The Seattle Food Geek is going to San Francisco (or at least Zooming there).
Today, Scott Heimendinger announced that he’ll be assuming the role of Chief Marketing Officer for Bay area headquartered Anova, the market leader for consumer sous vide hardware.
While we usually don’t do people-moves type posts here at The Spoon, this move is interesting in part because it essentially brings two of the early pioneers in the consumer sous vide market together under one company roof.
Heimendinger, who first wrote about his early effort to create a low-cost immersion circulator on his popular food blog Seattle Food Geek over a decade ago, would go on to commercialize the idea via one of the first standalone sous vide startups in Sansaire. Alongside Nomiku and Anova, Sansaire was part of a generation of early startups to bring sous vide to the masses by moving beyond the water bath and bringing the modernist cuisine cooking technique to consumer price points
In a way, ending up at Anova makes sense for Heimendinger. Ten years after he wrote his influential article on making a DIY low-cost sous vide circulator, Anova is the last of the original three startups still standing. Acquired by Electrolux in 2018, the company has gone on to become the market share leader in consumer sous vide hardware and now is venturing into new precision cooking hardware with a smart combi oven.
And it’s the Anova Precision oven where Heimendinger and Anova first teamed up. As readers of The Spoon know, he was brought on in a consulting capacity to help develop the oven and was at CES this past year doing booth duty.
In the press release announcing the news, Anova CEO Steve Svajian had this to say about the move: “When it was time to start working on the Anova Precision Oven, I knew I wanted Scott’s expertise and insight to be on this project. Our goal was to create a countertop combi oven that would be a game-changing tool for home cooks. Scott played a key role in making that possible.”
One thing I did wonder when I saw the news is what what this meant for Heimendinger’s own product concepts. Earlier this year he’d launched a new kitchen tech company and had just filed patents for his work a couple months ago.
When I asked Heimendinger if he still hopes to build the next great cooking device, he told me that he’s continuing to work on the idea on nights and weekends. My guess is he will at some point and may just do it with Anova’s help.
Or who knows? Maybe at some point he and Svajian spin it out and try to launch the next Anova together.
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