Interview with Fresco CEO, Ben Harris on The VergeCast

[00:00:16.730] - David Pierce

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. Actually, we're even more focused than the smart home. We're just talking about 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-Tui is the only person I could imagine doing this with. Jen, thank you for being here.

[00:00:44.550] - Jen Patterson-Tui

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.

[00:00:53.700] - David Pierce

The frustrating part is why we both really wanted to do it. Talking about the smart home, the 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.

[00:01:06.570] - Jen Patterson-Tui

I was like, Come on, David, matter. I mean, it's obvious. He's like, No. But don't worry, listener, we will talk about matter.

[00:01:15.500] - David Pierce

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 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 clear the vision is for what we want this thing to be. So I guess Just to set the scene for what we're going to do in the next couple of episodes here. When you think about what a smart kitchen could be, what is the beautiful, perfect vision that you think of in your head?

[00:01:58.710] - Jen Patterson-Tui

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. Food waste, food management, cooking lots of meals. I have two kids and I have a husband, and dogs that love leftovers. 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. 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. 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 microwave, your thermomix, your blender. I mean, there's so many parts and pieces.

And then the dishwasher, the cleanup. So 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, order pizza or DoorDash.

[00:03:12.450] - Jen Patterson-Tui

Whereas that shouldn't be my default. But often on a busy night, I look at my fridge and I'm like, no. But really, if the fridge could say to me, okay, 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. This is where the smart home in general has had problems.

The kitchen in particular, even more problems because there's so many legacy manufacturers in this space. Then you have these startups that have come in with like, Oh, look, we have this great device for you, but it doesn't work with anything else. It's just a single device. Whereas the kitchen is a big space with lots of technology already in it. My ultimate smart kitchen is 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.

[00:04:13.990] - David Pierce

I think that's right. The thing that makes my life easier 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 away? The part where I'm cutting carrots is whatever. I don't really mind cutting carrots. And if you make things that make cutting easier. 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.

I would just like it if the balancing act of 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 also start 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.

[00:05:13.770] - David Pierce

And I feel like when we talk 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. That's a version of the smart home that people talk about that I actually don't really want, where you just sit at the table and your kitchen cooks dinner for you.

[00:05:27.950] - Jen Patterson-Tui

I mean, I would like that, but I guess that's fair. I would like that occasionally. Perhaps pie in the sky. We may be a ways away from that.

[00:05:36.400] - David Pierce

Yeah, that's a pipe dream at best, I think. But the idea that I could just do the things that are interesting and useful and valuable and my appliances know what I need from them in that process, that feels like it should be attainable. I feel like as we talk about smart home stuff in general, that is the level we have to get to that with so many things we're just not quite at yet.

[00:06:00.880] - Jen Patterson-Tui

Yeah, because ultimately, you could see... One of the problems with cooking is that nothing ever comes out at the same time. This is where DoorDash is great because everything's ready at once. But 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. It's like a juggling act.

It feels like technology could really help bring everything a great streamlined timeline. You preheat the oven, the overhead fan should come on automatically. There's just so many small parts that it feels like it could all come together to just make the process easier and also make us better chefs. Like the air fryer, for example, is obviously a huge revolution in the kitchen, though. It's basically a convection oven.

But a small one, it's so fast. That's another story. But, yeah, technology can make us better chefs, better cooks, and do better in the kitchen. That's where we're at now. Perhaps eventually we'll have a kitchen that actually can cook for us one day beyond the microwave, which already does a pretty good job of that for you.

[00:07:03.190] - David Pierce

True. Yeah. So you want the beauty in the beast kitchen? I mean, I really do, too. I guess I'm lying to myself. It would be great to have every once in a while.

[00:07:12.000] - Jen Patterson-Tui

Well, all the robots that you just say, go cook my dinner for me, and it goes into the kitchen and gets everything for you. It would be nice. Yeah, I mean, Rosie, the robot dream. But yeah, ultimately, though, cooking is fun, right? A lot of people enjoy cooking. I am a huge home chef. For my last large birthday, rather than get the sports car, my midlife crisis was a brand new kitchen.

