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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

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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.

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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:

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.

Whirlpool Smart Kitchen Announcements Include Cooking Automation And Yummly 2.0

Whirlpool is kicking off CES with a slew of smart kitchen announcements, including an update to the Yummly personalized recipe app, voice integration with Google Assistant and scan-to-cook guided cooking technology.

Whirlpool made a huge effort at CES 2017 to move further into the smart kitchen space, showing off a suite of connected appliances. Then, in May of last year, the company acquired recipe app startup Yummly and gained an entire community of users and a host of food content.

Whirlpool spent the rest of 2017 working on taking full advantage of the Yummly acquisition and is introducing the results of its work today at CES 2018. Among the brand’s many kitchen-related announcements, Whirlpool is launching Yummly 2.0, a new version of the recipe and cooking resources app that includes image recognition, meal scheduling features and an enhanced guided cooking experience when using Whirlpool connected appliances to cook.

Ingredient Recognition 

The next-gen Yummly app will include built-in image recognition software powered by machine learning to recognize multiple foods in one picture and dole out recipe recommendations based on what foods are shown. With a large database of food images, Yummly will continue to get better at identifying the food that users have on hand, using machine learning to evolve and grow its knowledge base.

In the Whirlpool mobile app, the company is launching the new Scan-to-Cook technology, a feature that allows users to scan a UPC barcode on frozen food packages and an existing set of instructions including temperature and cooking time for that particular food will be sent to the appliance. Scan-to-Cook setting can be customized to individual preferences if a food is preferred more or less cooked than the standard settings.

Guided Cooking Gets Better

For home chefs that have Whirlpool’s connected range or microwave, Yummly is now able to identify recipes that will work with those appliances and send cooking instructions to the device while following an interactive step-by-step tutorial in the app with images and video. While the user is instructed on what to chop, wash and prepare, the participating oven can be heating up and preparing a timer so it’s ready to go when they are. 

Starting in the spring of 2018, users will also be able to control their connected appliances straight through the Yummly app – a good sign that the brand plans to continue to invest in the platform as the center of their smart kitchen strategy in 2018.

Same Day Grocery Ordering 

Many smart appliances offer grocery list integrations, but Whirlpool takes it a step further in the Yummly app. The ingredients are categorized automatically in an attempt to make shopping easier (better than my Amazon Alexa grocery list which is just one giant list of things I may or may not have already bought) but even better – a new integration with Instacart means you can get the ingredients you need, delivered in about an hour.

Scheduling, Voice, Remote Start

The Yummly app lets users schedule their meals out for the week and let them know when it’s time to start cooking based on the scheduled desired eating time. And, like almost every other company at CES, Whirlpool is announcing integration with Google Assistant to be able to control connected appliances through voice command. Details on the integration weren’t provided but with Google pushing back at Amazon’s domination in voice assistants, it’s not surprising that they’re pursuing the kitchen as a space to gain mindshare. Additional features in the app lets families remotely start their appliances from outside the house to warm up the oven and get the kitchen ready for dinner.

For more #smartkitchen news at CES, follow @TheSpoonTech, @SmartKitchenCon and @michaelwolf for updates.

Amazon Brings Cooking Capabilities To Alexa Smart Home Skill API

While over 50% of Echos end up in the kitchen, a lack of cooking-specific commands and categories within the popular voice assistant’s smart home API has meant few people actually prepare food with Alexa today.

But that could soon change.

That’s because today Amazon introduced built-in cooking controls for cooking appliances into the Alexa smart home API. Initially rolling out in microwaves from Whirlpool and others, the new cooking capabilities will let users define time and temperature parameters and will eventually use the Alexa voice interface to walk through cooking a meal.

From the Alexa developer blog:

Customers are increasingly using voice user interfaces (VUIs) as a hands-free way to manage their lives, and hands-free control is especially valuable when cooking. With the built-in cooking device controls in the Smart Home Skill API, you will make it easier for your customers to control your cloud-connected microwave. Instead of pressing multiple buttons to enable advanced microwave features, your customers can now use their voices. For example, a customer can say “Alexa, defrost three pounds of chicken” or “Alexa, microwave for 50 seconds on high.”

