Close Ad

The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Whirlpool

Food Tech Patent Watch: Patent Reveals Eatsa’s Robotic Meal-Assembly Machine

Remember Eatsa?

You know, the automat-like bowl food restaurant that was re-spun as a fast-growing (but more boring) restaurant marketing tech company called Brightloom?

I do, mainly because I loved the place. After I visited one in New York City, I wrote that the restaurant could be the future of fast-casual dining.

As it turns out, some – including maybe Eatsa’s investors – didn’t agree with me. I say that because starting in 2019, they phased out the cubbies, changed their name, took money from Starbucks, and, from the looks of it, dropped big plans for automating the back of house with meal assembly robots.

I say that because Eatsa (now Brightloom) holding company Keenwawa, Inc. was issued a patent last month for a meal-making robot. The patent, a continuation patent for one first issued to the company in 2019, shows a system that assembles meals by dispensing different ingredients stored in canisters into bowls and then shuttles the assembled meals off to the cubbies in the front of house.

Drawing of The Eatsa Meal Assembly Machine From Patent Filing

From the patent:

The automatic food preparation and serving apparatus may also comprise the food dispensing mechanism configured to dispense the ingredient from the plurality of food canisters into the bowl or food receptacle, under program control of the one or more processors.

The patent goes into excruciating detail about the system, complete with dozens of images outlining the canisters, the dispensing system, the conveyor belt, the bowls, and even the touchscreen user interface (which looks a lot like those deployed in the actual Eatsa restaurants for consumers to choose their bowls).

The list of inventors on the 60-page plus patent includes the former automation and engineering team for Eatsa, as well as Dave Friedberg, the one-time Climate Corp founder who incubated the company as part of what would eventually become The Production Board holding company.

I have to wonder if Eatsa-now-Brightloom’s owners are looking to license or sell the technology or even revive their ‘eatsa-inside’ strategy. After all, the recent news that Sweetgreen had acquired Spyce to help do exactly what Eatsa did – make food bowls – shows that some restaurants see a future in automated meal assembly.

Time will tell. For now, however, you can take a look back at the Eatsa ordering and cubby system below.

Food Tech Patent News Roundup

The First Patent Awarded to an AI System is in Food

While I thought that artificial intelligence systems will do most everything at some point, I assumed an AI being awarded a patent was one we could sleep on for a few years more.

I was wrong. In the July edition of the Patent Journal, an AI system named DABUS was awarded a patent for an innovation called “food container based on fractal geometry” for a system with interlocking food containers.

This Quartz Africa article describes DABUS’s creator:

DABUS (which stands for “device for the autonomous bootstrapping of unified sentience”) is an AI system created by Stephen Thaler, a pioneer in the field of AI and programming. The system simulates human brainstorming and creates new inventions. DABUS is a particular type of AI, often referred to as “creativity machines” because they are capable of independent and complex functioning. This differs from everyday AI like Siri, the “voice” of Apple’s iPhones.

DABUS’s inventor Thaler submitted the patent application listing DABUS as the inventor since the AI conceived and created the food storage system entirely. He submitted it to patent offices worldwide, including the US, which rejected him because, among other reasons, the US patent office only awards patents (for the time being) to human inventors. However, the South Africa patent office apparently had no such restrictions when it surprised many with an award of a patent.

In retrospect, it shouldn’t be that surprising AI are creating patentable ideas. AIs already write novels and movie scripts, so why not invent novel things like food containers and get them patented?

I’m looking forward to when we see AI start innovating on novel food. We’ve seen what an impact AI had in vaccine development, so it’s not too much of a stretch to see how it could start making a difference on the bioengineering front for foods.

A Patent Awarded for Many Container Within Container Scenarios For Food Storage, Cooking, and More

A fairly wide-ranging patent titled “Multi-function compact appliance and methods for a food or item in a container with a container storage technology” (US011104502) has been awarded to an Edward Espinosa from Spain for a system that enables a variety of container within container use-cases.