[00:07:38.740] - David Pierce

I love that.

[00:07:39.970] - Jen Patterson-Tui

I know. And I wanted to make it smart. I was like, I mean, I'm a smart home reviewer. I should have a smart kitchen. And it was surprisingly hard.

[00:07:47.850] - David Pierce

Yeah. Actually, one of the things I was going to ask you at the beginning is 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 incrementally better over time.

And I think lights are a fun example. 10 years ago, it was like, Oh, you can turn on your lights, and now you can do some 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 I can sync up my lights to my television so that what I'm watching affects the lighting in the room, that's objectively cool and pretends to be bigger, more interesting things over time. It feels to me like the smart kitchen is still a collection of individually smart things, but nothing bigger than that.

But I'm curious, you have to go through this process as a person who does this for a living. Paint us a picture of Jen's Smart Kitchen.

[00:08:35.840] - Jen Patterson-Tui

So it's still very much individually smart gadgets. And that's 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 a robot that washes our dishes. We've got 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.

This is where apps and AI and the smart kitchen could be so much more useful, 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.

[00:09:45.120] - Jen Patterson-Tui

I have to answer your question, so I have a Thermador oven, which is owned by... It's Bosch. It's Bosch and Thermador, a sister company. Then a Thermador dishwasher. They're both smart using the Home Connect appliance app.

[00:10:00.000] - Jen Patterson-Tui

Which is Bosch's smart home app. I was able to connect it to voice assistance, and I can start it remotely. But there are all sorts of caveats, like I have to turn a certain knob on the oven in order to be able to access it remotely, which half the time I've forgotten to do.

Those types of frustration, I think it's the safety feature, and I get it, but those two appliances I got about two years ago, and I 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 And it is an amazing device, but it doesn't work with anything else.

I just have to do everything in this little pot. And then other parts of my smart kitchen are my smart fridge. 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.

[00:11:06.030] - Jen Patterson-Tui

So even if I went and bought a new fridge today, the capabilities are comparable, which is nice. Samsung has done a good job there keeping the software up to date. But it's still a giant Android touch screen 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 Moan. And again, it's in its own little eco system.

[00:11:30.810] - Jen Patterson-Tui

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.

[00:11:38.110] - Jen Patterson-Tui

Okay, two reasons. First, it does have a sensor, so you can just swipe on and off, and that's the most useful because 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. I'm beyond this stage.

But for example, if you have a baby and you're filling a baby bottle, you can have it dispense exactly the right type of water, exactly the right amount. When you go and put your tea spoon 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, if I'm cooking and I have a big pot and I can be like, Hey, Moën, 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.

[00:12:41.980] - Jen Patterson-Tui

It's like we stick Wi-Fi chips in things, and then we figure out down the road whether there's something good that we can do here. 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 find some solutions to over these next two episodes.

[00:13:02.770] - David Pierce

Yeah, it is really interesting. I think the fact that the thermomix is so useful to you and so many other people. People love the thermomix. I feel like it is nearing the kitchen aid territory of just people who buy one then obsessively talk about how much they love it.

As somebody who relatively recently actually went and finally bought a kitchen aid and a bunch of attachments, 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 need to exist is 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, 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.

[00:13:46.830] - Jen Patterson-Tui

Convenient.

[00:13:47.670] - David Pierce

Right. You can control it in one app. You know where it is. 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, can't be the future.

The idea that you're going to have one single appliance that does everything, and that's how we solve the smart kitchen, 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 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 its original pieces, but make them all make more sense together.

[00:14:26.770] - Jen Patterson-Tui

Exactly. Yes. They all need to work together. And I think that starts with, the core really is the fridge. And, 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 10 years ago, there were some really good ideas about food management.

And food management really is the core piece that you need to make the smart kitchen work. 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 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 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.

[00:15:35.070] - Jen Patterson-Tui

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. Then one of the other areas that I've really struggled with in terms of understanding the benefit of the smart kitchen is the WiFi 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. Samsung knows every time I've opened my fridge. So there's a privacy issue, I think, also that is worth considering when you're jumping in 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 harness that power and end up helping save energy in our kitchens, that gives you a really good reason right there to start with the smart kitchen, I think.