Initially, there are four new capability interfaces in the Smart Home Skill API – Alexa.Cooking, Alexa.Cooking.TimeController, Alexa.TimeHoldController, and Alexa.CookingPresetController. You can leverage these interfaces today for microwaves and for appliances that support preset cooking. The interfaces are designed for future extensibility as support for more cooking devices becomes available.

The new Alexa cooking capability understands food categories (for example, Alexa will take a food term from the Echo user – such as “sockeye salmon” – to categorize food in the “Fish” category) and cooking modes.  Appliance makers are able define their different cooking modes that are discoverable within the Alexa app, which means users will be able to access modes such as “defrost” in products such as Whirlpool’s line of connected microwaves. The new cooking capability from Amazon also allows appliance makers to make their presets libraries available through Alexa.

While Whirlpool’s expected to be the first to launch the new Alexa cooking capability for its connected microwaves (no exact date has been given), Amazon also announced Samsung, GE, Kenmore and LG are all working to bring the new Alexa cooking capability to market.

And finally, one last piece of news embedded in the announcement: The company has invested in June, high profile maker of the June connected oven, via the Alexa fund. This means, of course, you can expect the June oven to work with Alexa’s cooking capabilities sometime in 2018.

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Sears Cuts Ties With Whirlpool In Another Effort To Survive

For almost a century, Sears carried staple appliance brands from Whirlpool including Maytag, JennAir and KitchenAid. But amidst the retailer’s struggles to remain profitable in a tough environment, Sears has announced it is cutting ties to Whirlpool and will no longer carry the brand’s appliances.

It appears that the retailer’s decision stemmed from Whirlpool’s attempt to raise margins in an increasingly competitive appliance market environment. In a statement, Sears commented, “Whirlpool has sought to use its dominant position in the marketplace to make demands that would have prohibited us from offering Whirlpool products to our members at a reasonable price.”

The decision is effective immediately and Sears reported that it would sell off the rest of its Whirlpool inventory while immediately pulling subsidiary brands including Maytag and KitchenAid from store floors. Sears will continue to sell its Kenmore brand and other popular appliance brands including GE, Bosch, Samsung and Electrolux.

These recent changes may not be enough to keep Sears from going under and the announcement comes in the last quarter of a rocky year for Sears; the company has been in the process of closing less profitable stores, including all those in Canada and has attempted to reinvigorate its e-commerce efforts through a partnership with Amazon. In a “if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em” mentality, Sears signed a deal with the Seattle based e-commerce giant to sell Kenmore appliances on Amazon.

Sears business dealings with Whirlpool aren’t entirely over though, the company still manufactures the Sears Kenmore line of appliances and will continue to do so according to Sears. Kenmore is attempting to remain competitive in the connected appliance space, launching a new suite of smart kitchen appliances with Amazon Alexa compatibility at the 2017 Smart Kitchen Summit.

Whirlpool, on the other hand, has spent the past several years dipping their toes into the smart kitchen space, first partnering with food platform startup Innit, then announcing voice connectivity inside their devices and after dissolving the Innit partnership, buying Yummly, one of the internet’s biggest food & recipe sites.

SideChef Plans To Be The Engine Behind Sharp’s Smart Kitchen Appliances

SideChef began in 2013 with a mission to make cooking easy and fun and to take the guesswork and heavy reading out of recipes. Over time, the recipe app startup has evolved to think of itself as a platform for the connected kitchen and today announced a partnership with electronics and appliance giant Sharp at the Smart Kitchen Summit in Japan.

SideChef will now be the smart software behind Sharp’s connected appliance lineup, powering the mobile app and recipe content to provide guided cooking tools when using the brand’s products. The first internet-enabled appliance from Sharp that will include SideChef’s intelligence is the Sharp SuperSteam+ Convection Oven, an oven that includes a new way to grill, brown and even roast foods using super heated steam.

