The Vergecast - The smart kitchen is a great idea — and a strange reality

Episode Date: February 25, 2024

Over the next two Sundays on The Vergecast, The Verge’s Jennifer Pattison-Tuohy and David Pierce dig into the dream smart kitchen, the less-than-dreamy reality of the situation, and what it might take to make cooking, cleaning, meal-prepping, and eating more efficient and more fun. On this episode, Jen takes us on a tour of her own smart(ish) kitchen, and explains why the kitchen often feels left behind in the overall smart home race. Then, Jen and David are joined by Ben Harris, the CEO of Fresco; and Nick Holzherr, the co-founder of Samsung Food. They tell us about the opportunities and challenges in reinventing the way we cook and eat, and explain why the AI revolution might usher in huge change. Further reading: This smart oven solved my work-from-home lunchtime conundrum 2023 in the smart home: Matter’s broken promises How the smart home is finally getting out of your phone and into your home Appliance makers are teaming up to reduce your electricity usage — and save you cash This smart mixer did not make me a better baker Can Samsung Food usher in a new era for the smart kitchen? Email us at [e-mail] or call us at 866-VERGE11, we love hearing from you. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Support for the show comes from Retool. Too many companies run critical operations on duct taped spreadsheets, Slack workflows, and whatever else they could cobble together. Not because they want to, but because building internal tools means weeks of waiting on someone else's backlog. That's where Retool comes in. Build custom internal tools just by describing what you need. Prompts something like,

Build me a revenue dashboard on our Salesforce data. And Retool actually builds it on your company's data, in your cloud with enterprise security built in. Go to retool.com slash vergecast. We all need to retool how we build software. Welcome to the Vergecast, the flagship podcast of automated pancake flippers. I'm your friend David Pierce, and this is the first episode in our two episode mini-series all about the smart home.

And actually, we're even more focused than the smart home. We're just talking smart kitchens. So for the next two Sundays, we're going to get deep in the weeds and in our feelings about smart kitchens. And Jen Patterson-Tooey is the only person I could imagine doing this with. Jen, thank you for being here. Thank you, David. I'm so excited about this. I am a smart kitchen fanatic, a frustrated smart kitchen fanatic. So I'm really excited to dive into this. The frustrated part is kind of why we both really wanted to do it. Talking about the smart home, like our only rule coming into this series was we can't make a series about matter. That was the

only thing I believed in my soul. I was like, come on, David. matter? It's obvious. It's like, no. But don't worry, listener, we will talk about matter. We are overdue for our quarterly is matter ever going to actually fix everything conversation. So we'll do that at some point. But you've been covering the smart kitchen kind of as a concept for a long time. And you were just taking notes, getting ready for this. And you were like, here's some stuff I wrote 10 years ago about why the smart kitchen was going to be great. And I was struck reading it by how little has changed, but also how sort of clear the vision is for what we want this thing to be. So I guess like just to sort of set the scene for what we're going to do in the next couple of episodes here.

Like when you think about what a smart kitchen could be, what is sort of the beautiful, perfect vision that you think of in your head? So I just want my smart kitchen to help me cook food. I mean, it's a simple request. The kitchen is a complicated, expensive space, you know, food waste, food management, cooking, lots of males. I have two kids and a husband and dogs that love leftovers. So, you know, there's a lot going on in the kitchen. And it feels like it's such a ripe space for technology to just be like, okay, here, we're going to help you. So the ideal smart kitchen for me is one that knows what food I have can tell me what to cook.

so I don't have to spend 20 minutes standing in front of the pantry or can most importantly alert me when I'm at the store. Okay, you're planning to cook chili tonight, but you don't have kidney beans. Don't forget to buy them. You know, there's so, but there's so many parts and pieces to the kitchen. There's the pantry. There's the cooking. There's the fridge. Your stove, your microwaves, your thermomics, your blend. I mean, there's so many parts and pieces. And then the dishwasher, the clean up. So I just, I feel like there's such a huge potential in this space for technology to make it easier, but also better, because the default is, oh, order pizza or, uh, door dash. Whereas, you know, that shouldn't be my default, but often on a busy night,

I look at my fridge and I'm like, ah, no, but really, if the fridge could say to me, okay, no, no, no, don't call dominoes. Here, don't forget, you've got kidney beans, you've got mince. Let's whip up a curry or a chili. But then the one other thing that really is a struggle here is I want everything in my kitchen to work together. And this is where the smart home in general has had problems. And the kitchen in particular, even more problems because there's so many legacy manufacturers in this space. And then you have these sort of start-ups that have come in with like, oh, look, we have this great device for you. But it doesn't work with anything else. And it's just a single device. Whereas the kitchen is a big space with lots of technology already in it.

So my ultimate smart kitchen is one where everything communicates with everything else. My pantry talks to my fridge. My fridge talks to my oven. It sounds extreme. Why do I need my fridge to talk to my oven? But ultimately, it should be a simple process and make my life easier. I think that's right. The make my life easier thing is what I've really come around to too.

I was making dinner last night thinking about, okay, what parts of this would I like to automate a way? And the part where I'm like cutting carrots is like, whatever. I don't really mind cutting carrots and if you, they make, like, things that make cutting easier, right? But the thing where I have to remember when to preheat the oven and always forget to do it for too long, so I'm doing it too late and then I'm standing around waiting for the oven to preheat. Like, I would just like it if the kind of balancing act that is being in the kitchen all the time were just a little better. That it was like, oh, he started preheating the oven. I'm going to start also preheating the air fryer because I know what David's about to cook and it's going to go in there in 10 minutes.

I made air fryer broccoli last night, by the way, for the first time. Fantastic. Easiest thing I've ever made and probably the tastiest broccoli I've ever cooked. So that was cool and upsetting all at the same time. But it just feels like there's so many of these little tiny decisions you make in the kitchen all of the time. And I feel like when we talk about the smart kitchen, we talk about, I always think about the scene in beauty and the beast where the dishes are making dinner. Like that's a version of the smart home that people talk about that I actually don't really want, right? where you just kind of sit at the table and your kitchen cooks dinner for you.