[00:16:38.680] - David Pierce

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 is talk 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.

[00:17:25.210] - David Pierce

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 just spring on me in the middle of an interview.

[00:17:41.800] - Jen Patterson-Tui

The British invasion of the Verge cast. Set up who these folks are and what we're about to talk to them about.

[00:17:49.600] - David Pierce

Why do you want to have them on the show?

[00:17:50.970] - Jen Patterson-Tui

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.

[00:18:07.860] - David Pierce

We're a software company who are working with many of the large appliance manufacturers to empower them to actually deliver on the forms of the smart kitchen.

[00:18:16.380] - Jen Patterson-Tui

Its main goal 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, sous vide, 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. Right now, I think the only appliance you can use with the Fresco app is the Instant Pot.

But it's an interesting approach to that interoperability issue that we've been discussing. He describes the Fresco Kitchen OS app as 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.

[00:19:33.300] - Jen Patterson-Tui

Yeah, agreed. And then the other is ≈ of Samsung Food.

[00:19:37.850] - Nick Holzer

I was the founder of Whisk, which was a startup that Samsung acquired and turned into what is now Samsung Food.

[00:19:44.160] - Jen Patterson-Tui

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 Whisk app, or 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 Whisk app has transformed into the Samsung Food app, which was launched last year, although 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 Smart Fridge.

Samsung 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.

[00:20:52.220] - Jen Patterson-Tui

So they have lots of strong feelings about the smart kitchen, and they have great accents, too.

[00:20:57.560] - David Pierce

Well, 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 big vision for how all of this is supposed to feel as you cook, which I thought was very cool. It's an awesome interview. Let's just play it here. Let's roll it. All right, so I just want to start with 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, Jetsons-y terms. Maybe someday, decades in the future, it'll 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 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.

[00:21:45.920] - Nick Holzer

We talk about joy, making cooking more joyful. I think there's lots of things that can do that for people. For some people, it's taste. For some people, it 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? 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.

[00:22:16.050] - David Pierce

Ben, what about you?

[00:22:17.080] - Ben Harris

Ben Harris (22:17)

Similarly, joy is definitely something that we have latched on to. And it is really unique in the kitchen from an experience point of view. When we really think about a moment, I think that we're most focused on is that inner glow that you have when you've sat down the table and your friends or your family are licking a plate 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 to get into that moment as easily as possible and giving them confidence to be able to get there.

I can add maybe a bit more context to that and how we see we can get there, just how we think about the space a little bit.

I think one constant, I would say in the kitchen appliance market over the course of the last 100 years has been any appliance, any product that can give you better results with less effort has ultimately been successful. To oven, to microwave 50 years ago to stand mixers 100 years ago, to pressure cookers, to air fryers in the last couple of years, just how fast that has changed the market, which I think air fryers are an amazing example.

[00:23:30.180] - Ben Harrie

And now leveraging IoT and AI and content creators and screens out there, is there a potential for us to finally deliver that friend chef or a Jamie Oliver sitting next to you in the kitchen, essentially, just by leveraging technology to actually say, actually, no, this is how you add a squeeze of lemon in here, or this is how you can soften a cantaloupe, or this is how you peel an onion, and now your steak is done.

I think it's those little tips and tricks and helpers that we believe we can leverage technology to deliver that will ultimately be what the smart kitchen is, which has a bit of a dirty name at the minute, I think.

[00:24:09.260] - Jen Patterson-Tui

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.

My theory is it's already so technologically advanced that it's hard to get to that next step. I understand you guys are saying, Well, the outcome we're looking for is to make this kitchen experience seamless and make us all Jamie Oliver's or Nigella Lawson's 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.

[00:25:11.690] - Nick Holzer

I think the way we look at it is, 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, for example, with food waste, you know that there's thousands of dollars.

The food in the US is $3,000 per person a year. They're wasting on food. The majority of consumers want to reduce their waste, whether it's for environmental reasons or financial reasons or other reasons. That's an area where we know there's a problem. That's 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.

