To help it stay on the cutting edge of kitchen innovation, Williams-Sonoma Inc. has penned an exclusive deal with The Orange Chef to exclusively carry its products in its stores.
The retailer is also carrying The Orange Chef products online with pre-sales that started last week, according to a Wall Street Journal blog.
Some of The Orange Chef’s most recent tech products include an iPad stand, a cutting board with an iPad stand and a high-tech Prep Pad – a Web-enabled food scale and accompanying iPad app called Countertop, which provides users extensive nutritional information about the recipes they make. The Countertop app used with the Prep Pad can be voice-activated or ingredients can be typed in.
Other products that don’t involve technology per se include the Chef Sleeve, one of The Orange Chef’s first products, which is an iPad cover that allows cooks to use the touch screen while cooking without getting food on it.
Williams-Sonoma discovered The Orange Chef when the company ran a crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter for its Prep Pad smart scale. The company has since raised $3 million through Google Ventures, Spark Labs Global Ventures, New Enterprise Associate and Lerer Ventures, to name a few interested investors.
“[The Prep Pad] is all about living a healthy lifestyle and understanding the dynamics of nutrition and a balanced diet. Also, our customers have shown through the smart tools we already offer a real penchant for bringing technology into the kitchen,” said Michelle Foss, Williams-Sonoma’s vice president of merchandising.
One reason Lerer Ventures decided to back The Orange Chef is the firm’s original research indicated that 50 percent of people who have an iPad use it regularly in the kitchen.
The Orange Chef plans to use the funds it has raised to hire talent and fulfill pre-orders of the Prep Pad, according to the report. Future plans include developing new kitchen apps and tools.