One example is a food container within a larger food storage appliance (i.e., a fridge) sending information on status such as freshness, etc. Another is the refrigerator with a microwave oven in one of the compartments.

The patent describes various technologies such as NFC, Bluetooth, voice control, machine vision via an internal camera, and more to enable the container systems to communicate with the appliance. In addition, the system describes the use of smart tags that communicate freshness data from within storage drawers.

I’ve long called for innovations in the core design of the fridge since they’ve largely been the same for the past 100 years, and it looks like Espinosa has definitely given the refrigerator a rethink.

Whirlpool’s Solid State Cooking Patent

Schematic for Cooking System With Directed RF Energy

It’s been a loosely held secret in the appliance industry that Whirlpool has been tinkering around in the solid-state cooking area for a while. This patent describing a system with multi-regional cooking via RF signals shows they are also trying to accumulate IP in the market. At this time, only Miele has commercialized a consumer solid-state cooking appliance, but hopefully, soon, we’ll see a next-generation microwave from a mass-market brand like Whirlpool.

Whirlpool’s W Labs Countertop Smart Oven is Now Selling for Half The Original Price

Did you know Whirlpool has a countertop smart oven?

Don’t worry, most people didn’t, in part because Whirlpool never talked much about it after it launched in early 2019.

But now that you do know about it, you might also be interested to know they’re selling it for just $399. That’s half the original sticker price for the smart oven from W Labs, Whirlpool’s innovation hub. From the looks of it, the price reduction looks permanent.

So why is W Labs selling its June clone which debuted in January 2019 so cheap? It might be because the group is looking to clear out the remaining inventory of a product which was, from the beginning, positioned as an experiment. They only made 2000 of them and they only sold the product online and not through traditional Whirlpool appliance showroom sales channels.

Still, the wind down makes me wonder if the big appliance manufacturer is making way for a more permanent replacement. Whirlpool tends to do big refreshes to its product lineup every two years, which means 2021 is a refresh year after a relatively quiet 2020 and a big 2019. As part of a larger refresh, I can see a countertop smart oven as a logical candidate for the lineup.

It also appears Whirlpool is closing out its scan-to-cook smart microwaves and is out of stock on many of its smart ovens or ranges. While some of this could be due to COVID-related supply chain disruptions, this could be another indication that the company might be starting to wind down its current lineup more broadly as it prepares for a new line of smart ovens for 2021.

Recipe Database Yummly Will Personalize “The Entire Digital Kitchen” to Help You Cook The Perfect Steak

If you’ve ever searched for a recipe online, odds are you’ve perused at least a few offerings on Yummly. This massive database started out with a focus on personalizing recipe discovery. Then, almost three years ago, appliance giant Whirlpool bought the company and the stakes changed. In the words of Greg Druck, Chief Data Scientist at Yummly, the company has now expanded from “personalizing recipe discovery to personalizing the entire digital kitchen.”

Curious? So were we, which is why we invited Druck to speak at Customize, our food personalization event happening next week in NYC. (Hot tip: There are still a few tickets left, and you can get 15 percent off with code SPOON15.)

To ramp up to the main event we asked Druck a few questions on what exactly a personalized kitchen might look like and what tools it’ll feature (hint: digital assistants and something called a “virtual pantry.”). And yes, the kitchen of the future should be able to perfectly cook a steak to your personal definition of doneness, every single time.

Check out the Q&A below. We’ll see you in New York!

Tell us a little bit about what Yummly does. 
Yummly is the most advanced AI-powered digital kitchen platform with over 25 million users. Yummly started out as a personalized platform for discovering online recipes. We are now expanding our offering to support the future of the kitchen. We want to help our users achieve their cooking-related goals with smart appliance integrations, premium guided recipes, and tools for meal planning and shopping.