That's making the cooking process more joyful. You're not watching softs go 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 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.

[00:26:09.760] -  David Pierce

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. It's 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.

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 everything around that.

That maybe I actually don't mind standing in front of my stove, flipping my pancake. 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, It's an Instacart. It turns out actually a lot of people really like going to the grocery store. It's a process. It's a thing. People enjoy it. People do it on purpose. Automating that out of existence is actually not what people are looking for. 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.

You're both describing everything around that as the more interesting set of problems.

[00:27:10.480] - Nick Holzer

I think it's really not joyful. If you're cooking something and you're burning it, 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, is there a robotic part to my oven that does something that 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... It's like art. It's a hobby. In fact, it's the world's number two hobby, right? Cooking, if you survey people, it’s the number two hobby in the world. People like it. They do it not just for the sustenance.

[00:28:04.070] - Jen Patterson-Tui

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... Yes, on Saturday morning, when I want to whip up the pancakes and I want to do the rasberry compote, and the French press coffee. I'm going to enjoy putting that all together. But on a Monday afternoon, when my kids are 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 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 both sides to this coin?

[00:28:49.500] - Ben Harris

I think that's a really interesting way of looking at it. And we look at it in a similar way from a product point of view. It's like when you come home, to your point, in DoorDash, we have the promise of the food replicator that I just push a button and then food arrives at my door in DoorDash or Uber Eats and delivers it across Europe.

So I think that's how we also think about it from a product point of view, 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?

And after both of them, you feel that guilt and sliminess and a bit of dirtiness if you've gotten takeaway or you feel that wholesomeness and happiness if you've cooked. You've all experienced that 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?

[00:29:54.900] - Ben Harris

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 I'll give you all the helping hand in these monitoring pieces to ensure and give you confidence that you're going to get great results that we believe 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 I heard as well. And this Betty Crocker analogy of when it's initially when the powder mixes were released in the '50s, and they were like bobbling on from a sales point of view.

So you had to add, I think, just add water and then bang it in the oven. And the sales are like, tipping along. And they did the consumer research and people just said, I just don't feel like I'm cooking. 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 put it in. Suddenly the dynamic changed to be, okay, I'm now cooking this and I'm now gifting people this cake.

And I have the pride, and then suddenly sales skyrocketed. And that's really, I think, where we are in the cooking assistant that we ultimately deliver.

[00:31:10.290] - Nick Holzer

To 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, to David's point. I don't choose to go to the grocery store. If I'm trying to cook something, it 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 that. So I cook three or four times the amount that's needed, and then I put it in the fridge or the freezer, and I will reheat it and make it later.

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 small incremental parts where when you add it together, it does get rid of some of that hassle and annoying stuff that you have to go through to make a meal.

And remember all the right ingredients, make sure you've got the right quantities, adapt the recipe 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.

[00:32:23.590] - Jen Patterson-Tui

Okay, you mentioned the fridge. When am I going to be able 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. That convenience is like, I don't think anyone would argue with that.

[00:32:47.050] - Nick Holzer

I think the answer is yes. I think it's possible to say that with more confidence in the last year due to the advances of AI. The challenge has been AI hasn't been good enough to truly deliver on that. The latest version of the Family Hub, which is released this year, as you said, it tracks in and out actions on the fridge. That is new, and it does accurately understand a good number of ingredients.

No real user or Very, very, very few users are going to manually input that stuff into their phones or their fridges or wherever it happens to be. You have to automate it. And people have tried things like barcode scanners on bins. So as you put things in the bin, you scan the bar. 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... Some of it's here in some of the latest appliances. Of course, need the latest one. Last year, it hasn't got the right cameras in it and stuff. But 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 to be able to leverage.

I think 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.

[00:34:08.960] - David Pierce

Ben, what are you seeing on that front, too? Because I think you're in a position of being less specifically integrated with an ecosystem, but also being able to look more broadly at a lot of stuff.

Like Jen is talking about, Nick, I'm sure, is required by company policy to exclusively have Samsung appliances everywhere. But most people have this amalgamation of stuff.