I mean, I would like that. But I feel like that is perhaps pine the sky. We may be a ways away from that. Yeah, that's like a pipe dream at best, I think. But the idea that I could just sort of do the things that are interesting and useful and valuable and kind of my appliances know what I need from them in that process, that feels like it should be attainable. And I feel like as we talk about smart home stuff in general, that is like the level we have to get to that with so many things we're just not quite at yet. Yeah, I mean, because ultimately you could see, you know, one of the problems with cooking is not, nothing ever comes out at the same time.

This is where DoorDash is great because everything's ready at once. But, you know, you've made mashed potato, but the sausages are still an hour later and then you're going to have cold mashed potatoes or you have to stick them in the microwave. And it's like a juggling act. And it feels like technology could really help bring everything, you know, a great streamline. timeline and you know you preheat the oven the overhead fan should come on automatically i mean there's just so many small parts that it feels like could all come together to just make the process easier and also make us better chefs yeah like the air fry for example is obviously a huge revolution in the kitchen and though it's basically a convection oven but you know but a small one it's so fast that's another story

but yeah technology can make us better chefs better cooks do better in the kitchen that's where we're at now. Perhaps eventually we'll have the kitchen that actually can cook for us one day, beyond the microwave, which already does a pretty good job of that for you. True. Yeah. So you want the beauty in the beast kitchen? I mean, I kind of do too.

Like I guess I'm sort of lying to myself. It would be great to have every once in a while. Well, all the robot that you just say, go cook my dinner for me and it goes into the kitchen and gets everything for you. It would be kind of nice. Yeah, I mean, you know, the Rosie, the robot. dream. But yeah, ultimately though, cooking is fun, right? A lot of people enjoy cooking. I am a huge home chef. I have a, you know, for my last large birthday, rather than, you know, get the sports car.

My midlife crisis was a brand new kitchen. I love that. I know. And I wanted to make it smart. I was like, I mean, I'm a smart home reviewer. I shouldn't have a smart kitchen. And it was surprisingly hard. Yeah. So actually, one of the things I was going to ask you at the beginning is like, walk me through your setup. Because I think one of the things you and I talk a lot about is how these things are getting sort of incrementally better over time. And I think lights are sort of a fun example, right? Like 10 years ago, it was like, oh, you can turn on your lights.

And now you can do some sort of interesting, sophisticated stuff with the lighting in your house. I think it's still relatively low stakes in the scheme of things, like when lights come on. But the idea that, like, I can sync up my lights to my television so that what I'm watching affects the lighting in the room. Like, that's objectively, like, cool and pretend sort of bigger or more interesting things over time. It feels to me like the smart kitchen is still sort of a collection of individually smart things, but nothing bigger than that. But I'm curious, like, you got to go through this actual

process as a person who does this for a living. Like, paint us a picture of Jen's smart kitchen. Yeah, so it's still very much individually smart gadgets. And that's, you know, that's kind of been the way the kitchen has been. And I've said this before, but the kitchen is already the most technologically advanced space in our home. So we've already got, you know, a robot that washes our dishes. We've got, you know, a box that keeps our food fresh. We've got an oven that can do a lot of really cool things. But one of the problems I come across in the kitchen, and this is part of what I'm going to be experimenting over this next couple of episodes, is that smart kitchen gadgets and just regular kitchen gadgets are really complicated. They have so many functions, like a microwave,

can do some amazing things, but most people just hit that extra 30 second button and come out with hot coffee or popcorn. We don't take advantage of the technology we already have in the kitchen. And this is where apps and AI and the smart kitchen could be so much more useful, like actually helping us use our appliances better. It is a lot easier to use my smart oven, for example, the features on it. it's easier to program with an app than it is to use the tiny little screen. And I have, to answer your question, so I have a Thermidor oven, which is owned by, or it's Bosch. It's Bosch and Thermidor are kind of sister companies. And then a Thermidor dishwasher.

And they're both smart using the Home Connect appliance app, which is Bosch's smart home app. And I was able to connect it to voice assistants and I can start it remotely. But there are all sorts of caveats. Like I have to turn a service. knob on the oven in order to be able to access it remotely, which half the time I've forgotten to do. So those types of frustration, like small, I think it's the safety feature and I get it, but those two appliances I got about two years ago and I've really only just started to figure out the benefits I can use from them from a connected angle. My favorite thing in my smart kitchen is

a gadget that is siloed in its own little ecosystem and that's the thermomix, which we have talked about before, which is the blender that can cook. And it is an amazing device. But it doesn't work with anything else. So I just have to do everything in this little pot. And then other parts of my smart kitchen are my smart fridge. So I've actually had this Samsung smart fridge for a while. It's one of the older models. But one of the nice things about the smart fridges is that they get all the same updates. So even if I went and bought a new fridge today, the capabilities are comparable, which is nice. Samsung's done a good job there, keeping the software up to date.

But it's still a giant Android touchscreen that's about five years old. So it's a bit laggy. And then I have a smart faucet, which I love, and that's voice controlled. And that's, again, that's Moen. And again, it's in its own little ecosystem. I need you to explain to me why you would want to voice control your faucet. I'm not convinced that's a real thing anyone ever does. Okay, two reasons.

First, it does have a sensor so you can just swipe on and off. And that's the most useful because, you know, your hands are greasy. But you can say to your assistant, I need three cups of hot water or give it a specific temperature. And it will dispense precisely three cups at 50 degrees or 80 degrees, whatever's hot water. Okay. And so I'm beyond this stage. But for example, if you have a baby and you're filling in a baby bottle, you can have it dispense. exactly the right type of water, exactly the right amount. And, you know, when you go and put your

teaspoon to get your teaspoon of water and it all splashes in your face, instead you can just have a little pot and say, dispense a teaspoon of water. So yes, it's a bit gimmicky. I don't use it daily, but there are times when I find it helpful. And also, you know, if I'm cooking and I have a big pot and I can be like, hey, Moen, start the hot water and I'll come over and I can put the pot in the sink and it's already warm and ready to wash. So, but yes, as we've said, that, Right now, functionality is a little, it's like we stick Wi-Fi chips and things and then we figure out down the road whether there's something good that we can do here. And I feel like we're at that stage right now where figuring out how all of these devices can work well efficiently in our kitchen is where we should be. That's what I'm hoping to kind of find some solutions to over these next two episodes.