This announcement builds out SideChef’s vision of being the de facto smart kitchen platform, giving manufacturers software that can bridge the experience and control of different kitchen devices and engage users to go beyond basic connectivity. The Sharp “powered by SideChef” app will include over 5000 machine ready recipes with built-in control for the integrated appliances. The recipes give users a guided cooking experience, automatically setting timers, playing educational videos or suggesting helpful tips based on the ingredients, time of day, season or location.

SideChef’s CEO and founder Kevin Yu says that the company will also help Sharp build an engaged user community and drive relevant content – which is a core strength of SideChef’s business. But Yu hopes to help manufacturers think differently about their IoT strategies and move past connectivity as the end goal.

“We’re not just here to connect things or teach people how to cook. That’s a great goal, but that’s 1.0. We want to help manufacturers see how they can create real engagement and monetization from these platforms,” commented Yu in an interview with The Spoon.

It’s not a surprise that SideChef is thinking beyond the intelligence inside the app to the user experience and engagement. Yu’s background is in game design and development, so he’s often thinking about the gameification of activities in the kitchen.

“The goal is to get the user engaged and willing to spend more money in micro transactions. This is what we think of as modern monetization for the smart kitchen,” he adds.

Sharp is one of a handful of appliance manufacturers looking at third party companies to connect and serve as the content partner behind their connected appliances. Earlier this year smart kitchen startup Drop announced an integration partnership with GE and later Bosch and Innit, a kitchen platform and data company also explored work with Whirlpool in the past.

“Sharp was looking for ways to combine convenience with perfect cooking results from our next generation of smart connected home appliances,” Jim Sanduski, President of Sharp Home Electronics Company of America said in a prepared statement.  “SideChef already offers an award winning mobile culinary platform so partnering with them to integrate cooking operation and control was an easy decision.”

The company plans to roll out its internet-connected line of products starting with the SuperSteam wall oven along with the Sharp app powered by SideChef in fall 2018.

SideChef and Sharp announced their partnership at the first-ever Smart Kitchen Summit in Japan. To see Kevin Yu and others speak at the 2017 Smart Kitchen Summit in Seattle in October, use code SPOON for 25% off tickets.

The Tasty One Top And The Rise Of Content Powered Cooking

Back in 2008, Techcrunch founder Michael Arrington wrote a manifesto in which he announced plans to build a low-cost tablet computing device.

While the idea of a technology blog beating computing giants like Apple and Microsoft to market with a tablet seemed preposterous at the time, Arrington continued to pursue his crazy dream. Before long a team had been assembled, prototypes built, and eventually the Crunchpad got pretty darn close to becoming a reality before everything fell apart and instead we got something called the JooJoo.

The Crunchpad

The story of the Crunchpad seemed so improbable in part because of the difficulty of Arrington’s day job. When I went to work for one of Techcrunch’s biggest competitors (Gigaom) during this time, it made me even more fascinated with the story since I saw first hand just how hard it is to run a company tracking the fast-moving world of technology. The idea of actually building the technology in addition to writing about it seemed insane.

I also think part of what made the idea of the team behind a tech blog creating a piece of computing equipment so hard for me and others to wrap our minds around is most of us still view people – and companies – through a Richard Scarry lens on the world. In other words, content companies make content, hardware makers make hardware; food companies make food and so on. Sure, there are weird conglomerate mashups like when GE owned NBC, but often these types of weird combos were the result of merger and acquisition sprees in the 80s.

But if there’s anything we’ve learned from watching companies like Amazon or Google, the old rules don’t seem to apply anymore.  These companies have taught us that once you build a competency in one thing – whether e-commerce or transportation – that strength can often be leveraged to build a competency in an adjacent (or often non-adjacent) space.

Amazon started with books, eventually moved into web services, then to hardware, and now they’re on to grocery stores. Google started with search, moved onto mobile, then IoT and now all sorts of crazy ideas whether its VR, healthcare or balloon-based broadband.

And so while I was surprised when I learned last week Buzzfeed had launched its hardware device called the Tasty One Top, I also instantly knew this made sense at some level. We are, after all, living in the “throw the rules out” era of Amazon. And yes, the story of Crunchpad showed us that that occasionally a content company can break the Richard Scarry mold.

