Kitchen conversations

A look into the meaningful roles technology could play in commercial kitchens.

This set of articles were originally published as part of a series for a YEAST lab on AI x CHEFS, during my time as YEAST’s Researcher-in-Residence. If you like what you read and want to stay updated with future YEAST posts like this, connect to its Medium channel or visit its site.

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STARTING A DIFFICULT CONVERSATION.

A little too often, chefs are content as spectators to the transformation of their own industry. Modern technology is entering the kitchen, and it’s being driven by technologists rather than chefs. And that doesn’t feel quite right. If technology is changing the way we make food, we believe the voice of chefs needs to be at the centre of the conversation.

Taking a step in that direction, we spoke with a range of people working in and around food to understand what it means to be a chef. We explored how chefs perceive their craft and how technology could change — for good or for bad — tomorrow’s kitchens.

We spoke with emerging chef talents, seasoned head chefs, food critics, leaders in food education, decision-makers at global brands and managers of professional catering services. We had conversations in kitchens in Shanghai, Los Angeles, Turin, London and Copenhagen — giving us a global perspective.

Everyone we spoke with has spent time working in commercial kitchen s— even if their paths have veered away from the stove itself, their passion for food burns bright.

YEAST’s Founder Federico in conversation with Chef Owner Dan Yi Gao

SHIFTING DEFINITIONS.

Gone are the days in which the food speaks for itself and being a chef is only about the cooking. There are more demands than ever on chefs, forcing them to stretch well beyond their core culinary skills. It isn’t rare anymore to see chefs juggling between pots and pans, balance sheets and social media. The trade is changing, and so is the definition of being a chef.

“You’ve got to figure out a way you can maintain consistency, run your business intelligently but also evolve it regularly.”

As if it weren’t challenging enough, competition is coming from all angles. People have transitioned into cooking professionally from other creative industries, whilst a generation of chefs with no formal food training are making waves on social media. While these shifts may not directly impact a brigade of chefs when the kitchen is fired up, they are building a set of novel pressures that influence them outside of service.

“You’re only as good as your next menu.”

Understanding these new demands and tensions was a necessary first step towards envisioning what meaningful roles technology could play in context of commercial kitchens.

DECODING THE CULINARY CREATIVE PROCESS.

Chefs are typically better at cooking than they are at speaking. For the most part we are glad it is this way, but it did make it more challenging to decode the cooking process of chefs. What is the journey that turns an idea into a dish?

Most chefs were either surprised or confused when we invited them to explain their creative process. Few have thought about this question, nor have they been asked to put words to it. Their knowledge — we realized — is so deeply rooted that they give the impression of being on permanent autopilot.

As the conversations progressed, the key aspects of a chef’s creative process began to surface. We observed how chefs collect inspiration; the absorption process can be anything from fully conscious to the unconscious. We realized that inside a kitchen, people are permeable to each other’s knowledge, learning and building their own personal styles as if by osmosis. We learned about how chefs plan. We were exposed to the complexity of the information chefs need to consider in order to make a decision. And, of course, we watched them cook. That final moment, ephemeral and spontaneous, where all of the above converges and comes out in the form of an entree, a soup or a dessert.

We built a framework for our learnings. This helped us to explore where technology would be most useful and desirable.

A framework to explore where technology would be most useful and desirable.

THE FOUNDATION OF CREATION.

Capturing inspiration, exchanging knowledge and exploring one’s style happen simultaneously, building a foundation upon which chefs create. A lot of this happens seamlessly, with chefs barely realizing what is going on.

When it comes to inspiration, for example, chefs reference personal experiences, travelling and other cultures as sources to evolve their understanding and perspective about food. It’s impossible to pre-empt which past experiences might pop up and trigger an idea, yet reference points get stored in a sort of mental sketch-book that help forge the chef’s culinary identity.

Chefs today also have limitless access to inspiration. But such an accessibility is a double-edged sword for creativity in the kitchen. The digital platforms that chefs use for food inspiration are the same they use for social media. This allows for near-constant, crudely targeted stimulation for chefs; not necessarily the right information to inspire them creatively.

“We have so much shared information now. This is one of the big challenges moving forward as chefs. Nothing is hidden really. Everything is there in images and text.”

With the limitless information, it would be a wonder for any chef to be able to leverage its full potential. Chefs explained that their inspirations don’t always come from the food itself, yet food is largely what they look at when they go online. Yet most of the creative tools available for chefs focus on food recipes; despite the fact that most of the chefs we spoke with don’t even follow recipes!

