring Tom Mastrobuoni of Tyson Ventures, Christie Lagally of Seattle Food Tech, and Thomas Bowman of JUST, Inc., explores the challenges and opportunities of the future of meat: plant-based, cell-based, and otherwise.

Plant-Based, Cellular & Sustainable: Exploring The Future of Meat

Look out for more videos of the panels, solo talks, and fireside chats from SKS 2018! We’ll be bringing them to you hot and fresh out the (smart) kitchen over the next few weeks.

Video: Rethinking Business Models in the Era of FoodTech

There was a time when Whirlpool was an appliance company, pure and simple. Nestlé focused exclusively on packaged goods. ChefSteps started as an online content community. But in the past few years, Whirlpool bought recipe content platform Yummly, Nestlé has added digital services, and Chefsteps has diversified into hardware and prepared food.

In the technology age, are the traditional roles of food companies breaking down?

Michael Wolf asked this question to Chris Young of ChefSteps, Stephanie Naegeli of Nestlé and Brett Dibkey of Whirlpool on the Smart Kitchen Summit stage. Watch the video below to see the panelists discuss how food companies are taking new, sometimes risky approaches in order to stay viable in the shifting smart kitchen ecosystem for years to come.

Rethinking Business Models In The Era of FoodTech

Look out for more videos of the panels, solo talks, and fireside chats from SKS 2018! We’ll be bringing them to you hot and fresh out the (smart) kitchen over the next few weeks.

From Project Runway to Project Foodie: Eli Holzman on The Power of Kitchen Video

A year after Eli Holzman first created Project Runway, he called Parson’s School of Design to see how the partnership was going from them. They told that enrollment in their program had doubled. In fact, across the country, there had been a massive uptick in applications for fashion design schools. That’s when Holzman first realized what a powerful medium television — and video — could be.

Cut to a few years later, when he was trying to cook a recipe from his brother (chef of The Meatball Shop). “I just made a mess of it,” he said. So he decided to send a crew to videotape his brother making the recipe and use it as a guide to cook along in his own kitchen. He had such success that the brothers decided to launch Project Foodie: an app with real-time video recipes meant to be a foolproof guide for home cooks.

Our own Chris Albrecht sat down with Holzman on the Smart Kitchen Summit 2018 stage to talk about his experience transitioning into a new form of media in the kitchen: the unexpected production challenges, his new success metrics, and his vision for the future of cooking video content.

Watch the full video below:

From Project Runway To Project Foodie

Look out for more videos of the panels, solo talks, and fireside chats from SKS 2018! We’ll be bringing them to you hot and fresh out the (smart) kitchen over the next few weeks.

Video: To Survive, the Future Kitchen Must be Personalized, Flexible, and Emotional

The first panel of the 2018 Smart Kitchen Summit (SKS) North America started out not with a bang, but with a beep. Just after Jon Jenkins, Director of Engineering at Hestan Smart Cooking, Dana Cowin, former Editor in Chief of Food & Wine, and Michael Wolf got settled, self-driving robot Penny glided out onto the stage to bring them some water.

This little interruption was actually the perfect way to introduce their panel: The Disrupted Meal Journey. As automation edges its way further and further into our lives and our food, how will that transform the kitchen? Will people still cook in the future, or will they opt purely for food delivery — or just have a robot cook their meal for them?

Don’t worry. The panelists were confident that the kitchen wasn’t going to fully disappear: as long as it could use technology not only to make cooking easier, but also more exciting and emotional.

“If what we’re selling is purely sustenance, you don’t need a kitchen,” Jenkins stated. “We’ve got to hope we’re getting something more out of cooking.” Cowin agreed, adding that home meal preparation should leverage technology to become more “personalized, exciting, and diverse.”

Watch the video below to see the full panel, and hear Cowin and Jenkins’ predictions on how kitchens will have to adjust to survive in the age of ever-growing automation and delivery.

The Disrupted Meal Journey

Look out for more videos of the panels, solo talks, and fireside chats from SKS 2018! We’ll be bringing them to you hot and fresh out the (smart) kitchen over the next few weeks.

Video: Regional Perspectives on the Connected Kitchen Market

At Smart Kitchen Summit Europe last month, a topic on everyone’s mind was the future of the connected kitchen market.

In fact, we had a whole panel devoted to analyzing the regional perspectives of the smart kitchen marketplace: Chris Albrecht of The Spoon moderated the conversation between Holger Henke of Cuicinale, Robin Liss of Suvie, and Miles Woodroffe of Cookpad, Ltd.

The speakers explored the evolving role of voice assistants, regional perspectives across Europe, Asia and North America on the smart kitchen, and what the consumer really wants (to save time and money).

Watch the full video of the panel below.

If you want to hear more deep-dive analysis on the connected kitchen from people in the business, join us at the Smart Kitchen Summit in Seattle this October!

Video: CNET’s Ashlee Clark Thompson on Her Best Cooking Gadgets

We at The Spoon have long been fans of Ashlee Clark Thompson, Associate Editor at CNet and hilarious twitter poster. (You may have seen her on stage at last year’s Smart Kitchen Summit talking about the future of food.)

Like us, Thompson is fascinated by the smart kitchen market. “The kitchen has become the center of the home,” she said. “We’re seeing all these screens pop up everywhere. For me, as a person that loves to cook, that’s exciting. But it’s also a little scary, because I want products that will last.”

Chris Albrecht caught up with Thompson at this year’s Housewares Show Smart Home Pavillion to debrief about said products. Check out the video to see Albrecht and Clark Thompson discuss the best cooking gadgets to invest in, their hesitations about connected products, and how tech can make us better cooks.

CNET at the IHA Smart Talks Theater

Interested in hearing more about the Smart Kitchen Summit? Our first European event is coming up June 11-12th in Dublin, and we’ll be returning to Seattle for our fourth year in October.