People – and companies – don’t live in a Richard Scarry world anymore.

But I also realized what I was witnessing with the Tasty One Top made sense because it was indicative of a trend I’ve been thinking about for some time, an idea that in the future cooking companies need to become content and community companies.  I’d witnessed it with the acquisition of Yummly by Whirlpool, and before that, I saw that ChefSteps had been building a large community around its content which it then leveraged into willing customer base for its cooking device called the Joule.

As I wrote when Whirlpool acquired Yummly, the deal “gives Whirlpool a massive infusion of cooking content and community. As newer companies in the connected kitchen like ChefSteps have shown, having strong recipe content and an associated community can create fertile soil upon which to launch new hardware products. With Yummly, Whirlpool now has a built-in community to tap into as it expands is smart kitchen product lineup in the coming years.”

I realized this is the same principle Buzzfeed was capitalizing on, the idea that they could tap into a large community built around compelling content to find a friendly and willing audience into which to tap.

But I also knew it was more than that. What the Tasty One Top further validated for me was the idea of content-powered cooking, where cooking content becomes more than just a dry recipe on a page or a simple YouTube video which we watch to learn a new skill. The idea of content powered cooking is central to guided cooking, something I first started writing about after I first saw the Hestan Cue. In short, guided cooking is where the cooking content not only acts as a helpful set of instructions for the cook but works with an app and sensor-powered appliance to become the guidance system for the entire cooking experience.

When I talked to Buzzfeed Labs’ Ben Kaufman last week about the One Top, he told me that they wanted to turn their Tasty cooking videos into a utility.  To do so, they went back and did the arduous work of breaking down each video into single steps, time-stamping and logging each, and then building an app that would work with the One Top itself.

The result is a content-powered cooking experience, where what began as quick viral cooking videos ultimately become part of the cooking system and experience itself.

Together, the idea of a large community built around content coupled with a cooking product and associated experience powered by the product makes lots of sense. In many ways it’s indicative of what companies like ChefSteps and Hestan Smart Cooking were already building, only coupled with the world’s largest cooking video site in Tasty.

Kaufman told me last week that this is the only cooking appliance Buzzfeed plans on making, in large part because they built the Tasty One Top as a Swiss army knife type of sorts that can work with nearly any type of recipe. But he also said they had more products ideas in mind in which they can build around the “utility” they’ve created in the Tasty cooking videos and app.

I can hardly wait to see what type of Richard Scarry busting concept they dream up next.

Want to hear about the future of connected cooking? Make sure to not to miss the Smart Kitchen Summit. Just use the discount code SPOON to get 25% off of tickets. 

The Battle For The ‘Kitchen Screen’ Has Just Begun. Here’s The Leading Contenders

Back in the year 2000, the world’s first Internet-connected refrigerator was introduced. Made by LG, the Digital DIOS came with a webcam, an Ethernet port and perhaps most importantly, an LCD touchscreen.

The fridge was one of the first examples of an appliance with a digital screen created specifically for the consumer kitchen, but with a $20 thousand price tag, consumers stayed away.  Today, nearly two decades after the introduction of the world’s first smart fridge, some of the world’s biggest consumer electronics companies are rushing to put screens back into the kitchen again.

Why now? There are a few reasons, but most come back to one simple truth: today’s kitchen is becoming the home’s central gathering place, where people not only come to make meals but also to hang out with friends, pay bills or do homework. In other words, the kitchen has become the modern home’s ‘everything room’, and unlike the family room where a TV or family computer often resides, there’s no defined product today in the kitchen that’s accepted as the go-to screen for family members to share information, manage home systems, keep tabs on things and communicate with one another.

Not that some companies aren’t trying. Here’s a look at the leading contenders:

Refrigerators

With ample flat surface space and usually centered in the middle of the kitchen, you can see why appliance makers see the fridge as the logical place to put a big digital screen. And unlike past efforts where companies would sometimes slap a screen on a fridge with limited functionality, today’s smart fridges have big, high-definition LED touch screens. The Samsung Family Hub’s screen is 21.5″, while LG’s Smart Instaview refrigerator has a huge 29″ screen.