Yeah, it is really interesting. I think the fact that the thermomix is so useful to you and so many other people, like people, people, love the thermomix. I feel like it is mirroring like the kitchen aid territory of just like people who buy one then sort of obsessively talk about how much they love it. Yeah. And as somebody who relatively recently actually went and finally bought a kitchen aid and a bunch of attachments, like I get it now. I am one of those people. But I think the fact that the thermomix and things like the instant pot even like need to exist is sort of telling on the smart home. Because the only way we've been able to figure this out is to just shove as many things as we can into a single

gadget. They're like the smartphone of the smart home, right? Where it's just like, it just does all the stuff. It doesn't do any of it as well, but it's all right there. And that makes it useful. Convenient. Right. You can control it in one app. You know where it is. Like it's, it, you know, it doesn't have to learn how to talk to other stuff because it's right there. But that, for a bunch of just practical reasons, like can't be the future, right? Like, the idea that you're going to have one single appliance that does everything and that's how we solve the smart kitchen is just, that's just not it. Not least because it would require you to yet again, like, rip and replace every single thing in your kitchen to make this work.

But so I think we're kind of in the smartphone phase of the smart kitchen where it's like, how can we put all of this stuff into one gadget? And then the right answer is like, let's blow it all up back into sort of its original pieces, but make them all make more sense together. Exactly, yes. They all need to work together. And I think that starts with the core, really, is the fridge. And, you know, Samsung and its smart fridge has been mocked rightly. over the years. But ultimately, and in that article that you were referencing that I wrote like 10 years ago, there was some really good ideas about food management. And food management really is the core sort of piece that you need to make the smart kitchen work. And it's great to have all these

appliances, but if you don't have anything to cook, you're not going to do much with them. So, you know, a fridge that can know what it has in it, know when you're low on supplies, know what you need for, say, the meal plan you've made for the week. and also tie in with your pantry. I know Amazon at some point had like a shelf you could put in your pantry that would weigh your ingredients and give you an idea of what you needed to buy. RFID tags are a really interesting idea in this space. But I feel like maybe a lot of the ideas we had 10 years ago for the Smart Kitchen, there are so many developments in technology that have come along that could supersede those and really bring us to that next level. And AI is obviously one portion where I feel like there's going to be a huge step forward now in the smart kitchen now that we have that type of capability.

And then one of the other areas that I've really struggled with in terms of understanding the benefit of the smart kitchen is the Wi-Fi connectivity. I think a lot of people really just don't like the idea of all their appliances being online and all their appliances talking to their manufacturers. you know, Samsung knows every time I've opened my fridge. So there's a privacy issue, I think also that it's worth sort of considering when you're jumping into the smart kitchen. But on the flip side, and I know we're not necessarily going to go into this in a lot of detail, but it's an area I'm really interested in is energy management. When you connect your kitchen, many of the devices in your kitchen are using energy

constantly. And if we can sort of harness that power and end up helping save energy. energy in our kitchens, that gives you a really good reason right there to start with the smart kitchen, I think. Yeah, I think that's right. And that's a perfect segue to the next thing we're going to do on this episode, which has talked to some folks who are trying to build all of this stuff. But first, we need to take a very quick break. We'll be right back. Support for the show comes from Framer. Framer is an enterprise-grade, no-code website builder used by teams at companies like Perplexity and Muro to move faster. With real-time collaboration and a robust

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And instead of getting buried in resumes, you get a focus shortlist that actually moves your hiring forward. Join the 2.7 million small businesses using LinkedIn. to hire. Get started by posting your job for free at LinkedIn.com slash track. Terms and conditions apply. All right, we're back. The next thing we're going to do is talk to some of the folks who are trying to build this. Jen, you found these two folks we're about to talk to, who I only discovered later, both have British accents, which I found very rude to do, to just spring on me in the middle of an interview. The British invasion of the Vergecast. Yeah. Set up who these folks are and what?

we're about to talk to them about. Why do you want to have them on the show? Yeah, so I had spoken with both of these gentlemen over the last few years as I've been covering the Smart Kitchen, and they've both been involved in the space for over a decade. The first is Ben Harris, and he is the founder of a company called Fresco. We're a software company who are working with many of the large appliance manufacturers to empower them to actually deliver on the promise of the smart kitchen. It's main sort of goals. is to create a smart kitchen OS that all your appliances can work on. They've done a really neat thing where they've managed to figure out exactly the number of cooking terms there are out there and the types of cooking you would do.

So things like bake, boil, suvied and then how you would describe them. And then they've managed to standardize that format into an operating system that will allow you to control any appliance from a single app. Their app is one that you can use Fresco, but it also works in the appliance app. So, for example, they work with Instant Pot. They've also just announced a partnership with Viking and Panasonic, Thermomix, LG, Kenwood, GE appliances, Electrolux. There's a whole load of brands that are working with them, although this is still new. And right now, I think the only appliance you can use with the Fresco app is the Instant Pot. But it's an interesting approach and to that interoperability issue that we've been discussing.

He describes the Fresco Kitchen OS app as like Spotify Connect in the Sonos app. It's basically a layer that can go into any smart kitchen app and make your appliance easy to use and interoperable with other appliances, which is a great idea if you ask me. Yeah, agree. And then the other is Nick Holzer of Samsung Food. I was the founder of WISC, which was a startup that Samsung acquired and turned into what is now Samsung food. which anyone who has been interested in using apps to cook will have probably used. It was a great app that basically let you pull recipes from anywhere. You could scan your grandma's curry recipe and upload it to the WISC app.