And I think one of the things it seems like is maybe we don't need all of these things to be perfectly intimately connected to get some of this stuff you're talking about. But you're also in a position of being able to make the hole greater than the sum of its parts of the kitchen. Are you seeing the same stuff with AI there?

[00:34:45.320] - Ben Harris

Yes, absolutely. It's been transformational and I think has accelerated what we thought was only possible over the course of a five year time horizon to a twelve month time horizon. It's rapid changes are what's possible in the market.

So for context, Fresco is working with Panasonic, GE Appliances, LG, Bosch, Kenwood, Instant Brands, and so multiple other appliance brands on our platform.

Actually today, or when this podcast goes live, we're announcing a new partnership with a group called Middleby, which owns brands like Viking and deeply integrates into their connected ovens and delivers the whole connected experience there as well. Because exactly to your point, no, the kitchen is a single brand.

If you want to deliver a delightful cooking experience, it needs to be able to move from each brand to the next and elegantly move across the full kitchen. And as Nick touched on there, it's this dot connecting, which is needed in the kitchen.

This is what we see right now, people 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 what's possible on their appliance manual or on their interface.

So as Panasonic, one of our partners say, is that the only thing that microwaves are used for in the States is to reheat food and to make somewhere.

[00:36:23.480] - Jen Patterson-Tui

Heat coffee.

[00:36:24.140] - Ben Harris

Yes, exactly. And coffee. But it's got unbelievable capabilities inside of being able to perfectly defrost a pound of turkey. It's just making Nick's 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 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.

[00:36:59.050] - Jen Patterson-Tui

So 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 I can just press a button and have all the settings go to the Viking oven.

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. Every time a new smart oven comes out, it's just its own little ecosystem.

There's the Thermomix, which David and I have talked about in the past and It's just a joy to use. It's a great smart kitchen gadget, but it's siloed in its own ecosystem. I mean, everyone has an oven in their kitchen. Most people have a stove top. 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.

[00:38:08.380] - Jen Patterson-Tui

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 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 pull out an app or use an interface or use voice? I mean, is that a realistic future in the smart kitchen or do we need to still be there and press buttons?

[00:38:56.940] - Ben Harris

I don't think we're that far away now, which is incredibly exciting where we are in the journey. I agree. I see a future where there's 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 has to be multimodal.

So you can look at your Apple Watch and see, okay, it's like another three minutes until your rice is ready, synced to the finish of your chicken in the oven. So it all starts to come together at exactly the same time. And you can have this automated process to move to your point from the defrosting in the Panasonic oven to the quick transfer if you needed to move over to another appliance.

We have standardized the communication and the data format we believe needed for delivering this delightful guided cooking experience in creating a digital representation of any recipe and digital representation of any appliance.

So really trying to break down how to digitally represent an appliance in the back-end infrastructure to allow you, again, to connect the dots between all of these things and ultimately deliver this joyful experience.

[00:40:05.860] - Jen Patterson-Tui

When you say digitally represent, can you break that down? What's it doing? So my cooking app, say my Samsung Food app or my New York Times recipe app, it could know to turn my oven to broil or sous vide. How's that actually working in the back-end?

[00:40:22.200] - Ben Harris

So we scoured thousands of appliance manuals and millions of recipes online. So we crawled them and put them through our AI a pipeline to start to process them. And we realized, initially, this has now grown, but there's actually 77 cooking capabilities. So bake, broil, steam, sous vide.

[00:40:41.520] - Jen Patterson-Tui

77, that's a lot.

[00:40:44.660] - Ben Harris

Eight ways to describe them. So time, temperature, speed, humidity, power. So suddenly, once you have that Rosetta Stone, that's how you can then map a recipe to an appliance and appliance capability and control.

We now patented some of this experience as well, how it's actually done, but 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 it could say, roast your chicken for an hour at 180 degrees.

I think the amazing thing is 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. If you have to give this generic one, that's definitely going to not poison people. So invariably, it's always over-cooked and dry. Whereas these appliances now have unbelievable technology in them. With the temperature probe and heating maps, you've got chicken programs and the likes as well.