Yummly places strong emphasis on personalized recommendations for the consumer. How do you optimize those suggestions? 
The Yummly recipe ingestion pipeline (pun intended) builds comprehensive representations of over 2 million recipes by inferring latent structure. Machine learning models parse the recipe and map it onto our food knowledge graph, inferring nutrition information, cuisine, techniques, difficulty, and more. This provides a foundation for content-based recommendation algorithms. 

Yummly also learns taste profiles for 25 million users by combining explicit and implicit feedback based on behavior and usage. Machine learning systems synthesize this data along with other contextual and ambient signals including day of the week, season, and location to create dynamic personalized feeds for each of our users. 

Has Yummly’s acquisition by Whirlpool changed its approach to personalization (by gathering data from home appliance usage, etc)?
Whirlpool’s acquisition of Yummly has allowed us to expand from personalizing recipe discovery to personalizing the entire digital kitchen. We believe personalization is the key to helping people achieve their goals, such as eating healthy, saving money, and reducing stress. Combining Whirlpool appliances as the hardware with Yummly software and machine learning systems allows us to personalize the experience to each home cook.

For example, Yummly will recommend personalized meal plans and shopping lists — in addition to individual recipes — based on a user’s tastes, goals, and appliances. We’ll keep track of the ingredients they have on hand and incorporate information from their “virtual pantry” into recommendations that will help them save money by reducing food waste.

Integrations with the Yummly Smart Thermometer and Whirlpool ovens will allow Yummly to adapt cooking algorithms to each user’s needs: for example, cooking a steak to a user’s personal definition of doneness. Combining these ideas into one seamless experience will substantially reduce friction in the kitchen. 

How do you envision recipes (and the recipe recommendation process) getting even more personalized over the next 5 years?
Conversational digital kitchen assistant AIs will help people create plans and recommend custom recipes that are much more personalized to specific needs and more useful for achieving goals in the kitchen. AI will guide you through the week, providing ongoing personalized advice, as well as gamifying and tracking progress against goals over time.

Your AI services will personalize a weekly meal plan and schedule for your household and then have the ingredients delivered to your home. Your plan may include a custom stir-fry recipe that uses up the carrots and chicken that were going bad (recognized using in-kitchen cameras) to save money and reduce food waste. It may avoid pasta or adjust ingredients according to your personalized nutrition plan to help you maintain a low-carb diet (because your assistant knows you’re not tracking well against your weight-loss goal). It might include a cheesy broccoli recipe to help you achieve your goal of getting the kids to eat more vegetables. It may even suggest cooking the chicken dish on Sunday to have an easy meal ready for Monday, reducing the stress of meal planning. Lastly AI may automatically adjust the bake time and temperature to make the dish extra crispy for you, and monitor cooking using a smart thermometer, notifying you when it is done.

This is just the tip of the iceberg — get your tickets to Customize to hear Druck’s fireside chat, where we’ll discuss how personalization will reshape the consumer kitchen. Get 15 percent off tickets with code SPOON15.

Whirlpool’s Yummly Introduces Wireless Smart Thermometer

Yummly, the digital recipe and cooking platform acquired by Whirlpool, announced the new Yummly Smart Thermometer at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) today.

The wireless thermometer keeps track of both internal food temperature and ambient cooking temperatures, and can be monitored via an accompanying app that sends alerts when the food is ready.

At first, this sounds a lot like the Meater smart thermometer. Smart thermometers can actually be pretty great because they allow you to remotely monitor your cooking without opening your oven and letting all the heat out.

But what differentiates Yummly’s Smart Thermometer from Meater and others is its ability to integrate with both the Whirlpool and Yummly ecosystems. So if a person is cooking from a Yummly recipe, the Yummly Thermometer will know what step the user is on and be able to communicate with a Whirlpool oven to adjust the temperature or switch from roasting to broiling automatically. According to the press release, this type of integration will be available in late 2020.