You could find a recipe from the New York Times cooking app and you could just pull everything into one place. It makes it a lot easier to manage your meal plans, your cooking experience for the week. And WISC app has transformed into the same. Samsung food app, which was launched last year, although its sort of whisk has been powering Samsung's food service, which has been part of its Smart Things app, which is Samsung's smart home platform. And now the Samsung food app works with the smart fridge, Samsung's smart fridge, works with Samsung's smart ovens to do some of the stuff we've talked about. So it can help you meal plan. It can help you send recipes, say, your fridge can tell your oven what you're

cooking, that you're cooking a roast tonight and start preheating. So there's some interoperability there, which is interesting. And as I said, they've both been in this space for over a decade. So they have lots of strong feelings about the smart kitchen. And they have great accents, too. Well, you know, they're doing their best. No, it was a really good conversation. They are thinking about things in both similar and different ways in a way that I thought was really interesting. But they both have the same sort of big vision for how all of this is supposed to feel as you cook, which I thought was very cool. It's an also. interview, let's just play it here. Let's roll it. All right. So I just want to start with kind of a big

picture version of this question. What are we trying to do here? I think we talk about the Smart Kitchen in these big, broad sort of Jetsons-y terms. Maybe someday, you know, decades in the future, it'll look kind of like that. But I think you're both in a position of trying to figure out what is the best and most useful and most interesting thing we can do, you know, now and in a year and in two years and in five years. Just to frame a lot of what we're going to talk about here. What are you thinking about in that space. Nick, you go first. We talk about joy, making cooking more joyful. And I think there's lots of things that can do that for people. For some people, it's taste, for some people, which can include what you're cooking or the cooking outcome. The other part is

the joy of actually the cooking process. Are you enjoying it? Is it fun? Is it, or are you constantly looking for facts? Health, I think, is an important part for some people. Waste, it can be an important part. There's lots of different parts. It means different things for different people, But joy is the word that we center around in our team. Ben, what about you? Similarly, joy is definitely something that we have latched onto. It is really unique in the kitchen from an experience point of view, you know. We really think about a moment, I think, that we're most focused on is, you know, that inner glow or that you have when, you know, you've sat down at the table and, you know, your friends or your family are, you know, licking to play clean across from you.

and just that inner pride that you have, I think more so than anything, that's really the experience that we're empowering consumers to get and sort of get into that moment as easily as possible, you know, and giving them confidence to be able to get there. I can add maybe a bit more context of that and sort of how we see we can get there, just sort of how we think about the space a little bit. You know, I think one constant, I would say, in the kitchen appliance market over the course of the last sort of hundred years has been, you know, any appliance. clients, any product that can make, give you better results with less effort has ultimately been successful. The oven to a microwave 50 years ago, to, you know, stand mixers 100 years ago, to pressure cookers, to air friars in the last couple of years, just how fast that has changed the market, you know, which I think air friars are an amazing example.

And now leveraging IoT and AI and content creators and screens out there, is there a potential for us to finally deliver that like friend chef or a Jamie Oliver sitting next to you in a kitchen essentially just by leveraging technology to actually say, actually, no, this is how you, you know, get a, add a squeeze a lemon in here or, you know, this is how you can soften a cantaloupe or this is how you peel an onion and now your steak is done. You know, I think it's it's those little tips and tricks and helpers that we believe we can leverage technology to deliver that will ultimately be what the sort of smart kitchen is, which sort of has a bit of a name at the minute, I think.

So you think it's more about making the experience better than necessarily making the kitchen smart enough to cook for us? Because that's what the smart home today seems like it's moving towards everything being automated, whereas the kitchen is already very automated. I mean, we have a robot in our kitchen that washes our dishes. We've already got a lot of exciting, useful technology in the kitchen. And it feels like that next step in the kitchen has been really hard to get to. And my theory is it's already so technologically advanced that it's kind of hard to get to that next step.

So I understand you guys are sort of saying, well, you know, the outcome we're looking for is to make this kitchen experience seamless and make us all Jamie Oliver's or Nigella Lawsons or who's the American one, Martha Stewart. But yes, there's that experience level. But how are we going to get from where we are today to that joy? I feel like there's a big leap there. I think the way we look at it as like, what are the problems that users actually have when they're in the kitchen? And I think there are some incremental changes you can make to appliances. But I agree there's a lot of automation in there already. But if you look at where the problems are, like, for example, with food waste, people, you know that there's thousands of dollars.

I think the figure in the US is $3,000 per person a year, that they're wasting on food. And the majority of consumers want to reduce their waste, whether it's for environmental reasons or financial reasons or other reasons. So, like, that's an area where we know there's a problem. And that's where one of the areas we're tackling with things like the Family Hub, where we look at what's inside your fridge and create a pantry and give you recommendations. And that is making the cooking process more joyful. You're not watching soft off in your fridge. You're saving money. When it comes to cooking, there's lots of things that are happening there.

They're a little bit, maybe a little bit more incremental than some of the pantry stuff with health. I think people want to be healthier. And if they achieve that, then it makes their life better. When we think about the smart kitchen, I feel like the vision in people's head is like, my stove flips my pancake for me. And it's like these little things where it's like the oven just makes the cookies for me. And I don't even have to think about it. And I want to talk about that road because I think there is some stuff down that road.

But it sounds like the way you both are thinking about it is actually sort of everything around that. that maybe I actually don't mind standing in front of my stove, flipping my pancake. And one of my questions for you was going to be, do people actually want to stop cooking? I remember a couple of years ago when everybody was like, no one will ever have to go to the grocery store again, Instacart. And like it turns out actually a lot of people really like going to the grocery store.

