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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Wednesday, March 14, 2018

Coming Soon To A Kitchen Near You: Smart Trends And More At The Chicago Housewares Conference

I’m fresh back from four days at the International Home and Housewares Show in Chicago. Once I got off the plane in the Windy City and had an Italian beef sandwich at Al’s, I was ready to see what almost every possible kitchenware manufacturer is doing, all in one place.

Wandering the acres and acres of show floor, I picked up on several trends—some encouraging ones, some not so much. I was also inspired by two students, surprised by something that’s not usually up my alley, and figured out what I’ll be writing about for many stories to come.

Here are some takeaways:

TRENDS

THE SMART KITCHEN
—After years of ups and downs, the smart kitchen is starting to move forward in a (sorta) unified direction. Don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of false starts and failed companies worth of shakeout ahead, but this trip allowed me to see the bigger picture of where it might go. One of the best examples of this was a discussion with Christoph Milz and Philip Tessier at Hestan Smart Cooking. Hestan will soon be selling a built-in induction range and (likely next year) a gas range that will allow guided cooking when used with their pans. Even more exciting, they plan to offer the guided cooking capability to people who have a Bluetooth-enabled stovetops with other brands they’ve partnered with.

—Tyler Florence of Innit’s claim that “The Recipe Is Dead” seems to have wisely recognized as the idiot clickbait that it was.

—I loved the Thermomix when it was introduced in the United States. Their new Cook-Key attachment gives the existing TM5 model the capability to connect to the cloud and store 5,000 recipes. If you’re really organized, you can tell it what you want to cook for the week and it will give you a comprehensive grocery list broken down by the section of the store.

EYE-ROLLING TRENDS
—Big brands are really getting into making all of the things. Not everybody should be slapping their label on an electric pressure cooker or sous vide machine, but it’s happening. It makes sense from a marketing standpoint, but it cheapens the brand when these new products don’t add anything new to the game.

—To wit, everyone is now making an air fryer.

—Everyone is also trying to make All Things Coffee.

—Sigh and sigh.

THE PRACTICAL KITCHEN
As somebody who’s deep into the practicality of anything that goes into the home kitchen, I was glad to find plenty of new, unconnected products that help keep things moving while we cook and clean. Some highlights:

—Staub is out with glass lids for a few of its Dutch ovens so we can see what’s going on while we cook.

—Polder’s got a little platform built onto one of its drying mats, giving glasses a stable spot to dry off.

—There’s lots of effort being pointed toward people with small kitchens and limited storage space. The forthcoming D3 Studio Line is not from L’Oreal, but a supremely stackable set of pans from All-Clad.

—Similarly, Zwilling has a peculiar-looking ‘Universal Lid’ that can cover everything from a small saucepan to a large skillet.

—As a panelist at IHA’s Inventor’s Corner, I was happy to discover the FluteSpa—a plastic container in the form of a six-pack holder. It allows you to put wine glasses—flutes for now, red and white glasses in prototype—in the dishwasher without chaos erupting.

SOME BUDDING GREATNESS
I met some amazing young designers who, as the winners of IHA’s Student Design Competition (https://www.housewares.org/show/sdc), had their own section on the show floor.

—Following a trip to Nepal where he saw dozens of used plastic water filters discarded on roadsides, Cody Moore came up with a design for a mold to make filters made of clay and sawdust (two easy-to find and biodegradable materials).

—I also met Brandon Rodriguez who’s building the Novus Home Brewing System, a compact machine that uses Keurig-style pods to make a six-pack’s worth of beer. Pico Brew may wish to figure out when he’s graduating and turn him into a Seattleite!

A PLEASANT SURPRISE
I’m a ‘form follows function’ guy, but a couple of things really caught my aesthetic eye at the show.

—Smeg’s unlikely partnership with Dolce & Gabbana makes for some of the coolest-looking appliances I’ve ever seen.

—To a lesser, but still impressive extent, I saw beautiful designs on KitchenAid mixer bowls.

—Finally, I’m not much of a tea drinker, but on the show’s last day, I fell hard for Dafu Ironware’s enamel-coated cast iron kettles. Lovely.

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