The Yummly Smart Thermometer also seems to be helping Yummly create something akin to a deconstructed June Oven. The Yummly mobile app can be used to recognized ingredients and suggest recipes. Those recipes can be communicated to a compatible Whirlpool oven and the thermometer can talk with the oven to create an automated cook program. While this requires a number of different pieces to create a smart oven, it also means you don’t have to take up countertop space with an additional cooking appliance.

The Yummly Smart Thermometer will be on display at CES this week, and available for purchase in early 2020 with an MSRP of $129.

Will KitchenAid’s SmartOven+ with Steam and Grill Cooking Win with Consumers at $3,199?

When is an oven like a stand mixer? When it’s KitchenAid’s SmartOven+. Much like the company’s iconic mixer, KitchenAid’s new connected built-in oven, which the announced the availability of yesterday, will feature a number of attachments that enable different types of cooking. The question now is whether people will pay a premium ($3,199) for that flexibility.

As of now, the SmartOven+ has three attachments, all of which are powered via a plug inside the oven. The SmartOven+ comes with a powered grilling attachment, which the company says offers “true grilling year-round, minimizing smoke and eliminating flares common in outdoor grills.” There is also an integrated baking stone attachment and a steam cooking attachment. Oddly, neither the steam nor the stone attachments ship with the SmartOven+, but must be requested after purchase and are shipped out to the customer at no additional cost.

In addition to different types of cooking, the SmartOven+ also has connected features such as remote control via KitchenAid’s mobile app, as well as Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa integration for voice control. Through a Nest integration, you can also be alerted if you accidentally leave the oven on.

All of this versatility in the SmartOven+ ain’t cheap. The 30-inch single configuration will set you back $3,199 and the 30-inch double is $4,799. (You can get a “regular” KitchenAid single oven for $1,700 and a double for $2,700.)

When the SmartOven+ was announced at CES earlier this year, we were intrigued by the device’s modular cooking capabilities. The steam function was of particular interest to Spoon Founder, Mike Wolf, who wrote, “While I’m not sure I’m ready for a baking stone, after trying out a countertop steam oven, I’m sold on that method as a superior way to prepare many types of food. With this new KitchenAid oven, I can add it in.”

The KitchenAid stand mixers became a countertop (and wedding registry) staple because of its versatility. It’s safe to bet that KitchenAid won’t stop at these three attachments and like its mixer, more functionality will be on the way. Depending on how many attachments the company makes, $3,199 might wind up being a bargain.

Chop and Awe: Whirlpool Debuts A Bunch of Smart Kitchen Products at CES 2019

Big companies will sometimes debut one intriguing product at CES and call it a day. But this year, Whirlpool decided to drop about a half dozen.

In what amounted to essentially a shock and awe campaign of smart-kitchen product debuts, the company announced a whole bunch of products that piqued my interest. We’ll be stopping by the Whirlpool booth when the show floor opens tomorrow to capture some of these items on video. For now, here’s an overview of what the company is unveiling in Las Vegas:

Connected Hub Wall Oven With Augmented Reality

This oven kind of blew my mind when Whirlpool told me about it, primarily because of the transparent front display: besides allowing a user to see inside the oven, it also acts as a video screen for displaying pretty much everything from video-cooking instructions to shopping lists to family calendars.

As Spoon readers know, I’ve felt for a long time now that the kitchen screen is a big opportunity, one that only a handful of companies (cough Amazon, cough Samsung) have tried to seize. With this new oven, Whirlpool is staking territory for this largely unclaimed terrain with an integrated screen that can power all sorts of video-centric applications in the kitchen.

KitchenAid Smart Oven+

This one was intriguing to me because not only does it offer smart-oven capabilities such as voice control and an LCD screen for recipe selection, it’s also modular and allows the user to add steam, grill or baking stone attachments. While I’m not sure I’m ready for a baking stone, after trying out a countertop steam oven, I’m sold on that method as a superior way to prepare many types of food. With this new KitchenAid oven, I can add it in.