It's like it's a process. It's a thing. People enjoy it. People do it on purpose. Like automating that out of existence is actually not what people are looking for. And I think to some extent making food for your family is that too. But it sounds like maybe we've been thinking about it as this very specific act of making food is the thing we have to solve. And you're both sort of describing everything around that

as the more interesting set of problems. I think it's really not joyful. If you're cooking something and you're burning it, right, that's a very non-joyful experience. It's definitely cooking things too. I don't think it's flipping your pancake for you, in my opinion, but there's lots of things like controlling your oven or your cooking device. But yeah, I absolutely agree with you. I'm definitely thinking about it way more broadly than like, is there a robotic part to my oven that does something that I I would usually do myself. And I actually think there's a lot of joy in cooking. I love, personally, the cooking experience, especially when it doesn't go wrong. If I haven't forgotten the ingredients, when I've got everything I need for it, if I know that it actually fits with my

health goals, that all makes that process enjoyable. And that's not taking me out of the process. I want to be part of it. I enjoy making, you know, it's like art. It's a, it's a, it's a, it's a hobby. In fact, it's the world number two hobby, right? Cooking, if you survey people, it's number two hobby in the world. People like it. They do it not just for the sustenance. But that's when you have the time, right? Because also what I see in the smart kitchen is making cooking easier so that I, you know, yes, on Saturday morning when I want to whip up, you know, the pancakes and I want to, you know, do the raspberry compot and I want, you know, the French press coffee, I'm going to enjoy putting that all together. But on a Monday afternoon when my

kids coming home from school and I got three meetings and I need to get dinner on the table, I want those Samsung arms that they showed at CES one year. that will come down and just get the food out of the fridge, put it in the oven, and then I don't have to worry about it. Okay, I know I can order DoorDash, but, you know, I still want to use what I have in my kitchen. I want the kitchen to do as much of it for me as possible. Is there sort of, you know, both sides to this coin? I think that's a really interesting way of looking at it, and we sort of look at it in a similar

way from a product point of view. It's like when you come home, you know, you sort of at pure point in DoorDash, we sort of have the promise of the, the promise of it. the food replicator that, you know, I just push a button and then food arrives at my door in DoorDash or Uber Eats and deliver it across Europe, you know, so it's, I think that's how we also think about it from a product point of view, sort of when you arrive home in that moment, and then it's like, you have to make that decision, am I going to cook tonight or am I going to get DoorDash or have a frozen pizza, you know? And after both of them, you know, you feel that sort of guilt and

slimyness and a bit of dirtiness if you've gotten takeaway, or you feel that wholesomeness and happiness, if you've cooked, I'm sure you've all experienced that sort of like a couple of seconds, a few microseconds that you've made that decision of which way you're going to go. All the levers that push you towards, oh, Jesus, I'm just going to watch Netflix and order Uber Eats are the ones we're looking to remove. That it's the, okay, am I going to fail? Is it to next point? Is this going to burn?

How do I get the ingredients? What am I going to decide? What I'm going to cook? But we can give you all of the helping hand in these monitoring pieces to ensure and give you confidence that you're going to get great results that we believe, you know, that's ultimately what consumers want. I think there's this amazing analogy from the 50s that I'm sure many of your listeners have listened to as heard as well. And this Betty Crocker analogy of when it initially when the powder mixes were released in the in the 50s. And they were sort of like bubbling on from a sales point of view. So you had to, you know, add, I think just add water and then bung it in the oven.

And the sales are sort of like tipping along and they did the consumer research and people just said, I just don't feel like I'm cooking. You know, I don't feel that inner intrinsic pride afterwards. And suddenly they're like, okay, let's remove the dry egg from the mixture and get consumers to start just crack the egg in and then add the milk, then mix it and putting in. Suddenly the dynamic changed to be, okay, I'm now cooking this. And I am now gifting people this cake and suddenly I have the pride and then suddenly, you know, sales skyrocketed. And that's really, I think, where we are in the cooking assistant that we ultimately deliver. So Jen's point around being a busy parent, I'm a relatively new parent as well. But I cook regularly. How do I do that? I choose to automate out the grocery shopping part, right?

To David's point, I don't choose to go to the grocery store. If I'm trying to cook something, it is actually, takes a long time, to walk around that store and even if you have a smart shopping list, it takes a while to go through that store. I choose to have that part automated away from me. The second thing I do is I batch cook. I think a lot of parents do do that. So I cook like three or four times the amount that's needed and then I put it in the fridge or the freezer and I will like reheat it and make it later, right? And that's like, so I don't cook every day, but I have cooked food almost every day. But when you're actually trying to scale a recipe, that's also another area where technology can help. It's all these like small incremental parts where when you add it together, you add it together,

it does get rid of some of that like hassle and annoying stuff that you have to go through to make a meal and you know remember all the right ingredients make sure you've got the right quantities adapt the recipe to make to make to make that right amount don't have to go to the grocery store and have it just arrive for you someone rings your bell and brings it to you that makes you able to focus on that cooking part which I think lots of people actually really enjoy that part but now okay you mentioned the fridge when am I going to be able to to have my fridge do all of that for me, though, because that's what I want. I want my fridge in my pantry to talk to each other and say, okay, she doesn't have

milk. She wants to do pancakes tomorrow. We need to make sure she's got eggs and there's no flour in the pantry. And, you know, that convenience is like, I don't think anyone would argue with that. I think the answer is yes. And I think it's possible to say that with more confidence in the last year due to the advances of AI, right? The challenge has been AI. hasn't been good enough to kind of truly deliver on that. The latest version of the Family Hub, which is released this year, as you said, like it tracks in and out actions on the fridge. That is new. And it does accurately understand, you know, a good number of ingredients. No real user or very, very, very few users are going to manually input that stuff into their phones,

right, or their fridges or wherever it happens to be. You have to automate it. And people have tried things like, you know, barcode scanners on bins. So as you put things in the bin, it's, you you scan the bark. People have tried all sorts of things. And as soon as you ask the user to do a bunch of stuff there, it basically fails. So I do think AI means that it's actually, you know, it's some of it's here in some of the latest appliances. Of course, you need the latest one. You know, last year it won't do it. It hasn't got the right cameras in it and stuff. But like, we're going to see across the whole industry some really interesting capability jumps, leaps because of what AI is now able to do and how accessible AI is to all our companies,

