
Tovala (YC W16), a smart oven that aims to perfectly cook meals in 30 minutes - confiscate
http://techcrunch.com/2016/03/08/meet-tovala-a-smart-oven-that-aims-to-perfectly-cook-ready-made-meals-in-under-30-minutes/
======
grogenaut
Summary: it's a $400 solder reflow oven for food. Eg it's a computer
controlled toaster oven with a heat profile that comes from a bar code on top
of the food you buy from the service.

Stouffers aluminum tray meals + computer control.

Wondering how they're going to solve the food quality / price / stability
issue.

~~~
wilcoxbr
Solder reflow recipes are a good idea! Although, in good conscience, I would
not suggest using the oven for food after that.

Meals are delivered, fresh and uncooked, a la ingredient delivery services. In
our case, they're already prepared and just need scanned and put in the oven.
Modified atmosphere packaging helps with shelf life and stability.

(disclosure: I'm the CTO of Tovala)

------
yitchelle
This looks like we are heading towards the ink jet printers scenario. The oven
refuses to cook the food if it detects that the user is trying to use non-
approved ingredients. The ingredients will have an edible RFID tag embedded in
it for security and ID.

/sarcasm

~~~
pdq
That's real. See Keurig 2.0 and its DRM technology. The good news is the
market has avoided it, and the regular K-cups (non-DRM) have won.

------
andyjsong
Had a number of their dishes as a beta tester. They have nice quality
ingredients. The Chicken Pozole was my favorite.

They mentioned that commercial kitchens use this type of tech. I wonder how
many restaurants in SF cook their food this way? Maybe this is the next sous
vide or at that price point, it could be your next microwave replacement.

~~~
moreorless
Apple Bees would be my guess.

------
jbob2000
I'm skeptical they can maintain quality and healthiness at scale. I mean,
there's a reason why companies like Aramark and Sodexho have such crappy food;
it's just really hard to manage supply at that kind of scale. Aside from that,
if their food is frozen or dehydrated, you pretty much destroy the healthy
parts of the food. At that point, might as well just stick with the
microwavable TV dinners.

------
pjc50
As with all products of this kind: what problem does it solve that isn't
adequately addressed by existing technology? Is it really that much better
than a microwave?

(It's entertaining to find archive advertising material from the 70s/80s when
microwaves were still brand new and the manufacturer could make all sorts of
claims about what you could cook in them.)

------
petra
In order for their business model to work, it means they have some control
over the oven, and it's not fully open. So does it mean that the app expose
only a part of the capabilities of the oven, or less accuracies, while people
who buy premade meals, get to have the full benefit ?

~~~
wilcoxbr
You have complete control over your oven through the app. You can control each
and every cooking element individually. We do have some logic in there to make
sure you don't accidentally pull too much power. Other than that, it's all
yours.

We want you to cook your own meals with it. It's great for that.

The delivery service is for folks who do not want to spend time shopping,
preparing, cooking, and cleaning. The smarts basically enable us to put a chef
in your kitchen, without actually putting a chef in your kitchen.

~~~
Eridrus
Do these ovens rely on some cloud infrastructure? Will they still work without
it?

Also, do you have some pricing information available for the delivery service?
I dig the idea, and the fact that you're part of YC gives me hope that this is
something you'll actually execute on, but I'd like to know what prices I'm
looking at before committing $250+ to it.

------
eddyg
I still like the idea of the June "intelligent" Oven.

[https://juneoven.com](https://juneoven.com)

~~~
shalmanese
Except it costs an order of magnitude more.