The Smart Countertop Oven from WLabs

This oven is basically Whirlpool’s answer to the June smart oven. The countertop device has food identification capability, which means it can recognize a variety of food types and set cooking temperature and time accordingly. It also has a scan-to-cook feature and voice-control integration with Alexa. The smart countertop oven is from Whirpool’s incubation unit, W Labs, which essentially means it’s a limited availability product that is not – as of yet at least – part of the permanent Whirlpool lineup. The product will be available soon for preorders for $799 at the WLabs website.

KitchenAid Combination Cook Processor

While not as tech-forward as the other products, the KitchenAid Cook Processor may just be the most useful product debuted by Whirlpool/KitchenAid at CES this year. This multifunction cooking appliance can cut, stir, steam, and, just like a Thermomix, has an internal scale that enables step-by-step recipe guidance. The device has Wi-Fi on board, allowing it to connect to the Internet to download recipes and software updates.

I’ve long been waiting for one of the big appliance makers to offer up a Thermomix-like offering for the U.S. market, and it looks like KitchenAid finally has done just that.

KitchenAid Smart Display

I mentioned above my belief that kitchen screen is going to be a big deal, and so it makes sense that KitchenAid would offer up their own smart display with Google Assistant. Google’s been on a tear lately, hoovering up integration partners, and with KitchenAid, they’ve gotten a blue-chip partner into which they can plug their voice assistant and smart home platform. The KitchenAid Smart Display will work with Yummly, including a new Pro version of Whirlpool’s cooking guidance app that features celebrity chefs like Richard Blais.

Believe it or not, this isn’t even all of the announcements Whirlpool/KitchenAid will be making this week. We’ll be sure to post updates once we’ve visited the Whirlpool booth here at CES.

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.

Whirlpool’s Brett Dibkey on How to Be Smart in the Smart Kitchen

Whirlpool made waves last year when it acquired Yummly, a popular recipe site, in order to boost their foothold in the smart kitchen space. With fingers in the grocery fulfillment and guided cooking pies, as well as a patent for an induction-powered sous vide cooking appliance, appliance giant Whirlpool is working hard to establish itself as a leader in the future kitchen space.

Next month, Brett Dibkey, Whirlpool’s Vice President of Brand Marketing, IoT, and Business Units, will return to the Smart Kitchen Summit (SKS) stage to talk about this very topic. We got to ask him a few questions in advance — on Yummly, IoT, and millennials — to get the smart kitchen juices flowing.

See the full Q&A below.

The Spoon: What role you do see Whirlpool and other connected appliance makers playing in the smart kitchen revolution?
Bretty Dibkey: Honestly, I don’t see Whirlpool’s role in the smart kitchen revolution any differently than our role in the (analog) kitchen revolution of the early 20th century. Like it was then, our focus today is on building and delivering products that create real meaningful value for consumers. While our definition of “products” may be changing, we remain obsessed with the principle of purposeful innovation. The smart kitchen will only be “smart” if the technology we deliver is purposeful and removes real friction from the lives of consumers. This is what we’re laser-focused on.

Last Whirlpool acquired smart recipe platform Yummly. How do you see this partnership furthering Whirlpool’s presence in the connected kitchen?
Whirlpool Corporation has unparalleled presence in the kitchen through our brands and product portfolio. Our brands, including Whirlpool, Maytag, KitchenAid, and JennAir, give us reach across major appliances, countertop appliances, cookware, and cutlery.

What we were missing prior to the Yummly acquisition was a digital platform to help tie the “physical” experiences of our products together. Yummly gives us a strong platform on which to build a digital presence that helps consumers address a variety of kitchen pain points — answering the “what’s for dinner” question, providing step-by-step guidance for new recipes, sending instructions to cooking appliances to ensure perfect results, and even replenishing out-of-stock ingredients.