right, to be able to leverage. I think that's, I'm super excited about AI. And it goes beyond the fridge. It goes into connecting data from health apps to food apps. It goes right across the whole space. Ben, what are you seeing on that front too? Because I think you're in a position of being kind of less specifically integrated with an ecosystem, but also being able to look more broadly at a lot of stuff. Like Jen is talking about, you know, Nick, I'm sure is like required by company policy to exclusively have Samsung appliances everywhere. But that's, most people have this kind of amalgamation of stuff, right? And I think one of the things it seems like is maybe we don't need all of these things to be sort of perfectly intimately connected to get some of this stuff you're talking about. But you're

also in a position of being able to kind of make the whole greater than the sum of its parts of the kitchen, right? Are you seeing the same stuff with AI there? Yes, absolutely. It's been sort of transformational and I think has accelerated what we've thought was only possible over the course of a five-year time horizon to a 12-month time horizon. It's like rapid changes in what's possible in the market. So yeah, for context, Fresco are working with, you know, Panasonic GE appliances, LG, Bosch, Kenwood, Instant Brands and several multiple other appliance brands on our our platform. Actually today or when this podcast goes live, we're announcing a new partnership with a group called Middleby, which own brands like Viking and deeply integrating into their connected ovens and delivering the whole connected experience there as well.

Because exactly to your point, no kitchen is a single brand. Except for next. So, you know, if you want to, you know, deliver a delightful cooking experience, you know, it needs to be able to move from. from each brand to the next and elegantly move across the, across the full kitchen. And as Nick touched on there, it's this dot connecting, which is sort of needed in the kitchen. This is what we see right now that people are,

they go to YouTube to figure out certain tips. They then look on Google for substitutions. They then go to their, sometimes have to figure out how, what's possible on their appliance manual, that's or on their interface, you know, as Panasol. one of our partners say is that like, you know, the only thing that microwaves are used for in the States

is to reheat food and to make coffee. Heat coffee. Yes, exactly, in coffee. But it's got unbelievable capabilities inside of being able to, you know, perfectly defrost a pound of turkey to like, so if you can just, it's just making to next point as well, making these points accessible and just a tap of a button available to you. So we've now got all of these pieces now represented in data,

it in our back-end infrastructure, that then allows us armed with AI to just connect the dots between these and actually deliver a delightful consumer experience that's contextual right in the moment to help you with exactly what you need at the top of a button. So like I could stick my turkey in the Panasonic microwave, defrost it, and then my Viking oven will know that I'm going to be cooking the turkey and can and I can just press a button and have all the settings go to the Viking oven. I mean, how is that going to work? Because one of the things I've noticed right now with Smart Kitchen is we have all these individual smart appliances. And every time a new smart oven comes out, it's just its own

little ecosystem. And there's like the thermomix, which David and I have talked about in the past and is just a joy to use. It's a great smart gadget, smart kitchen gadget. But it's siloed in its own ecosystem. I mean, we have a big, everyone has an oven in their kitchen. Most people have a stove top. You know, you've got all of these parts and pieces already. Why we shouldn't need to buy individual smart appliances. What we have, I feel like, could get more intuitive to use and more integrated. But that's just been a real roadblock to date, as is the whole smart home. Interoperability in general just doesn't seem to be moving us very far forward.

And the kitchen feels like the biggest roadblock there. And I know, Ben, that's very much what you guys are doing. And also Samsung is doing with their interoperability through this home. Connectivity Alliance and Matter, being able to bring other appliances into the apps, but then we're still having to use an app to control our kitchen. And I think that's a friction point, right? No one really, if you're standing in the kitchen, you don't want to pull out your phone to press a button when you can just press a button on the device. Is there a future where, you know, I put the turkey in the Panasonic microwave, it defrosts it and everything else

happens automatically and I can just move things from place to place, like move my turkey, around and without having to like pull out an app or use an interface or use voice. I mean, is that a realistic sort of future in the smart kitchen or are we, do we need to still be there and press buttons? I don't think we're that far away, you know, now, which is incredibly exciting and sort of where we are in the journey. You know, I agree. I see a future where there's, you know, one screen in the middle of your kitchen that you can use to orchestrate all of your appliances and that's where you get the feedback. But it's, it has to be multimodal. So you can sort of look at your Apple Watch and see, okay, it's like another three minutes until your rice is, you know, ready, synced to the finish of your chicken in the oven.

So it all sort of starts to come together at exactly the same time. And you can have this sort of automated process to move to your point from the de-frosting in the Panasonic oven to the quick transfer if you needed to over to another appliance. We have standardized the communication and the data format we believe needed for delivering this delightful guided across. cooking experience in creating a digital representation of any recipe and a digital representation of any appliance. So, you know, like really trying to break down how to digitally represent an appliance in the in the back-end infrastructure to allow you, again, to connect the dots between all of these things and ultimately deliver this joyful experience. When you say digitally represent, can you break that down? Like, what's it doing? Like, so my

cooking app, say my Samsung food app or my New York Times recipe app, it could know to like turn my oven to broil or suvied. I mean, how's that sort of actually working in the back end? So we scoured thousands of appliance manuals and millions of recipes online. So we crawled them and sort of put them through our sort of AI pipeline to start, you know, to process them. And we realized initially this is now grown. But there's actually 77 cooking capabilities, you know, so bake, broil, steam, suvied. 77, that's a lot.

Yeah, yeah. Eight ways to describe them. So like time, temperature, speed, humidity, power. So like suddenly once you have that sort of Rosetta Stone, that's sort of like how you can then map a recipe to an appliance and appliance capability and control. We now patented some of this experience as well, sort of how it's actually done, but it allows us to then search a recipe, see all the capabilities that are needed to be fulfilled, and then map them onto the appliance you have in your kitchen.

and, you know, it could say, you know, roast your chicken for, you know, an hour at 180 degrees. I think the amazing thing is, like, this is the way recipes have had to be written because all of our appliances are a little different. All of our chickens are a little different. See, I have to give this generic one that's definitely going to not poison people. So, invariably, you know, it's always overcooked and dry, whereas, you know, these appliances now have unbelievable technology in them. that like with a temperature probe and, you know, heating maps can actually put, you've got chicken programs on the likes as well. But, you know, all of these appliances now are having all of these sort of great programs, but nobody actually uses them because they're buried in a menu that some of them look like a VCR from the 90s, you know, you can get at them. So how do we, again, connect the dots between these two pieces and what your appliance can actually do?

