What trends will shape the kitchen of the future?

Market Trend

What trends will shape the kitchen of the future?

The kitchen is the heart of the home. It’s the place that brings everyone together at both the start and the end of the day. This certainly rings true in U.S. households where people at home spend up to 60 percent of their time in the kitchen.

Recent surveys show that most Americans no longer like to cook as much as they used to because of lack of time, the skills, and the talent Our busy lifestyles require convenience in nearly everything, including food preparation, and companies are catching on. The growing need for convenience is shaping the kitchens of the future.

New inventions allow people to cook complete meals in a single appliance in just a few minutes. Imagine cooking raw proteins, fresh vegetables, dry starches, and chef-designed sauces into one perfectly cooked, restaurant quality meal. People also want to be connected. According to one survey, 73 percent of home cooks use a smartphone or tablet in the kitchen to assist with choosing a recipe, preparation, and cooking.

New services that deliver home cooked meals to your door have sprung up across the country, due in large part to the pandemic. With one company, you can give them back the special crockery the food was packed in so there is no waste for the landfill and total convenience to the homeowner.

The Dialog oven is another invention that is a combination low-frequency microwave oven, convection oven, and radiant oven all connected to a computer. It allows you to cook different things at different temperatures, all at the same time. Appliance manufacturers are constantly looking for ways to make cooking convenient and simple.

One company has developed sensors that can be embedded in appliances or containers, or in cabinets and countertops that can track the products we have in our pantries and help determine the freshness of the food in our refrigerators, and tell us new ways to prepare a meal, and let us know what foods might heal specific health concerns. Up to 25 million Americans suffer from gastrointestinal problems that might be better controlled by a diet change than by meds.

Companies have also invented smart countertops that can generate ideas on what to create. Simply place a lemon, dry pasta, butter, and cheese on a smart countertop, and a recipe pops up guiding the cook on tonight’s dinner.

The kitchen of the future continues to change, and it may morph into different formats according to the day of the week. Monday through Friday, it may be an organic vending machine used to reheat food delivered by external services, while on the weekend, it becomes a space for meal prep and cooking.