With the rise in food delivery, some worry that kitchens will eventually become obsolete. Do you think that the kitchen will continue to be the heart of the home?
Certainly cooking habits and practices are changing, but I think the kitchen is far from becoming obsolete. Millennials, in particular, are concerned about nutrition and promoting healthy food attitudes with their children. I think because of this, the average millennial is cooking at home almost 5 times per week and nearly 90% say it’s something they’d like to get better at.

Our job at Whirlpool is to make products — both physical and digital — that enable and inspire all consumers to cook at home more. While cooking will always play a role in fulfilling a basic human need, I believe it is also increasingly becoming an outlet for creativity and passion. For this reason, I think the kitchen’s place as heart of the home will endure for many years.

—
Thanks, Brett! If you want to see him speak more about rethinking business models in the era of food tech, snag your tickets to the Smart Kitchen Summit on October 8-9th in Seattle.

Will BSH’s PAI Usher In The Era of the Kitchen Projection Interface?

The idea of using your countertop as a touchscreen interface has been something big tech and kitchen appliance makers have been playing around with for much of the past decade.

First there was Whirlpool’s attempt in 2014:

Whirlpool® Interactive Cooktop at CES 2014

IKEA served up the idea for its Kitchen 2025 concept a year later:

IKEA Concept Kitchen 2025

And Bosch has been showing off things like this coffee robot with a projection interface for a few years:

Spotted at #ces2017: coffee robot at the @Bosch booth.

A post shared by Michael Wolf (@michaelawolf) on

And this year it looks like the large German appliance conglomerate, BSH Appliances (the company behind the Bosch, Thermador and Gaggenau appliance brands, to name a few), is showing off what looks to be a more evolved version of the projection interface in PAI at IFA in Berlin.

PAI, which stands for ‘Projection and Interaction’, is a system that projects an image onto a flat surface to create a virtual interactive interface for the kitchen.  While the projector incorporates a camera, a speaker, a microphone, two USB ports, WiFi and Bluetooth antennas, the key technology here is a 3D sensor that detects minute movements of fingers on the surface.

According to project manager Markus Helminger, the PAI 3D sensor powers a projection interface that can “be perfectly operated even with dirty fingers and occupies no space on the work surface, so that consumers have enough space for cooking or baking.”

While other efforts at projection interfaces at trade shows have largely been to show off the concept with no concrete plans for commercialization, this time things look different with PAI. According to a German language post about PAI by on the BSH Kitchen Stories blog, they plan on rolling out PAI in February 2019 in China. While there’s no indication as to when we might see the technology in Europe or the US, my guess is we could see the technology in product rolled out in Europe as early as next year.

You can see a demo of the PAI interface (in German) below courtesy of Computer Bild TV:

Bosch PAI: Projektor für die Küche vorgestellt!

The story behind PAI is an interesting one. The technology spun out of development work Bosch was doing in ventilation. According a company spokesperson, researchers were looking to improve the user experience for cooks and “the developers wanted to create an assistance function for an extractor hood that would make it possible to project images from the hood and display recipes on the work surface. In an extensive UX study carried out by Bosch, this idea went down so well that the project was actually carried out.”

According to the company, consumer testers almost universally said they use tablet or smartphone when cooking or baking, but they didn’t like giving up the counter space to these devices required and, perhaps more importantly, they worried touching these devices with dirty hands. As the company worked on the concept more, they eventually decided to not incorporate it into a vent hood but to make the PAI a standalone projection system that allowed the consumer to place it where they desired on the counter.

The company has also integrated the PAI with its Kitchen Stories guided cooking system and its Home Connect platform, which opens up some intriguing possibilities. It’s not hard to envision a Kitchen Stories guided cook experience that shows step-by-step instructions projected onto the kitchen counter. With Home Connect, PAI could also project virtual start buttons, timers and other ways for the consumer to interact with their appliances.