Pros: The main advantage of having the refrigerator act as a family’s community screen is the simple fact the fridge has long served as the home’s de facto analog bulletin board, where families stick shopping lists, family pictures, and calendars. Given what seems a natural progression for the fridge to become the home’s digital command center, it’s no surprise companies have been pursuing the idea of the smart fridge for two decades.

Cons: The biggest challenge fridges face in becoming the main ‘family screen’ is simple: these are devices that are meant to stay in a house for ten years or more. This long lifespan is much different from traditional computing devices, such as mobile phones or tablets, which typically have much faster replacement cycles.  Consumers plopping down $2,500 for the latest fridge are going to want their new device to last for at least a decade, no matter how smart they are when they purchase them.

Smart Assistants

Though the Amazon Echo is only a couple years old, its success has create a whole new category of devices alternatively called ‘smart speakers’ or ‘virtual assistants’ (for our purposes I’ll call them ‘smart assistants’, since not all are speakers and the hardware part beyond the voice assistant is hardly virtual).

And now, the company’s new Echo Show represents an entirely new and exciting direction, with a 7″ touch screen and a new visual skill API that allows third party developers to create skills that leverage visual information such as live stream video from a networked camera or cooking videos from Twitch.

And let’s not forget HelloEgg, a smart assistant with an embedded visual display designed specifically for the kitchen created by a company called RND64 that is expected to ship this year.

Pros: Unlike a heavy appliance like a fridge, smart assistant products can be purchased and installed anywhere on a countertop.  In a way, they’re like a highly optimized tablet, but instead of being a personal computing device they’re created to act as a shared screen. In many ways, the Echo Show is Amazon’s concept of a kitchen computer.

Cons: The touchscreen enabled smart assistant category is just simply too new to know how well it will do with consumers. While the Amazon Echo and other smart assistant products are no doubt becoming popular, it’s just a little soon to see how popular smart assistants with touchscreen will be.

Kitchen Counters And Flat Surfaces

The concept of using the kitchen counter as a Minority Report like interactive touch screen has been bouncing around in future-forward design studios for much of the past decade and, in the past couple years, big kitchen electronics makers like Whirlpool have even toyed with the idea of the countertop touch screen.

IKEA Concept Kitchen 2025

Pros: First and foremost, the idea of your surface as interactive computing screen is just cool. It also offers an extremely flexible and dynamic format to display information and adjust to specific design needs of a kitchen.

Cons: While the idea has been floating around and touted by such big brands like Whirlpool and IKEA, a projected surface touchscreen has yet to roll out in any significant way in a mass market consumer product.

Kitchen-Centric PCs

For a hot moment back in 2008-9, some in the computer industry decided that since people spend lots of time in the kitchen, they should create a line of Kitchen PCs. The idea wasn’t altogether bad since, in some ways, was a predecessor concept to the Echo Show since these products centered around the early touchscreen Windows PCs. But not surprisingly, the late aughts “kitchen PC” movement fizzled out as quickly as it started.

Pros: The idea of a kitchen computer with a touchscreen is not a bad idea, and lots of people actually have their PCs in the kitchen.

Cons: These devices were just Windows PCs with touchscreens that were very much a product of 2009.

The Microwave Oven

The fridge isn’t the only device where a screen could reside. In fact, a decade ago appliance giant Whirlpool toyed around with the concept of putting a TV screen on a microwave oven. While they never rolled the product out to market, others have since toyed around with the idea.

Games Console Microwave

Pros: Some appliances, like the microwave, are nearly as prevalent as refrigerators. Chances are a touchscreen enabled microwave would likely be much less expensive than a smart fridge.

Cons: At this point, I know of no product company that is considering a smart microwave, perhaps because of the complications of sticking a flat screen computing device on the front of a microwave. Not to say someone couldn’t surprise me, but this one seems to be the domain of tinkerers and video-bloggers at this point.

