2022.04.06
The kitchen of the future: a robot & a grill?
No one can say for sure what the kitchen of the future will look like today. Maybe it will be similar to today, but the products will be smarter and can do more without the consumer's help. Or maybe we will have a single kitchen robot in the kitchen that does everything and in addition to that we will supplement it with mobile products that can be used both in and outside the kitchen, such as a grill.
This year was the first time Food Tech was a dedicated theme at the CES trade show in Las Vegas and at the conference session The Kitchen 2030: How Food & Cooking Will Change in the Future spoke Michael Wolf, CEO at The Spoon (who reports daily on Food Tech), with Kai Schaeffner, Robin Liss, Dr. Dochul Choi and Khalid Aboujassoum about the kitchen of the future.
Kai Schaeffner (far left in the picture below), Executive at Vorwerk LLC (the German company behind Thermomix), said that cooking has become a stress factor for many people in recent years and that we no longer learn as children what we did in the past. Many people want healthy food but few have the time and energy to learn, which is why Vorwerk has recently focused a lot on guided cooking, to assist and help to minimize effort and stress.
Suvie – a kitchen robot
Suvie Kitchen Robot is a dual-zone cool-to-cook kitchen appliance for cooking proteins, vegetables and some starches. It works by loading your meal and telling Suvie when you want dinner ready. Suvie automatically cools the food and starts cooking when it’s time. It can be scheduled and cool-to-cook works with sous vide, slow cooking, reheating and steaming. The baking and roasting modes require a single push of a button (for safety reasons). Suvie ensures that all parts of the meal are ready at exactly the same time.
The Suvie Starch Cooker is a sibling product that functions as a rice and pasta cooker and syncs with the Suvie for a perfectly timed meal.
Robin Liss (second from left), CEO of Suvie, expressed that people generally have a resistance to adopting new technology in the kitchen and for this reason Suvie invests heavily in education. For example, they send out a physical magazine to their customers to teach them how to best use the product.
”If you don't get training, the product just sits on the shelf and collects dust,” said Robin Liss.
Khalid Aboujassoum (second from right), Founder and CEO of Else Labs, said that they see three dimensions in terms of consumer expectations in the future.
- People are more careful about eating and want more flavor.
2. Convenience – we are busy.
3. People are more aware of their personal well-being.
”Our thesis is autonomous cooking and in five to ten years we will see more personalized cooking experiences where intake of nutritional content, fat etc. will be on a personal level,” said Khalid Aboujassoum.
The end of the kitchen?
Dr. Dochul Choi (center), Senior Vice President at Samsung Electronics Inc, said that Samsung is looking for more opportunities to expand its home appliance segment towards other IoT (Internet of Things) devices.
”Many white goods have a 100-year history and I am concerned about energy and water use, and especially about food waste. In Hong Kong today, there are many people who do not have a kitchen in their apartment. People think they need a bigger refrigerator, but that is wrong, it leads to more waste,” said Dr. Dochul Choi.
Choi also said that food delivery has limitations today, but that in the future it may be that the only thing you have in your kitchen is a product like the Suvie Kitchen Robot because centralized cooking is smarter and produces less food waste than localized cooking.
”If I like music, I can buy a grand piano and play it myself. Or I can buy a nice HiFi system and listen. The same may apply to cooking in the future,” said Dr. Dochul Choi.
Ola Larsson