This is quite different from other creative industries, where analogous inspiration and cross-pollination of ideas are common practice. The idea of looking for inspiration outside of one’s industry is nothing new for designers, architects and artists. What’s holding chefs back?

KNOWLEDGE & STYLE.

Chefs keep a wealth of essential information stored in their head, imparting it verbally and rarely writing it down. They accumulate this knowledge working in different environments, sharing chef tips with colleagues and watching others work. Each kitchen compounds the combined experiences of chefs working there at that time. It is a fluid, constantly evolving body of knowledge. Unsurprisingly, it is rarely documented.

“It’s all in my head.”

The chef’s learning process is not just about copying like-for-like. It’s also about learning to interpret in their own unique way and being given the freedom to develop intuition. This freedom is what enables them to feel creatively fulfilled. Yet in order to create the consistency required by most food establishments, chefs also have to master specifics rules about a kitchen. This creates a tension between consistency and creativity. How should both co-exist in today’s commercial kitchens? How can technology play a role in preserving and expanding a kitchen’s knowledge?

Style is hard to cultivate without the core culinary skills in place. Most chefs can trace their cooking roots, but few were able to articulate their individual culinary style.

“You find your style while you are working, you don’t develop your style.”

Chefs find it hard to distinguish their style from the cuisine of the places they worked. This felt especially true of chefs who worked in kitchens where menus were created as a group. This collaborative approach to creation allows chefs to learn from different cultures and ways of working. But there’s a risk that the act of creating from many different backgrounds leads to menus that lack a distinct through line. One chef we spoke to even suggested that if a kitchen’s identity is defined by its concerted desire for diversity, this can detract from the cohesiveness of its vision.

“Now more than ever we should try to protect particularity in cooking; there’s a tendency now we have this mass of information to move towards generalised world cuisine.”

THE ART OF CREATION.

The visioning moment is where the chef’s experiences, inspirations and constraints-on-hand come together. Chefs combine creative judgement and technical skills, balancing their creative ego with the direction of the head chef or restaurant.

“Unless you are a high-end restaurant you are feeding and nourishing people, so there is that basic practical need you are fulfilling. If you get too lost in your own creativity you move further away from the basic purpose of a restaurant.”

A team of chefs working together in a kitchen.

Professional chefs rarely cook on their own. They are a team who need a clear vision to work towards. This adds an additional layer of responsibility to the head chef, who is ultimately responsible for guaranteeing that the vision and direction are relatable to all of the brigade.

Interestingly enough, even though most chefs were unable to articulate their own style, it was clear that their team understood it without it needing to be laid out in words.

LOST IN THE WORK OF MAKING.

Chefs deal with many variables in their head during the creation process. Part of a chef’s creativity is also working around constraints — whether it’s seasonal ingredients, their clients’ demands or whatever is leftover in the fridge.

They rarely plan a dish in isolation, but instead imagine it alongside a combination of other dishes. But when different chefs are working on different parts of a menu of dishes, it’s a challenge to have a bird’s eye view of all that is being created.

“It’s like the formal structure of a piece from a great composer. You can’t enjoy the crescendo until you have the right build up.”

Chefs are spontaneous, almost impulsive during the act of cooking, making it difficult to imagine technology’s role in such an unpredictable moment.

“There is no thinking when you are in the act of doing at all. That’s one of the reasons I love it.”

They love the spontaneity — and uncertainty — of creation in the moment. The potential for human error is a large part of what keeps the kitchen alive! What makes chefs interesting to study is how they use intuition, judgement and instinct. These skills are considered fundamental to the chef’s craft, yet they are traits that are difficult to quantify — and even more difficult for technology to simulate.

COOK, RINSE, REPEAT.

There is a sort of Cinderella quality to the structure of service. Midnight strikes. The day is over. Tomorrow it begins again. Chefs are constantly iterating, but for most chefs there’s a lack of specificity in the feedback loop.

“While chefs put in a huge amount of emotion into their cooking, but aren’t usually there to witness the reaction of the people they just cooked for.”



And while they are more influenced than ever by the feedback of the public, the current channels for feedback — the restrictive and rational language of reviews and ‘likes’ — don’t give chefs the kind of feedback they really want. Feedback becomes a problem, rather than a value, enslaving chefs and restaurants to a ‘star’ and ‘like’ system that doesn’t make much sense. While chefs put a huge amount of emotion into their cooking, they aren’t usually there to witness the reaction of the people they just cooked for.

THE WRONG EASY.

