This week we are joined by Akshita Iyer, CEO and co-founder of Ome, a smart kitchen startup that’s revolutionizing home safety with its second-generation smart stove knob. Originally launched under the name Inirv, the company’s journey began with a simple idea born from a personal experience—retrofitting stoves to prevent kitchen fires and help those aging in place. From a 3D-printed prototype in 2016 to delivering their first product through Kickstarter, Iyer shares the highs and challenges of bringing a hardware product to life, including turning down a Shark Tank deal and navigating complex safety standards.

Here's what we discuss in this week's podcast:

• Iyer shares how her mother’s experience with Parkinson’s and a kitchen fire inspired her to start the company.
• The challenges of developing the product, from idea to fully functional smart knob.
• Iyer's Shark Tank experience, including an offer from Robert Herjavec that they chose to decline.
• How Ome Smart Knob prevents fires by automatically shutting off burners, with a focus on helping older adults and those with cognitive decline.
• The UL 858 safety certification and the company’s role in updating industry standards.
• How insurance companies may someday incentivize the adoption of smart safety devices.
• How Ome is working with senior living communities to gather data on reducing cooking-related risks.

You can find out more at Ome Kitchen (www.omekitchen.com).

Join The Spoon this week for a live conversation with two scientists from NotCo on how they are using AI to create new flavors and fragrances.

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Ali Bouzari, a culinary scientist and co-founder of Pilot R&D, joins the podcast to discuss the intersection of food and technology. Bouzari shares his insights on the potential and limitations of AI and robotics in the culinary world, emphasizing the importance of approaching these tools with a critical eye. He also highlights the significant impact of climate change on the food industry, specifically citing the challenges facing chocolate production.

Bouzari discusses his work at Pilot R&D, where his team assists food entrepreneurs in developing and scaling up new products. He describes their process, which includes ingredient sourcing, extensive trials, and sensory evaluations like the "smellathon." The episode concludes with Bouzari's reflections on the evolving food landscape, emphasizing the need for adaptability and a sense of culinary adventure in the face of global challenges

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Today's conversation is with Sam Rose, who has spent her entire career unraveling the complexities of bringing consumer products—often kitchen-related—to life.

I first met Sam about eight years ago, introduced through our mutual friend, Scott Heimendinger, who was collaborating with Sam on developing a next-generation coffee grinder.

But this wasn’t just any coffee grinder. It was a cutting-edge, tech-forward device that could sense the freshness of the beans, use burr grinders to achieve perfect consistency, and more. In other words, it was exactly the kind of innovative kitchen gadget that intrigued me, especially as someone who organized the Smart Kitchen Summit.

However, Sam’s journey didn’t begin with coffee grinders. Her first product was much simpler—at least from a technology standpoint—and was inspired by a personal frustration. Disgusted with a cheap silicone spatula, Sam thought, "Why don’t I just make my own?"

And that’s exactly what she did. Throughout her entrepreneurial journey, Sam has not only mastered the art of creating and selling her own consumer products to hundreds of thousands of customers but has also developed a comprehensive set of business processes and technologies to help others do the same. To top it off, she’s now investing in companies she believes she can help succeed—focusing on physical consumer products, a category that many investors shy away from.

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Lab-grown or cultivated meat companies have struggled lately as they try to figure out how to do something that's never been done before: grow meat in large quantities in big metal vats known as bioreactors.

Part of the challenge is figuring out how to get the meat cells to grow. The technology to do this has been borrowed from the world of pharma, an industry where you can charge thousands of dollars for drugs.

Deniz Kent thinks he has the answer. His company, Prolific Machines, is replacing these expensive growth medium with the cheapest source of energy in the world: light.

Link: Prolific Machines Website

Make sure to subscribe to our weekly Food Tech News Show podcast where we talk about some of the top stories of the week in the world of food tech.

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This week's episode features a conversation with Paul Shapiro, who went from being a lobbyist who advocated for better animal treatment to building a future food company that leverages technology to reduce our reliance on animal agriculture.

Links:

Paul's website: https://www.paul-shapiro.com/

Paul's company: The Better Meat Co.

Paul's book: Clean Meat, on Amazon.

Also, make sure to subscribe to our weekly Food Tech News Show podcast where we talk about some of the top stories of the week in the world of food tech.

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The episode's guest is Robby Earl, president of Virtual Dining Concepts (the company behind Beastburger). Robby is also president of Linked Eats, a new technology company that makes software for virtual restaurant brand operators.

I caught up with Robbie last week to talk about his new company and its technology and to get an update on what is going on in the virtual restaurant space, an industry that has seen some challenges in recent years. We also talk about the reshuffling of the VDC brand portfolio and get an update on the lawsuit between VDC and BeastBurger.

Enjoy the conversation!