With BSH Appliances -- one of the world’s biggest appliance companies -- taking projection interfaces seriously, my guess is we’ll likely see other big appliance brands push forward with their own projection interface commercialization efforts in the coming year and we’ll most likely see some of these teased at CES in Las Vegas next January.

Whirlpool Patents Induction-Powered Sous Vide Cooking Appliance

Whirlpool has been awarded a patent for a new sous vide appliance that utilizes an induction system to both heat and power a cooking vessel with an internal water circulator. The system described in the patent also has Wi-Fi and a microcontroller to control the cook.

While the description of the system is very detailed (you can read it in all its glory here), below is a brief summary of how it works:

The system includes an induction heating surface that both heats water as well as powers an internal circulator within the vessel. The larger vessel, which sits atop the induction surface, has an internal vessel within it. There is a gap in between the two vessels where water circulates and is heated. The heating system is powered by a magnetic coupling  of two plates.  The internal stirring plate rotates and has heated blades on it, which help circulate and heat the water.

You can see a diagram of the blade-system below:

An internal plate with blades circulates and heats water within the vessel gap

The whole system, which is controlled through a user interface on the induction hob/surface, has a Wi-Fi or Bluetooth temperature probe that sends water temperature information back to the induction surface. The system can also be controlled via Wi-Fi and an embedded microcontroller.

With this patent, it looks like Whirlpool has created an interesting induction-based sous vide system that is differentiated from the sous vide circulators from the likes of Anova and Nomiku and the water bath systems that started appearing over a dozen years ago.

As with all patents, there’s no guarantee that Whirlpool will actually productize their innovation. The company filed the patent in late 2015 and it doesn’t appear at this point that the company has brought the system to market. Personally, I think an induction cooktop with a turnkey sous vide cooking vessel is an intriguing new product, so I’ll be keeping an eye out to see what the appliance giant does with this patent.

How will sous vide fit into into the kitchen of the future? Come to the Smart Kitchen Summit to find out. 

Electrolux & Innit Partner to Help Consumers Navigate the Cooking Journey

Today at the EuroCucina trade show in Milan, Italy, Electrolux announced a strategic partnership with smart kitchen platform provider Innit in which the two companies will work together to integrate Innit’s software with the Electrolux’s connected appliances to “help consumers throughout the cooking journey.”

The first Electrolux appliance to integrate with the Innit platform will be the camera-enabled steam oven introduced by the Swedish appliance giant last month. Starting in the first quarter of 2019, consumers will be able to use the Innit app to find recipes, plan their meal and send cooking instructions to the Combisteam Pro Smart oven from Electrolux. Over time, the two companies envision that users of Electrolux appliances will be able to use the Innit app as the main app to power the entire cooking process, from meal discovery to shopping to cooking.

For Innit, its partnership with the region’s biggest appliance maker marks a significant entry into a market that requires substantial understanding of country-by-country differences. Unlike the more homogeneous US market, products for the Europe market need to account for differences in consumer cooking preferences across different countries. While some countries tend to embrace surface cooking (induction, etc), others may be more inclined to cook the nightly meal in an oven. By partnering with Electrolux, Innit can tap into the appliance maker’s localization expertise and create an app tailored towards specific user requirements in each locale.

For Electrolux, its partnership with Innit is the first time the company will work with a third party application partner for its connected appliances. The company sees the partnership as a strategic move towards a common software and user experience across appliances. The two companies plan to expand to more cooking devices as well as other appliances such as refrigerators.

One benefit Electrolux sees in tapping into a software-powered cooking experience is the ability to help consumers unlock capabilities that for the most part go unused.

“Our appliances are extremely advanced and often the consumer only uses a small fragment of their capabilities,” Patrick Le Corre, Sr. VP of kitchen products at Electrolux EMEA, told me in a phone interview. “Steam cooking is the best way to cook, but their knowledge of steam cooking is limited. If you bridge the potential of our appliances with an app, we unlock the power for consumers and secure an enjoyable cooking experience.”