Bottom line, we’re likely to see many more screens in the kitchen in coming years. Unlike the personal computing devices most of us carry in our pockets or backpacks, these “kitchen screen” will be tailored for shared use and act as a modern equivalent of family bulletin board/digital command center for the modern home.

The only open question is exactly which device will it be.

The Smart Kitchen Summit is around the corner. Get your ticket today before early bird ticket pricing before it expires to make sure you are the the one and only event focused on the future of food, cooking and the kitchen. 

Whirlpool’s Dibkey: “We Think The Kitchen Is Headed For a Transformation”

Earlier this month, Whirlpool announced their intention to acquire Yummly.  It’s a fascinating deal to me in part because the idea of the country’s largest home appliance maker buying one of the Internet’s most popular recipe communities has so many potential strategic possibilities.

I wrote some of my thoughts about the deal here, but I also reached out to Brett Dibkey, the VP and GM of Integrated Business Units at Whirlpool to shed some further light on the deal and the company’s motivations. While Dibkey validated some of my early assumptions (Content integration with hardware is key for the smart kitchen) and told me where I missed the mark (the Orange Chef IP was not a motivation for the deal), the biggest takeaway from my Q&A with Dibkey was this one statement:

“We think the kitchen is headed for a transformation”

 

It’s a big statement, one which confirms much of my broader theory about the kitchen entering a new stage where new technologies such IoT, AI and precision heating methods combine with sweeping demographic and cultural shifts to set up a period of innovation and reinvention. Of course, it’s one thing for me to write it. It’s another for the guy who heads up Whirlpool’s appliance business to say it.

The good news is you’ll be able to see Dibkey speak about this change at the Smart Kitchen Summit in October where I’ll get to ask him on stage about this and other changes coming to the kitchen.

Here’s our interview:

In the press release, you described Yummly as a platform for you to build your ‘digital product offering’. Can you elaborate on what you mean by digital product offering?

Dibkey: We envision a number of digital products emerging in the kitchen that will help consumers remove steps and generally make their experience simpler and more enjoyable. Obviously, Yummly already provides an outstanding personalized recipe discovery experience – but we think that the convergence of digital and physical products can offer even more. While we’re not ready to talk specifics yet, we think the kitchen is headed for a transformation. Further, we believe that pairing Yummly with Whirlpool Corporation’s broad portfolio of brands (including Whirlpool, KitchenAid, Jenn-Air, and Maytag) will help fuel this transformation.

When Yummly acquired Orange Chef, at the time Orange Chef was working on a kitchen OS type ‘platform’ for appliance companies to build around. Is this IP part of the rationale for acquiring Yummly and do you plan to use what they started here for your products?

Dibkey: The Orange Chef IP was not part of the rationale for buying Yummly. Our interest in Yummly centered mainly around three things – their industry-leading meal discovery experience, the quality of their team, and the relationship they have with millions of engaged users.

One obvious synergy is taking the cooking automation features Whirlpool unveiled at CES this year and connecting to Yummly’s large database of recipes. Is this in the plans?

Dibkey: Unfortunately, we don’t comment on our future development pipeline. Stay tuned!

I have said that appliance companies need to become content company. As hardware becomes connected, it will begin to automatically tap into content like that of Yummly’s to help people learn to cook, discover food and take over manual tasks. Is this vision of becoming more of content company part of the reason for the acquisition?

Dibkey: Connecting great content to great physical products to deliver great results for consumers is undoubtedly going to be central to unlocking the promise of the “smart kitchen”. Yummly certainly helps us establish a key content presence that we previously didn’t have.

With Yummly, Whirlpool also gets a community and a social platform. How can Whirlpool tap into the community and social platform aspect of Yummly in a way that grows the community yet also provides return on investment?

Dibkey: Above all else, we are going to empower the Yummly team and give them resources to continue providing content and features that inspire and engage their community of users. In our view, if we can do this successfully, a number of value creation opportunities will emerge. But for now, our primary focus will be on nurturing the Yummly community through continuing to provide engaging personalized content.