The Spoon Podcast

Welcome to the first episode of The Spoon: Automat, a new ongoing podcast dedicated to food robots and artificial intelligence.

For this debut, we talk with Derrick Harris, AI expert and founder of the Architecht.io podcast and newsletter, to get your food tech startup ready for AI. What does AI even mean? Is there any difference between AI and machine learning and deep learning? What are the buzzwords companies should avoid when pitching their AI-powered products?

Take a listen and find out!

We took the Smart Kitchen Show on the road last month with a trip to Target's Open House concept store to talk about the personalization and the future of food.

Our guests for the evening were:

Shireen Yates, CEO of Nima

Kevin Brown, CEO of Innit

Jae Berman, Head Coach and lead nutritionalist for Habit

We also want to thank Brian Frank of FTW Ventures for interviewing Shireen Yates.

And thank you to Target Open House for hosting our live episode!

Check out more podcasts at www.thespoon.tech

Growing up in Detroit, Mike Lee used to to love to go to auto shows. His favorite part was the concept cars auto makers would roll out to help consumers envision the future.

When he got older, he wondered why food companies never created similar concept products. Eventually, he decided to do it himself.

Mike Lee is the CEO of The Future Market and cofounder of Alpha Labs.

Growing up in Detroit, Mike Lee used to to love to go to auto shows. His favorite part was the concept cars auto makers would roll out to help consumers envision the future.

When he got older, he wondered why food companies never created similar concept products. Eventually, he decided to do it himself.

Mike Lee is the CEO of The Future Market and cofounder of Alpha Labs.

The International Housewares Show is big. Very big. More than 60,000 professionals from all corners of the world convened in Chicago last week to check out the latest and greatest products coming soon to a home near you (or to your home).

Whether you attended in person, or missed it this year, we've got you covered. Mike Wolf and Chris Albrecht walked the show floor to find the best bits of connected kitchen tech.

In this podcast, we talk about how the whole smart home and smart kitchen industry is maturing, the prevalence of connected devices, and the very cool things we came across (precision heated plates and baby bottles!).

The International Housewares Show is big. Very big. More than 60,000 professionals from all corners of the world convened in Chicago last week to check out the latest and greatest products coming soon to a home near you (or to your home).

Whether you attended in person, or missed it this year, we've got you covered. Mike Wolf and Chris Albrecht walked the show floor to find the best bits of connected kitchen tech.

In this podcast, we talk about how the whole smart home and smart kitchen industry is maturing, the prevalence of connected devices, and the very cool things we came across (precision heated plates and baby bottles!).

Perhaps more than any time in recent history, big packaged food companies are being forced to think about their futures. Consumers are asking for new, healthy options and are embracing new more direct relationships with those who make their food.

As a result, food companies are looking at ways to explore and invest in this future through partnerships, incubation and accelerators and direct investments.

Tyson Foods is doing all of the above, and one of the people at the heart of these initiatives for Tyson is Tom Mastrobuoni, the CFO for Tyson Ventures.

One of the things I talk to Tom about Tyson's recent investment in Tovala. It was the first investment by Tyson in a connected kitchen and food delivery startup, joining the group's other investments in clean meat startups Beyond Meat and Memphis Meats. We also talk about how Tyson and other comapnies are thinking about technologies such as AI, Blockchain and much more

Enjoy!

Also, you can hear Tom and a bunch of other great speakers at Smart Kitchen Summit Europe in Dublin on June 11th-12th. You can learn more at www.smartkitchensummit.eu. Use discount code PODCAST to get 25% off of tickets.

As the cofounder of CNET and Whiskey Media, Shelby Bonnie has consistently proven his ability to predict future media trends.

His latest bet? A conversational media company that utilizes AI-powered voice assistants and chatbots to create media properties that power content delivery in vertical interest areas such as food and cooking. The company, called Pylon AI, is creating an platform agnostic publishing system that works with any voice assistant or chatbot to enable conversational consumer content experiences.

If you are an appliance maker, food brand or any company that touches the consumer, you'll want to listen to this podcast to get an understanding of the future of consumer media.

Ever since I saw Chewie and CP30 playing hologram chess in Star Wars, I've been intrigued by the idea of augmented reality (even if I didn't think of it as 'augmented reality' as a kid).

And now, as we enter the age of augmented and virtual reality, I am just as fascinated about the intersection between these technologies and food. Innovative new applications using AR and VR in the food shopping, restaurant and home cooking experiences are popping up more and more frequently.

Another person excited about this fast growing space is Jenny Dorsey. A year ago the professional chef had an epiphany that started her on a journey to become an authority on the AR/VR and food.

On the podcast, I catch up with Jenny to hear how the journey is going and learn about some new and interesting ways that these technologies are changing food.

Enjoy!

P.S. If you want to talk to Jenny and ask her questions about this exciting area, join our new Slack channel. She's on there and loves to talk about this topic.

Go to https://thespoon.tech/slack/ and we'll see you on Slack!

What do you do for a second act after spending a good chunk of your teens and twenties building one of the leading product review sites in the US?

You start a company to reinvent one of those product categories your site used to review.

That's what you do if your Robin Liss, cofounder of Suvie, a Boston based startup that is creating a next-gen cooking appliance. Liss, who started what would become Reviewed.com in her basement at the tender age of 13, sold her company to USA Today in 2011 and managed and grow the site as part of Gannett until she left in 2015.