But all of these appliances now have all these 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 can't actually 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 your chicken ends up moist on the inside, crispy on the outside every single time and across your full kitchen. So that's the real opportunity.

[00:42:14.630] - Jen Patterson-Tui

Doesn't that need to be 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.

People are concerned about buying smart appliances because what is the benefit to me? And it's going to be obsolete, is it, in 5 or 10 years? Whereas I want my... Most stoves, you can have an auger 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?

[00:42:53.760] - Nick Holzer

Well, I think things like matter are meaningful when you've got Apple, Amazon, Google, or Samsung, and others around the table. And Fresco.

That's number one, number one, exactly. That is meaningful. Of course, we can't force everyone to take part. 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 the others will eventually join. And I think ultimately, it's driven by consumer demand.

The software part becomes a little bit less important because as long as it works with matter, it'll then work with all the different all the matter devices, and you can switch that out 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.

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 preference has changed.

[00:43:45.910] - Jen Patterson-Tui

We have the federated kitchen. Yeah.

[00:43:48.020] - Nick Holzer

But actually, one thing I would say is I'm a startup founder. I'm not a company executive, I think, in my heart, but I'm still here at Samsung. And why? I think it's actually really exciting for me.

My personal reason is we have so many different appliances that are not just in the kitchen, just at Samsung, which we have first-party access to. Tvs are one, watches and phones are another, and then, of course, we got the kitchen. So what we can now, what we're starting to do is connect all these different parts where if I wasn't part of Samsung, I would basically need to go and build partnerships with another Fitbit or Apple Watch or whatever to try and get that data in. At Samsung, we have that data here.

If I have TVs, I have to go to a different TV company. We have it. It's all first-party. And first-party gives you, in today's security and privacy world, also gives you some benefits. There is interconnectivity that we can develop here. And then hopefully, 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 would love to have different parts to my house.

I'm never going to buy all my appliances from just one company. I know David joked that my whole kitchen is just Samsung. I do have a family hub, and I do have a bunch of Samsung devices, which I love. But yes, I also have to apply it to my house.

[00:45:04.280] - Jen Patterson-Tui

Sure. Yeah, I mean, it's not just the kitchen, is it? There's the laundry room. In Europe, in particular, the laundry rooms in the kitchen. So there's so much more this can extend to within the smart home, because it does at the moment, again, it feels like the smart kitchen is siloed.

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 you'll be watching TV and maybe watch an episode of Taste Made, which is the only thing my husband watches. And then you could snap a picture and your oven could be ready.

Your fridge can order you the food and your oven can get ready for... But I keep using that analogy. 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, as we wrap up, where do you see the future integration of the smart kitchen beyond just remote control of appliances? What is the vision here where we can feel like our kitchen is worth adding smart technology into our kitchen?

[00:46:08.000] - Jen Patterson-Tui

Where is the ultimate smart kitchen future for both of you?

[00:46:11.500] - Ben Harris

Back to what I mentioned earlier, it becomes your sous-chef through the whole process. To your point, we've got to feed from what's in your fridge and what's in your pantry.

So it's like, oh, you've got this aubergine before it goes off. Here's a couple of nice recipes for you. Then your oven is starting to preheat. Here's all the other pieces that you need so you can start cooking. And it's just giving you the right prompt. So also you can just remove that cognitive load.

So you're not worried sitting there stirring rice sitting over the stove. You know you're going to get a ping when it's ready 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. And then everyone's delighted. That is absolutely what drives me and the full team here at Fresco.

[00:46:59.630] - Jen Patterson-Tui

Are we there now, though, or is that the future? It sounds like you feel like we're already there.

[00:47:05.500] - Ben Harris

No, no, no. There's definitely work to do to get there. But I think, yeah, that's where we can see is not too far away now. And I think, as I mentioned earlier, it takes time for hardware to be developed and shipped. So we have a view now as to where the kitchen is going to be in 12, 24, 36 months. And I think one of the inspiring things, I would say, that we can remind ourselves of is that everyone thinks the kitchen space moves slowly.

