Foodini
Less than 36 hours ago the Foodini –a 3D Food Printer launched on Kickstarter asking for $100,000 of funding, with 28 days still remaining Natural Machines’ kitchen appliance is already half way there.
The machine, which was seen recently at Michelin starred Dos Cielos restaurant, aims to take the more repetitive tasks away from food preparation and use fresh ingredients to make healthy and tasty food.
“We don’t have six hours a day that we did 50 years ago to make all our snacks and food homemade,” says Natural Machines CEO Lynetter Kucsma. “It is really going back to making fresh food with fresh ingredients.”
The Foodini plots out shapes like a normal FDM printer but instead of putting in plastic filament you turn your ingredients into a paste (by blending or crushing) and fill capsules, which are then extruded out onto a removable surface ready to bake, fry or eat cold.
After a fair few prototypes the final product looks pretty neat and certainly an appliance that would not look out of place in a futuristic kitchen next to the internet fridge and the gesture hob. The RRP for the machine is $1,300 (£780, €950) but early bird backers on Kickstarter can pick it up for $999 and expect the first batch of machines in January 2015.
Natural Machines are hoping to create a community around their machine by integrating an app into the touch screen display. The app will allow users to share ideas recipes, and step by step guides for creating the ingredients and the shapes, as well as rating and offering feedback. One key growth area in this community could be for those with allergies and intolerances – wheat intolerance? Leave out the wheat. Nut allergy? – Leave out the nuts.
The hope is that people stop buying processed foods packed with preservatives inside preparing their own. The Barcelona company have big ambitions for their machine; they have a major manufacturing partner lined up to complete their Kickstarter orders and have received offers from over 40 professional kitchens, who want to make elaborate designs for presentation purposes.
Would you want a printer in your kitchen? Tell us below.