More people will move into cities, and our living spaces will become smaller. Natural resources will become more scarce, food more expensive, and waste an increasingly urgent issue. Near-instant grocery delivery will alter how we shop for and store food, and technology will be embedded in every part of our homes. What will the kitchen of the future look like, and, more important, what will it feel like to cook, eat, and socialize there?

A number of companies are looking to disrupt the cooking (and eating) space as consumers continue to demand convenience in the kitchen. Technological advancements have taken regular kitchen appliances altogether to a different level. Nowadays, smart kitchen appliances available in the market are integrated with sensors, which has boosted the market. These appliances also offer easy operability and are energy efficient, which keep them ahead from traditional kitchen appliances. Moreover, growing prices of energy are expected to fuel the demand for smart kitchen appliance in the forthcoming years. Rising disposable income in both developed and developing regions is also expected to benefit the market’s growth. In the United States, the most advanced country from this point of view, smart home technology penetration was 7.1% in 2018, but projections expect it to rise to 22.1% by 2023.

However, the high cost incurred on initial set-up and maintenance may hamper the growth prospects of the smart kitchen appliances market. In addition, lack of awareness and hesitant customers are also restraining the growth of this market.

What is smart cooking?

Smart cooking experience is enabled by smart cooking devices which represent an integral part of the smart kitchen. Put simply, smart cooking means bringing Bluetooth connected technology into the kitchen so that appliances can communicate with each other, and with an app you control, to deliver the best tasting and most consistent results. In an age where this kind of connectivity is cheaper than ever, many smart cookware providers seek to improve the culinary experience and educate the home cook, rather than merely add tech for tech's sake. The last thing people need is a toaster that requires an app to operate: the push-down lever is still a great user interface for making toast.

The goal is to empower users with the tools to produce restaurant quality dishes with ease. Smart cookware providers want to add innovative technology to the kitchen arsenal of gadgets to give people the confidence to cook recipes they wouldn’t have dared try before. The truly smart kitchen harnesses all the techniques that top chefs spend their lives learning, and factors in all variables to set you up for success. It accumulates hours of experience over the stove and puts the power of culinary expertise in the home cook’s hands. But at the same time, it creates room for flexibility and creativity so that you can learn the essentials of good cooking while feeling free to find your own style. For the novice in the kitchen, it delivers the confidence needed to cook at home. For the more experienced cook, it provides a trusted sous-chef that helps turn an ordinary Tuesday night dinner into a special menu they might otherwise only attempt on a free weekend.

Three trends that will reinvent cooking journey

1. Personalized cooking journey

The biggest shift in the kitchen will be personalization, where cooking and meals are adjusted to the needs and choices of each individual. Combining appliances with other assets, like apps or connected voice assistants, can inspire and easily guide consumers to cook meals to their own taste, achieve perfect results and boost their confidence into trying new meals. This change is driven by the increasing demand for more flexibility in when and where consumers eat, increasing consumer demand for greater cooking experiences as well as the constant exploration of new flavors, cooking techniques and new recipes.

2. Less complex and more seamless

According to a study by Google, consumers generally google food inspiration and recipes two to three times a week, and the most difficult part in the kitchen for most consumers is to decide what to cook. Kitchen appliances that work seamlessly together with other devices and are connected with online food platforms have enormous potential to simplify and save time in the kitchen by tailoring recipes, guidance and cooking programs. New technology like assisted cooking that guides the consumer through the whole cooking journey – from inspiration to shopping and cooking – will boost the personalization trend and create better consumer experiences.

3. Sustainable cooking

Consumers’ interest in eating and cooking healthy and nutritious food is growing. At the same time, awareness of food safety and the importance of combatting food waste is growing. New technology has great potential to tackle these issues. Several ideas and innovations to help the consumer eat more healthy and to simplify the reduction of food waste emerged at the Summit. For example, apps that guide consumers to cook meals on what they have available in their fridge so that groceries don’t end up in the bin.

Welcome to the Era of Cooking Convergence (Why Sous Vide is Going the Way of DVR)

It may be hard to remember in a world with Hulu, Netflix, and Apple TV, Apple TV+, but back in the early 2000s one of the coolest new technologies was this thing called the digital video recorder (DVR).

Better known by the brand name TiVo (“Hey, did you TiVo Sopranos last night?”), these “magic” boxes completely changed how we watch TV. Instead of being at the mercy of some broadcast or cable network’s schedule, you could watch a show when it was convenient for you, pause it to go to the bathroom or rewind to see an amazing scene over again.

While the cable and satellite TV companies initially resisted DVR technology, they eventually realized this revolutionary technology wasn’t going away, and today practically everyone with pay TV has show recording built into their set-top box. In other words, what started as an amazing new product category – the DVR – eventually just became another feature of a more established product category (the pay-TV set-top box).

Integrating what was once a standalone product into a multi-feature device is called digital convergence, and it’s long been common in the world of technology. Now, as food and cooking become more digital, we’ll likely see a lot more of it in our kitchens.

Take sous vide, a cooking technology with many similarities to the DVR circa 2004:

• Once people try it, they have a hard time going back to a world without it
• For consumers, it’s early on in the technology’s adoption cycle
• Most consumers who do it use specialized equipment (sous vide immersion circulators)

Perhaps most importantly, it’s something that could easily become a feature on a more general purpose appliance. In fact, it already is: The new Thermomix TM6 has sous vide as a feature, and new Instant Pot-like multicookers are featuring sous vide with a sous vide button, making it one of the 10 or 12 functions on a multifunction device. And Electrolux, which has offered sous vide in their high-end combi-ovens for a few years, introduced a smart oven with integrated sous vide last year.

Of course, all this begs the question: will standalone sous vide immersion circulators eventually go away? Probably. It may take a while, but there’s a high chance that a decade from now most people will sous vide using a countertop multicooker or built-in oven rather than a standalone circulator.

But this trend is not just about sous vide; slow-motion digital convergence has been quietly underway for the past few years in the kitchen. It’s what brought us the reinvention of the pressure cooker in the Instant Pot, new multifunction appliances like those announced by Whirlpool at CES and even some new crazy cooking robots. It’s also why beer brewing appliances are starting to make coffee and smart ovens can add new features in software like a routine for cooking plant-based meat.

So does digital cooking convergence mean everything in the kitchen will eventually become a Swiss Army knife with 10 built-in features? No. Tools are still tools, and there’s great staying power for simplicity. A great chef’s knife will always be a great chef’s knife.

But those for products or features that require specialized equipment today that could easily be integrated into another appliance, there’s a good chance it will in the long term. And like the DVR, it’s that kind of integration that eventually brings new features to a wider audience and give them permanent staying power.