But I think just if you look at air fryers, I think it's just such an amazing example of how they've gone from no one talking about them four or five years ago to now being in everyone's kitchen and everyone talking about the way we cook.

So that's something that has globally been transformed in a relatively short period of time. And that can move faster with software. So I think that's what we're excited about over the course of the next couple of years.

[00:48:01.620] - Nick Holzer

For me, I think it's all the different parts of your journey from inspiration to meal on the table, whether that is planning, shopping, cooking, eating, all of those parts. We have different features that we've already built in those, which we are going to incrementally keep improving upon.

But ultimately, it comes down to sensors being able to predict and make a more predictive experience for us, and then integrations into more devices. So it works more seamlessly with devices. And those are all incremental changes. And I think there's a fundamental vision. I don't think it's going to change drastically there.

I think those are the real problems that we're in the kitchen that we're 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 biggest ones, but there's lots and lots of other ones, too, which matter a lot.

I do think there's a real role to play. 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, especially in those two things, diabetes and people being overweight. I think that the opportunity to help people is huge. Actually, it also drives consumer choice.

Ben mentions the air fryer. One of the reasons why people like an air fryer is not because it's another thing to put on your kitchen counter, and it cooks stuff. It's because it cooks stuff healthily without oil. 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. I've seen how good software experiences can help me be healthy. I think it's a big problem in the world, and I think we have a lot that we can contribute to the world.

[00:50:07.500] - David Pierce

I really enjoyed that. I have been thinking ever since we did it about the idea of joy in the kitchen being a thing, which 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 monotonous nonsense? The remembering to turn on the oven and how to set timers and at your voice assistant. What if just the fun things was what you did in the kitchen? And what a great fish and tennis. I love that. It is.

[00:50:39.370] - Jen Patterson-Tui

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 extracurricular activities.

Joy of cooking maybe on a Sunday afternoon, but not on a Monday when I'm desperate. We're currently trying to get food on the table. 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 try and see how using technology to make things streamlined and easier in the kitchen will 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 veg cusp?

[00:51:33.230] - David Pierce

Oh, I mean, about your kids and 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.

[00:51:46.090] - Jen Patterson-Tui

Makes it easier to cook.

[00:51:48.380] - David Pierce

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 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 optimistic about what the next couple of years are going to be. I think, of course, they are. They're in this space. They founded companies. They're startup guys, right? Of course, they're optimistic about where this is going.

But you've been in the 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 make 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…

[00:52:37.470] - Jen Patterson-Tui

You know me, I'm very optimistic. True. And I do feel like, as we said at the beginning, that 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.

People aren't going to go and buy all new appliances. I still think we're going to see a lot of these individual appliances. Like air fryers we've talked about. Everyone loves air fryers, but it's another device and another gadget you go put in your kitchen.

I feel like that 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. 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.

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.

[00:53:59.300] - Jen Patterson-Tui

As much as they're all starting to work together, we all know how well that works out.

[00:54:04.460] - David Pierce

So before we get out of here, you have signed up to heroically run a self experiment on your sofa in next week's episode. What is this experiment? Tell us what you're in for before we get out of here.

[00:54:17.240] - Jen Patterson-Tui

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 assistants, 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 test a little bit of what Nick and Ben were telling us and see how it all works out. 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.

[00:54:59.910] - David Pierce

Is your family prepared for what you're about to do to them?

[00:55:02.540] - Jen Patterson-Tui

No.

[00:55:03.360] - David Pierce

Okay, good.

[00:55:04.550] - Jen Patterson-Tui

That's right for the best. I will just spring it on them.

[00:55:06.600] - David Pierce

And who knows? Maybe it'll go amazing.

[00:55:08.020] - Jen Patterson-Tui

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.

[00:55:17.420] - David Pierce

Yeah, we've asked you to keep a 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 Jenn's experiment. Until then, that is it for the VergeCast. Thanks to Jenn and Nick and Ben for being on the show. And thank you, as always, for listening.

This show is produced by Andrew Moreno, Liam James, and Will Pour. 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 the Smart Home series. That's the VergeCast. See you next time. Rock and roll.