So you tap a button and you're, so your chicken ends up, you know, moist on the inside, crispy on the outside every single time. And across your full kitchen. So that's the real opportunity. Doesn't there need to be like a much more basic common level where our appliances communicate with each other? Or is that not even necessary if we can just do it all in the cloud? And I guess that's the main key here, right? People are concerned about buying smart appliances because what is the benefit to me? And it's going to be obsolete, is it?

five or 10 years. Whereas I want my most stoves, you know, you can have an argo that can last for 50 years. Where is that benefit to me as a consumer of this interconnected appliance world? Is it coming or are we just going to be stuck with relying on cloud interfaces rather than local interfaces? Well, I think you've got things like matter are meaningful when you've got Apple, Amazon, Google, or Samsung and others around the table, right? That's a, that's a, that's a And fresco. And fresco, yeah. And fresco.

Number one. Exactly. That is meaningful. Like, of course, we can't force everyone to take part, right? Like, there's going to be people that don't take part in that. But over time, if it's popular with consumers and consumers choose matter devices because they want it all to work together, then people, then the others will eventually join, right? And I think ultimately driven by consumer demand, the software part becomes a little bit less

important about, because if long as it works with matter, it'll then work with all the different, you know, the matter devices. and you can switch that out, right, if you want to, and you can choose the best one. I think that's what's great about software. People can choose the best one and the best ones win and you can win really, really fast. You build something new. And that's not unique to this space. You can, that happens with social media companies that are huge.

And that's why some of them go out and buy other social media companies because the, you know, preferences change. You have the federated kitchen. Yeah. But actually, one thing I would say is like, you know, I'm a startup founder. I'm not like a company executive, but I think in my heart. But I'm still here at Samsung. And why? I think it's actually, it's really exciting for me.

My personal reason is we have. have so many different appliances that are not just in the kitchen, just at Samsung, which we have first party access to, right? TVs are one, watches and phones are another, and then of course we've got the kitchen. So what we can now, what we're starting to do is connect all these different parts where, you know, if I wasn't part of Samsung, I would basically need to go and build partnerships with another, you know, Fitbit or Apple Watch or whatever to try and get that data in. At Samsung, we have that data here. If a TV, I have to go to a different TV company. We have it. It's all first party. And first party gives you, you know, in today's security,

kind of privacy world, also gives you some benefits. There is interconnectivity that we can develop here. And then hopefully, I would, as a consumer, as a user, I would love to be able to expand that across other companies too. And I think matter is definitely a positive for me as a consumer. Because like you, Jen, I, you know, I would love to have different parts to my house. I'm never going to buy all my appliances from just one company, you know. I know, David joked that my whole kitchen is just Samsung. I have, I do have a family have and I do have a bunch of Samsung devices, which I love. But yes, I also have different appliances in my house. Sure. Yeah, I mean, it's not just the kitchen, is it? There's

the laundry room and in Europe in particular, the laundry room is in the kitchen. So there's so much more this can extend to within the smart home. Because it does at the moment, again, feels like the smart kitchen's kind of siloed. And I feel like there is so much more potential for the way we can integrate our cooking into the whole home and not just be. I mean, I think, Nick, we talked about like you'll be watching TV and maybe watching an episode of TastMade, which is like the only thing my husband watches. And then you could snap a picture and your oven could be ready. You know, your fridge can order you the food and your oven can get ready for.

But I keep using that analogy. You know, I want my, I want my fridge to buy the food and I want my oven to be ready to cook it. But there's so much more to the kitchen. And I guess just to kind of as we wrap up, like where do you see the kind of future integration of the smart kitchen beyond just remote control of appliances. Like, what is the kind of vision here where we can feel like our kitchen is worth adding smart technology into our kitchen?

Where is the ultimate smart kitchen future for both of you? Me? Back to what I mentioned earlier, it becomes your sushi through the whole process. Yeah, to your point, you know, we've got to feed from what's in your fridge and what's in your pantry. So it's like, oh, you know, you've got this albergine

before it goes off. Here's a couple of nice recipes. for you, you know, then your oven's starting to preheat. Here's all the other pieces that you can go. And it's just giving you the right prompt. So, you know, also you can just like remove that cognitive load. So you're not worried sitting there sort of stirring rice sitting over the stove. You know, it's like, you know, you're going to get a ping when it's ready, you know, and all your food will be ready at the same time. And you have the intrinsic pride at the end of it that you've cooked it, you know. And then so everyone's delighted. So it's like, like, that is absolutely what drives me

and the full team here at Fresco. Are we there now, though? Or is that the future? Like, it sounds like you sort of feel like we're already there. No, no, no. Yeah, there's definitely work to do to get there. But I think, yeah, that's where we can see is, you know, not too far away now. And, you know, I think, as I mentioned earlier, you know, it takes time for hardware to be

developed and shipped. So we have, you know, a view now as to sort of where the kitchen is going to be in, you know, 12, 24, 36 months. And I think, you know, one of the inspiring things, I would say, that we can remind ourselves of is, you know, everyone thinks the kitchen, you know, space move slowly. But I think just if you look at air friars, I think it's just such an amazing example of, you know, they've gone from, you know, no one talking about them, you know, four or five years ago to now being in everyone's kitchen and everyone talking about the way we cook, you know, so that's something that has like globally been transformed in a relatively short period of time.

