Joe Ray

Friday, October 12, 2018

Quick Takes From The 2018 Smart Kitchen Summit

Sunday afternoon, I got off a long-haul flight from Korea to Seattle, and immediately crossed town to where the Smart Kitchen Summit had just kicked into gear. The Summit the nerd prom for the connected kitchen set, full of some of the best minds in cooking along with manufacturers trying to find the right balance between food and tech. Talks and panels have names like “reinventing the recipe,” “food robot evolution,” and, um, “augmented food experiences,” whatever those are.

Not to be outdone, I moderated one panel about the future of restaurants and sat on another about reviewing called, “Is this thing on?”

While wandering the conference, I tried wheat-based ‘chicken’ nuggets—they weren’t bad!—tasted a dragon fruit ‘berry’ that came out of a printer (NRFPT) and was badgered by a robot waiter hawking a tray full of beef jerky. I also learned that many of those who were pioneers of creating food tech word salads have changed surprisingly little in the four years since the conference started.

That said, I could feel things falling a little further into place, and perhaps becoming a little bit better. Here, I thought I’d share a few quick thoughts I had—in italics—and quotes I heard while at the Summit.

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Countertop smart ovens—like June and Brava—are becoming a thing. The June, for example, can recognize which food you put inside of it and suggest its preferred method to cook it, and the Brava has heat zones so you can cook steak in one, mushroom in another, and onions in a third.

Three things strike me when I see these ovens.
-One: they seem to be reinventing sheet-pan meals, and you already own the oven to make those.
-Two: they’re small, so they can’t really replace your home oven if you want to have more than one friend over for dinner.
-Three: they take up a ton of counter space and aren’t really the kind of thing you’re going to store in a cupboard when you’re done.

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THE RECIPE
- “People don’t have to bake to survive” — Stephanie Naegeli, Nestlé
- “You can’t cook without a recipe” — Cliff Sharples, Fexy Media
- “Bacon is a challenge” — Matt Van Horne, June, whose oven now offers 36 ways to make bacon
- I’d argue that it might just be a challenge for their oven and one good method is just fine.

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VOICE CONTROL
- “It’s more complicated to do a recipe with voice than not. It has to be a marriage of voice and screen” — Stacey Higginbotham, Stacey on IoT
- “Voice is great, but not when my daughter’s yelling” — Jason Clarke, Crank Software
- “‘[I love being able to ask Alexa] what’s the ETA on my chicken?’ when I’m in the living room.” — Matt Van Horne, June

Stuff like this last quote constantly leaves me wondering ‘Didn’t your recipe already tell you that? Didn’t you set a timer?’

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THE CONNECTED KITCHEN
Manufacturers and tech companies are starting to understand that if there’s going to be anything like a “Kitchen OS” they need to communicate with each other’s machines (and not just to other products in their own brand.)

- “All the devices will have to connect…but I don’t personally like the idea of robots in the kitchen” — Shelby Bonnie, Pylon AI
- “Is [the applicance] a hub or an end device? If it’s an end device…don’t fool yourself that you want to be a hub…Nobody wants to watch Netflix on their thermostat.” — Jason Clarke, Crank Software
- “We’re past the novelty stage of turning the lights on with the phone” — Christofer von Nagel, BSH Home Appliances
- “Most [new] Whirlpool products will be connected within the next year” — Brett Dibkey, Whirlpool
- “We’re sick of going to the grocery store. We just want to push a button and have food dropped on our doorstep” — Pablos Holman, Intellectual Ventures
- “We were metal benders and now we’re an experience company…The digital experience is defining who we are” — Brett Dibkey, Whirlpool
- “Today you ran a lot. Today we recommend this recipe.” — Stephanie Naegeli, Nestlé
- I’m fine without my Fitbit telling a giant global food corporation that I went for a jog.
- “Connecting a radio and a shaver doesn’t help anyone” — Ben Harris, Drop Kitchen

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ONE LAST ONE, JUST FOR FUN
“We’re German! We engineer the shit out of everything!” — Christofer von Nagel, BSH Home Appliances

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