The deal comes at an important time as more appliance makers are honing in on strategic partners as the industry continues to transition towards software-enabled cooking. At CES, Whirlpool showed off its Yummly integration while LG announced partnerships with Innit and SideChef, and last month Kenwood launched a new multicooker powered by Drop as part of a longer-team development deal. And now with Electrolux, Innit has locked up Europe’s biggest appliance maker in what looks to be a significant potential long-term partnership.

Guided Cooking Trend Continues Momentum In 2018

Two years ago at the Housewares Show in Chicago, I saw the emergence of a new trend called guided cooking. At the show, companies like Cuciniale, Oliso and Hestan Cue showed off early efforts to combine sensors, software, precision heating and content in an orchestrated experience that guides home cooks through the creation of a meal.

As I said of my effort to make salmon with the Hestan Cue, using a guided cooking system for the first time was something of a revelation:

“…this combination of the pan, burner and app and the guidance system they had built that really led me to see the possibilities around this new category. I am not a great cook by any stretch of the imagination, but I cooked one of the tastiest pieces of salmon I’ve ever had in about 20 minutes. The experience was enabled through technology, but the technology didn’t take me out of the experience of cooking. Further, I can see as I gain more confidence using a system like this, I can choose to “dial down” the guidance needed from the system to the point I am largely doing most of the cooking by myself (though I don’t know if I’d ever get rid of the automated temperature control, mostly because I’m lazy and it gives me instant “chef intuition).”

Fast forward a couple of years and the guided cooking trend continues to gain momentum. A number of companies talked up new guided cooking platforms at CES in January, from big appliance makers like Whirlpool and LG to big tech platform providers like Google and Amazon.

And at the Housewares show in Chicago this week, guided cooking was everywhere. Hestan Cue, now shipping, was on display this week in the Smart Home pavilion. iCuisine, a startup that utilizes a modular sensor to connect to everyday kitchen tools to a guided cooking app, had its own take on step-by-step cooking instruction. Vorwerk’s Thermomix showed off their all-in-one multicooker with built-in guidance and talked about the company’s online recipe platform, the Cookidoo.

Over at the Gourmia booth, the prolific maker of low-cost connected cooking devices showed off a variety of connected devices, including a Thermomix-like multicooker with built-in cooking guidance. The company’s head of product told me the Gourmia multicooker will eventually act as a smart kitchen hub that enables cross-device cooking orchestration with other Gourmia appliances. As I left the booth, celebrity chef Cat Cora was performing a cooking demo in the booth and talking about the concept of smart recipes.

Gourmia’s Thermomix clone (currently only available in Europe)

Chefman, another maker of low-cost connected cooking appliances, showed off its sous vide cooking app with newly integrated guided cooking capabilities at the show, and a company spokesperson told me the company plans to add guided cooking to all of their connected cooking appliances this year.

Meanwhile at SXSW (which annoyingly was at the same time as the Housewares Show this year), Innit announced the release of Google Assistant functionality within the Innit app they first demoed at CES. With Google Assistant, a home cook can navigate the Innit app’s guided cooking features via voice. According to company COO Josh Sigel, the release marks the first third party app which is completely controllable via Google Assistant.

Of course, like any new trend, there will be hits and misses as products roll out. Early reviews of the Tasty One Top have been somewhat subpar, while my experiences with some of the early Amazon video cooking skills have been hobbled by lack of YouTube integration and the early stage of cooking capabilities in their Alexa skill API.

All that said, I think we can expect lots more in the guided cooking space as 2018 unfolds. I saw a slew of products in Chicago under embargo that are slated for later this year that offer new approaches to guided cooking, and there will no doubt more guided cooking products being developed in stealth that should see the light of day at IFA and Smart Kitchen Summit.

Bottom line: what started as a trend a couple years ago is fast becoming a central theme for appliance makers big and small, making 2018 a big big year for guided cooking.