Billions of dollars are wasted every year on bringing food products to market that don't succeed.

So what if we could use machine learning and predictive algorithms to create products that have a higher rate of success in the marketplace?

That's what we talk about on the podcast with Analytical Flavor Systems CEO Jason Cohen. Cohen's company uses AI to understand flavor perception biases of individual consumers and predict how consumers will like flavor signatures across a broader population of users.

Make sure to subscribe the the Spoon at https://thespoon.tech/subscribe/

If you think blockchain is just about cryptocurrencies, think again.

A number of trends are driving innovators and data scientists to look at ways to apply blockchain to the food system, so on this week's podcast we talk to Raja Ramachandran, the CEO of Ripe.io, a company building a blockchain for food.

You can find out more about Raja and his company at www.ripe.io

Robots are playing increasingly important roles from the farm all the way into the kitchen. We chat with science and tech writer (and robot expert) Signe Brewster and The Spoon Founder, Mike Wolf about restaurant robots, automation vs. robotics and why everyone should have to work in a restaurant.

The Spoon sits down with the always lively and innovative Dan Pashman, host of The Sporkful podcast, where he gives advice on how to build your own food media empire.

The recipe is having a moment.

Yes, the recipe, which some have called dead, is fast becoming the center of action in the digital kitchen as publishers, food brands and startups like Chicory want to help consumers make purchase decisions within the recipe itself.

My guest for this podcast is Chicory's Yuni Sameshima, a company which works with publishers such as Betty Crocker and Time Inc to help transition the recipe from a static list of ingredients to an interactive platform which helps food brands become part of customized food bundles that make their way into consumer homes through both physical retail and brick and mortar.

You can find out more about Chicory at https://chicory.co/.

As always, check out www.thespoon.tech for more stories and context on this topic.

During our recent Smart Kitchen Summit, celebrity chef Tyler Florence proclaimed that "the recipe is dead." Not to get all Monty Python, but Milk Street founder Christopher Kimball disagrees and thinks Florence's take is dead wrong.

In this episode we talk with Kimball about recipes, why cookbooks are still king in the kitchen, and what connected gadgets he actually likes.

On one misty morning in Lyon, France back in spring of 2015, hardly anyone noticed when the US team showed up for competition at the Bocuse D'or, the semiannual world culinary championships. By that afternoon, people realized that this team of Americans were not the same as teams of years past who had come away empty handed.

This team had come to cook and win.

The team, led by Phil Tessier, walked away with the silver medal for the first time in the history of the competition. Two years later, with Tessier as head coach, they walked away with gold.

In this podcast, I talk to Phil Tessier about this journey to Bocuse, what changed, and what it was like competing that day. We also talk about his day job at Hestan Smart Cooking, where he is the culinary director and works with a team of technologists, culinary experts and more as they try to forge the future of cooking.

It's time for Mike and Ashley's annual post-Smart Kitchen Summit wrapup where they talk about the talks, the startups, cooking tech and all the behind the scenes happenings.

It's required listening, an indispensable "director's cut" accompaniment to the Smart Kitchen Summit.

We'll also already posting videos from the Smart Kitchen Summit over at the Spoon. Check out www.thespoon.tech where you'll see the video sessions first. You'll also want to check in with the www.smartkitchensummit.com from time to time for more details about upcoming events as well as photos and videos of SKS17.

We're busy preparing for Smart Kitchen Summit 2017, which is only one week away.

To prime the pump, we'd thought we'd release some of our favorite sessions from last year as podcasts.

This sessions, entitled The Chefs, featured none other than Kenji Lopez Alt (Serious Eats, James Beard award winner), Chris Young (ChefSteps, coauthor Modernist Cuisine) and Philip Tessier (Hestan Smart Cooking, Head Coach, Bocuse d'Or Team USA).

If you haven't purchased your tickets for SKS 2017, you can do so now at www.smartkitchensummit.com. Use discount code PODCAST to get 25% off of tickets.

Over the past six months, there probably hasn't been a company more roundly mocked in startup land than Juicero. The funmaking started after a Bloomberg article showed how one can squeeze the company's juice packs by hand, essentially making superfluous the company's $400 juicer.

When you raise $120 million, this is a PR problem.

But the company's problems went beyond an expensive juicer. As we discuss on the podcast, the company created a nearly impossible logistical and supply chain problem from the outset.

We also discuss Miele's new RF solid state powered wall oven and Sharp's deal with SideChef, as well as Mike's trip to Tokyo for the Smart Kitchen Summit Japan.