With the takeover of the start-up Yummly, Whirlpool is acquiring a major asset in the race of connected home. When Yummly, the application with more than 30 million subscribers which is using the latest data and recognition technologies, is working with the historic household appliances manufacturer, the result is explosive.
Do you know Yummly?
They describe themselves as « the most intelligent and useful food platform in existence. »
Since its creation, Yummly, a foodtech company has been connecting users with the recipes they love. Headquartered in the heart of Silicon Valley, the company uses patented technology and proprietary data to understand food and taste to meet user needs.
Yummly provides all the advice we need to improve life in the kitchen. Diets, allergies, tastes and flavour preferences, tell Yummly and it will offer you recipes that suit you. With over two million recipes, you can then refine your search according to ingredients, preparation time, occasions, nutritional needs and more. From recipe recommendations to practical tools and useful videos, Yummly has everything you need to improve life in the kitchen at every step of the process, including cooking…
This led to the merger with Whirlpool, the world’s largest manufacturer of household appliances, with sales of $20.7 billion in 2017. Whirlpool bought the Yummly application without disclosing the amount of the transaction. For Whirlpool, this is an additional step into the trend of connected kitchen.
« We are committed to bring new products to market that simplify consumers’ daily lives. Increasingly, these products will be defined by physical and numerical experiences. Yummly provides an exceptional platform to start building our digital product offering, » said Brett Dibkey, Vice President, Integrated Business Units for Whirlpool Corporation, in a news release.
For Yummly, « Integration with the Whirlpool brand will enhance the power of the application, allowing cooks to send recipes and instructions directly to the appliance, achieving an excellent result every time, » says Masiar Tayebi, Yummly’s Managing Director.
The objectives of both partners
In the latest update of Yummly 2.0, you can synchronize your Whirlpool smart appliances and add different features and functions to simplify meal preparation.
1/ Programming
People who have difficulty preparing their dinner on time will appreciate the programming option. Depending on the exact time you want to eat, you can program your oven from the Yummly 2.0 app and then sit at the table at the desired time.
2/ Ingredient recognition
Yummly 2.0 uses the latest image recognition technology to simultaneously identify multiple foods and recommend recipes based on these available ingredients. The Whirlpool appliance apprenticeship will be used to train and develop Yummly’s image recognition model.
3/ Fill out your shopping list
The Yummly Smart grocery list is the ideal way to plan your next purchases. When you find a recipe you would like to make, you can easily add all the necessary ingredients to your shopping list.
Next steps: the fully integrated kitchen
Find a recipe that suits you and apply it step by step with video tutorials, timers and practical tools to make it easier for you, Yummly and Whirlpool don’t want to stop there. In the next versions, the idea is to connect all the equipment in your kitchen so that your connected fridge can assist you and inform you when you shop and then transmit all your ingredient choices to the application. It selects recipes that match your needs and will pass the baton to your oven, microwave or Kitchen-aid (another Whirlpool product) to ensure that all your meals are a success.
The growing popularity of applications to control lights, temperature, locks, security cameras and the rapid adoption of virtual assistants such as Alexa or Google Home are strong signals to illustrate the changes taking place in our homes. The merger of companies such as Yummly and Whirlpool shows us that the cuisine of the future will certainly be different than today’s.
These developments can provide new opportunities for manufacturers and marketers to collaborate with consumers and offer them new culinary experiences. This will require addressing the issues of market fragmentation. Indeed, your Yummly application can talk to your Whirlpool oven, but if your connected microwave oven or refrigerator is from another brand, they won’t have much to say to each other…
