Retail Observer

DECEMBER 2019 RETAILOBSERVER.COM 39 MIKE: The entire food and cooking ecosystem Is being transformed, so it's time to work together. As I said in my intro, this year was all about figuring out how to get things done. After all, we can speak about what we think will happen in the future, but unless we take stock of what's working and what isn't, we'll take twice as long to get to our desired destination. In my first session, I had Joe Ray, fresh off his article for Wired about the smart kitchen, on stage with Nick Holzherr of Samsung and Mario Pieper of BSH Appliances to discuss just that. Joe made it clear he doesn't think many of the current connected kitchen products are ready for primetime, but he agreed there are some tech-forward products that provide true value to the consumer, and he expected there would be more in the future, once the industry figures things out. Nick Holzherr emphasized the need to focus less on gadgets and more on building well- orchestrated consumer experiences, while Mario Pieper discussed how BSH had learned many lessons early on in the connected kitchen and said the industry needs to work together to make the future kitchen vision a reality. I also had a great session on the evolving meal journey and the potential for technology to shape it with Beth Altringer of the Flavor Genome Project, Nancy Roman of Partnership for a Healthier America and Sanjeev Kapoor, India's best-known celebrity chef. While the three came to the conversation with widely varying backgrounds, all agreed that there's significant potential to address some of society's biggest problems by applying innovation to the food system and inside our own kitchens. One of my favorite sessions was a discussion I had about the changing eating habits of Gen Z and Millennials with NPD analysts Joe Derchowski and Susan Schwalle. Susan pointed out that while some in the press think many consumers have given up almost entirely on eating at home in favor of ordering out or heading to the corner restaurant, in reality the data are skewed because of the high cost of outside-of-home dining. Joe pointed out that the future of food shopping lies in the ability to connect our kitchens to retail through smart home technology. We learned how connected kitchen products hold the potential to completely reinvent how CPG product companies approach product development from Victor Penev of Edemam and Marc Drucker of Drinkworks. Drucker discussed how data gathered from consumption of cocktails with their connected drink maker helped them realize how consumers are using it during the day and identify product holes in the drink pod lineup. I talked to those founders building software for the digitization of food and the kitchen – Kevin Brown of Innit, Ben Harris of Drop, Kevin Yu of SideChef and Jeff Xie of Chefling – who all felt it's essential to reduce the effort required of the consumer by better connecting all parts of the meal journey from shopping to meal discovery to cooking itself. My belief that food waste is having a moment as a critical focus for the broader food industry was confirmed throughout the two days at SKS. Many speakers made it clear their companies have made sustainability a core focus for new products, and we saw lots of excitement for our new Wise Kitchen Initiative with the Future Food Institute to foster innovation to reduce food waste in the home. And, of course, we had a great master session on how tech and innovation are reshaping food in Japan. Led by SKS Japan's Hirotaka Tanaka, the session illustrated the diversity and passion of the rapidly growing food tech market in Japan. This session was capped off by a fascinating look at the joint project to develop food for space, Space Food-X, which included a presentation from Yuta Kikuchi of JAXA, the Japanese Space Agency. With SKS 2019 in the books, we are more excited than ever about building this community, covering the innovators and disrupters, and continuing the conversation. We are already planning for SKS 2020 and are looking forward to seeing many of you in Las Vegas at FoodTech Live @ CES to discuss how we can build this future together. Visit www.smartkitchensummit.com for more information. W E C A N S P E A K A B O U T W H AT W E T H I N K W I L L H A P P E N I N T H E F U T U R E , B U T U N L E S S W E TA K E S T O C K O F W H AT ' S W O R K I N G A N D W H AT I S N ' T, W E ' L L TA K E T W I C E A S LO N G T O G E T T O O U R D E S I R E D D E S T I N AT I O N . — Michael Wolf An Industry Working Together RO

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