And that can move faster with software. So, you know, I think that's what we're excited about over the course the next couple of years. For me, I think it's all the different parts of your journey from inspiration to meal on the table, whether that planning, shopping, cooking, eating, all of those parts. And we have different features that we've already, you know, built in those, which we are going to incrementally keep improving upon. But ultimately, it comes in down to, like, sensors being able to predict and be making more predictive experience for us. us and then integrations into more devices. So it works more seamlessly with those devices. And those are all like incremental changes. And I think, you know, I think there's a fundamental kind of vision. I do think it's going to change drastically there. I think those are the real problems

that we're in the kitchen that we're kind of already working on solving, but we are going to make them all work better. I think the new part that I am more excited about now than I have ever been is health because of what a big problem health is for the world and for people in their lives, obesity and diabetes being the two bigger, biggest ones, but there's lots and lots of other ones, too, which matter a lot. And I do think there's a real role to play. And I know it's not strictly in the kitchen. And people might think of health as being more about watches or step counting on your phone. But actually, what you eat has a huge impact on your health, right? Especially in those two things, diabetes and people being overweight. So I think like that opportunity

to help people is huge. And actually, it always, also drives consumer choice. Ben mentions the air friar. One of the reasons why people like an air friar is not because it's another thing to put in your kitchen counter, right? And it cooks stuff. It's because it cooks stuff healthily, right, without oil. So it drives behavior. People want to be healthy. It drives spending. For me, that's exciting because I'm trying to be healthy and I know how hard it is. And I've seen how good software experiences can help me be healthy. And I think there's a lot of, it's a big problem in the world. And I think we have a lot that we can contribute to the All right, back in the studio.

I really enjoyed that. And I had been thinking ever since we did it about the idea of joy in the kitchen being a thing, right? Which kind of goes back to the same stuff we were talking about. It's like, what if you could do all the fun parts of cooking and none of the like monotonous nonsense. The like remembering to turn on the oven and how to set timers and yelling at your voice assistant. Like what if just the fun things was what you did in the kitchen? And like, what a great fish and that is. I love that. It is. I know.

As I did point out, it's like, yeah, I love this idea of joy of cooking, but it's not as a mom of two with a full-time job and a lot of extra correct activities. Joy of cooking maybe on a Sunday afternoon, but not on a Monday when I'm desperately trying to get food on the table. So, yeah, I think the joy of cooking is great. but I think ultimately if we can, and a lot of what both Ben and Nick said, really I can see, I'm excited to sort of try and see how using technology to make things streamlined and easier in the kitchen. We'll maybe make Monday evening dinner joyful. We'll see. I'm going to try. I'm going to test all this out and see. Hopefully there won't be too much swearing. Am I allowed to swear on the verge cast? Oh, I mean, about your kids in dinner? Yes, absolutely. Those are the rules. I will say the solution that I have discovered is to have a 14-month-old who doesn't want to eat anything that isn't graham crackers.

Makes it easier to cook. Yeah, well, and what I've discovered is most of parenting is just giving your kid healthy food that they don't want to eat. And like my diet has gotten better because I'm eating all the veggies that I make for him. It's ridiculous. But the thing that I'm struck by and I'm curious how you feel, before we get into this crazy experiment, we're about to run on you is Ben and Nick are both really sort of optimistic about what the next couple of years are going to be. And I think, of course, they are there in this space. They've founded companies like they're startup guys, right? Of course they're optimistic about where this is going. But you've been in the kind of mire and muck of trying to get all of this stuff working for a long time. As they talk about AI and as they talk about the platform stuff, are you optimistic that we're going to get real moves in this space over the next?

couple of years, are we going to start to inch towards the stuff we've been talking about? I think, you know me, I'm very optimistic. True. And I do feel like, as we said at the beginning, that, you know, with generative AI and some of the technologies that we're starting to see in the smart home, matter, interoperability. I feel optimistic, but I do think there is still a major roadblock, which is that the smart kitchen is not an easy, there's not easy, turnover. You know, people aren't going to go and buy new or new appliances. And so these,

I still think we're going to see a lot of these individual appliances. Like air fryers, we've talked about. Everyone loves air friars, but it's another device and another gadget you go put in your kitchen. I feel like that sort of beauty and the beast vision of the kitchen where everything just has its purpose and all works together and cleans everyone, everyone cleans themselves and cooks everything for you. You know, I feel like we're still a long way off from that. But I was really interested, and as you picked up on, the idea that really we need to start from the food and not start from the appliances. And I think that's where for individual consumers, the Smart Kitchen gets much more interesting. I think the larger appliance side of the issue is something that the

manufacturers have to work out, and that's going to take a long time. As much as they're all starting to work together. We all know how well that works out. Agreed. So before we get out of here, you have signed up to heroically run a self-experiment on yourself for next week's episode. What is this experiment? Tell us what you're in for before we get out of here. So I am going to try to plan my meals for a week for my family using smart kitchen tech from apps to actual appliances to voice assistance, smart displays, all the different tech that's in my kitchen, as well as a few pieces that I've called in for the experiment. I'm going to use Samsung food and the fresco app to sort of test a little bit of what Nick and Ben were telling us

and see how it all works out. And I'm going to try and cook lots of foods that I've never cooked before and see if my smart kitchen can make me a better chef. And yeah, it's going to be fun. It might get a bit messy. Is your family prepared for what you're about to do to them? No. Okay, good. That's probably for the best. I will just spring it on them. And who knows, maybe it'll go amazing. Maybe there'll be lots of food to eat, so that should make them happy. Cooking is hard, though, so I'm probably going to be quite tired and cranky after all of this. Yeah, we've asked you to keep a sort of running diary as you're doing this and I am extremely excited to hear unfiltered, just finished dinner, Jen thoughts on

the Smart Kitchen. I'm very, very excited about it. But awesome. Thank you again for doing this. We're going to be back next Sunday with the wild results of Jen's experiment. Until then, that is it for the Vergecast. Thanks to Jen and Nick and Ben for being on the show. And thank you, as always, for listening. This show's produced by Andrew Marino, Liam James, and Will Poor. Vergecast is a Verge production and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. We'll be back on Tuesday and Friday with lots more Vergecast and then next Sunday with the epic conclusion

for our smart home series. That's the Vergecast. See you next time. Rock and roll.