Roasting coffee is complicated. Subtle changes in timing and temperature can noticeably affect the flavor of your coffee, and getting things right often requires meticulous tweaks to your roaster settings—or hands-on attention to the roast itself.
But a company called Behmor wants to simplify this painstaking process, with help from the internet. If you spring for company’s forthcoming coffee roaster, you can use your smartphone to adjust the machine’s settings, finely tuning your roast from wherever you are.
It’s just the latest expansion of what’s called the Internet of Things, where everyday devices, from light bulbs to coffee roasters, are connected to the net. But the story behind the Behmor roaster is a little different.
Behmor isn’t some hot tech startup. It’s an established company that’s trying to transform its products for a new age, and it’s doing so with help from another outfit called DADO Labs. This is DADO’s mission: helping existing companies like Behmor get in on the Internet of Things action before hot new startups eat their lunch.
“It’s about helping brands that are being disrupted or could be disrupted the way Honeywell was disrupted by Nest,” says DADO CEO Tom Worley, referring to way the venerable thermostat company was upstaged by home automation startup acquired by Google last year. “We can help them respond quickly, in a few months rather than a few years.”
The end result is a more extensive and more robust Internet of Things—at least in theory.
In addition to the coffee roaster, DADO is also working with Char-Broil on a web-connected grill that provides you with information such as current cooking temperatures and tank levels on your phone, as well as a new version of the Big Easy smoker and fryer that can be automated through a slick, web-based interface.
Basically, DADO has built a standard Internet of Things platform— including a controller module, a cloud service, and smartphone apps—and then it can customize this hardware and software for use with particular devices.
For now, the company is focused on the food and drink industry, but plans to branch out into other markets soon. The idea is not just to add fancy new web-based features to existing products, but also to make them safer and easier to use. The real trick, though, will be striking the right balance between power and unobtrusiveness.
“There’s more than one Internet of Things experience,” says DADO vice president of software and business development Frank D’Andrea. “Less experienced grillers may want more automation, while more experienced grillers might not want the app in the way, they might just want to get notified when the gas tank is low.”
But there are drawbacks to DADO’s model. You have to trust the company to stick around, and keep its cloud service online, for the duration of the product’s life. In today’s tech landscape, with companies going out of business or being acquired on a daily basis, nothing is a sure bet.
But as D’Andrea points out that there’s a cycle of planned obsolesce built into most consumer products anyway. “Most grills rust out after five to seven years,” he says. But he adds that he’s not an expert on grills, and that his comment shouldn’t be seen as a reflection of the longevity of Char-Broil’s products. Nothing lasts forever, after all.
And the web-connected model offers many advantages to consumers as well. Companies can add new features to existing products, or receive notifications when a device malfunctions (as long as the consumer opts-in, of course).
“Instead of asking customers to ‘like’ a brand on Facebook, the brand can proactively reach out to the user and help them when something’s not working properly,” Worsley says. “That’s a whole new type of customer engagement.”
Correction 1/22/2015 4:00pm EST: An earlier version of this story attributed a quote about grills rusting out to Worsley. It was D’Andrea who said that. The story has also been updated to clarify that D’Andrea comment.