Remember to subscribe to our new show, The Food Tech News Show. Our latest guest is Molly Wood, longtime podcaster and host of Everbody in The Pool.

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This interview is with Rajat Bhageria, an investor and technology founder who debuted his food robot after working stealthily for five years.

Bhageria, a master’s graduate of Penn’s Robotics and Machine Learning Lab, started his first company in high school, a social network for young writers. During college and grad school, he founded Third Eye, a company using computer vision to assist the visually impaired.

I got to know Rajat in 2019 when he spoke at our food robotics conference called ArticulaTE. At the time, he was just getting started exploring the idea of food robotics while also running his venture capital firm Prototype Capital.

He took this knowledge and what he learned as an investor and started Chef, a company that makes a food robot that assembles cooked and ready-to-eat food in high-volume environments. This focus, says Bhageria, is much different from the bulk of robots in the market, most of which focus primarily on prep and cooking in restaurants and food service.

In this conversation, we talk about:

• Why it's important to have great data when building vertical-specific robot like Chef
• Why Rajat felt that restaurants is the wrong part of the value chain to start building food robot
• How early founders should focus on understanding the pain points of their future clients before building their product
• Why Rajat believes that home food robots will never be a big market
• Where he sees this space going over the next decade
• and much more!

If you'd like to explore how AI and automation will change food, you won't want to miss our upcoming Food AI Summit on September 25th. Visit the website and use the coupon code PODCAST to get 15% off tickets.

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The Spoon is launching a dedicated Food Tech News Show podcast. which you can find here on Overcast, on Pandora (and here on our podcast host) and Apple Podcasts. \And, of course, you can listen to this episode on The Spoon feed.

In the future, we will focus on interviews and deep dives here on The Spoon Podcast, so make sure to subscribe to FTNS for your weekly shot of food tech news.

On this episode, Michael Wolf and Carlos Rodela welcome Peter Bodenheimer, a longtime food tech investor and operator, to discuss the current state of food and ag tech funding. In this episode, they delve into:

• The decline in agrifoodtech investments in the first half of 2024, with startups raising $7 billion across 427 deals, a significant drop from H1 2023.
• Upside Foods’ recent layoffs and industry challenges due to legislative bans and decreased venture capital funding.
• SharkNinja’s latest innovation, the Ninja SLUSHi™ Professional Frozen Drink Maker, which brings commercial-grade slushies to home kitchens.
• Chef Robotics emerging from stealth mode to showcase its new robot and announce early customer partnerships.
• Thimus’ groundbreaking technology, the T-Box, which reads brainwaves to assess consumer reactions to food products.

Tune in to The Spoon's new dedicated weekly food tech news show!

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For most Americans, the Kraft and Heinz brands have been ever-present in our cupboards and fridges for our entire lives. Products like Oscar Meyer hot dogs, Kraft cheese, Velveeta, and Jello. Household names all.

The company resulted from the 2015 merger between Kraft Foods and Heinz. Now the third biggest food brand in North America, we thought it would be interesting to hear how they think about innovation and reinventing their product lineup.

To do that, we sit down with Kraft Heinz's President of R&D for North America, Robert Scott.

As a part of this conversation, we talk with Robert about:

• The company's partnership with NotCo and how they are using the Guiseppe AI to develop new plant-based products.
• How he sees AI becoming interwoven into the company's product development cycles
• Why they created a Freestyle-like machine for custom condiments called the Heinz ReMix
• The idea behind the 360Crisp and innovating our food products and how they cook in our kitchens
• How Robert would advise aspiring food scientist to pursue a career path in food research and development
• And much more!

At the Food AI Summit in September in Berkeley, we will explore how big CPGs can interweave AI into their product development and discuss lessons from the front lines. You can learn more about the Food AI Summit at our website, and make sure to use the coupon code PODCAST for 15% off tickets.

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This episode is the audio from the very first session at SKS 2024, Lessons From the First Wave (And How to Prepare for The Next One).

The session included Chris Young (Combustion, ChefSteps, Modernist Cuisine), Scott Heimendinger (Sansaire, Modernist Cuisine and Cuisonic), and Kai Schaffner (Thermomix). The session was moderated by The Spoon's Michael Wolf.

It was a lively conversation about how we are seeing patterns of behavior reminiscent of the last wave, as well as what each of the speakers is excited about for the future.

We'll be talking about some of these same topics at our next event, the Food AI Summit. Use discount code PODCAST for 15% off tickets. 

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SKS 2024 is in the books, so Carlos Rodela and Mike sit down and talk about the craziness of the past week, some of the products they checked out at the show, and some of the talks by our great lineup of speakers.

If you'd like to see a video version of this conversation with interspered photos from SKS, check it out on the Spoon later this week.

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