The life of a chef is hard work. But chefs like the fact that it’s hard. There’s a masochistic dimension to some chef stories: sleeping under the stairs; tyrannical bosses; frustrating pay. It’s all part of the reality of being a chef.

Technology has always been in the kitchen and always will be. It’s advanced the craft of cooking, enabled creation in novel ways, and made the life of chefs easier (despite still being hard work).

But in the rush to introduce AI technologies, we should be mindful not to lose sight of the essence and role of people, the cultural roots of food, and the context of eating. The issue we see is that many technology visions are solving for the wrong easy.

The self-stirring pan; an example of solving for the wrong easy.

The ‘problem’ with cooking is not to eliminate the act of doing so, but rather to find new ways to enhance chefs with new and intelligent tools.

The hype of AI technology often leads us to focus on the stunts of computers beating humans at different ‘human’ tasks. For chess there is AlphaGo, for food there is the Chef Watson’s perfect burrito. This can lead to a black or white discussion of the future and a divisive tension between us and machines.

The interesting, but often untold story in the world of chess, is that a human collaborating with a computer — known as a Centaur — beats both solo-human and solo-AI players.

This is a model of technology we want to advance. How could we create new collaboration between AI and chefs in the kitchen?

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I’m a foodie and a design researcher. I spend my days studying people and the colourful context of their lives, and fill the times in thinking about food. So it’s no surprise that I jumped at the chance to join YEAST as a researcher-in-residence.

YEAST is a future venture laboratory where we imagine, build, and run companies that improve living through food and technology.

AI x CHEFS is a lab where we research and experiment using artificial intelligent technologies in the context of commercial kitchens. We seek to build ventures where technology augments rather than automates the abilities of chefs.

Many thanks for the inspiring conversations.

Danny Brooks | Danyi Gao | Giles Clarke | Rahim Mohammed | Jeffrey Caterret | Jose Antonio Yepez | Licia Grannello | Harmut Frederich | Jerome Laurent | Snow Chen | Michael Zee | Lasse Petersen

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This was part of a series for a YEAST lab on AI x CHEFS.

AI x Chefs | Kitchen Conversations | The Centaur Kitchen | Experiment GhostChef

If you like what you read and want to read more, connect to my Medium channel. Also to stay updated with future YEAST posts like this, connect to its Medium channel or visit its site.

Fascination at my fingertips

A real-life lab for the elderly population in China

I live within walking distance of a behavioural gold mine called Fuxing Park. Before I jump into the marvels of this vibrant ecosystem, it’s worth explaining the context; why I’m excited at the prospect of it being my very own real-life lab for the next year.

I’m not entirely sold on the quality of the singing but the group get top marks for enthusiasm.

A prelude

I’m interested in the ageing population and the practical concerns it presents to societies around the world. The old age dependency ratio is increasing. Projections indicate that by 2050 there will be more people aged 60 or over than youth aged between 10-24 (2.1 billion versus 2.0 billion).¹

We need to improve care services. But we also need to find ways to enhance people’s lives as they get older; enabling them to live independently without care for longer — or even reimagining what care is and how it is delivered.²

Part of me was initially disheartened when I knew we were moving to China. I had planned a piece of UK-wide research about this topic and thought that the move would mean putting it on hold.

So it was a welcome surprise to learn that our new home is next to a hub for Shanghai’s elderly. It quickly became clear that this year could serve as a sort of prelude, informing that eventual piece of work.

Only four players left in a card game that has lasted the afternoon.

A self-organising Butlins

Fuxing Park (复兴公园) is a large green space located on the western edge of Huangpu, central Shanghai. The bold sycamores ease air pollution anxieties that exist on days when the wind blows over Shanghai in the wrong direction. But what I like most about the space is its inhabitants.

The space is about 10 hectares in size, within which people are engaged in all sorts of activities: singing, dancing, music practice, massage, mahjong (game), to name a few. The people are self-organising. The sense of community is palpable.

Park politics

Everyone is welcome in the park, but its inhabitants split roughly into three groups:

The regulars They are the engine. There has been little diminishment in activity as I have observed the regulars from balmy late summer into crisp autumn and now winter. Levels of commitment and enthusiasm are largely unaffected by temperature and weather.

Unpacking their chairs at 6am; still in the park as the sun sets.

The weekenders During the week, it’s common to see grandparents dotingly looking after a grandchild. At the weekend, the middle generation arrive. They typically are friends and family of the regulars. The numbers swell and the sense of intergenerational mingling is more apparent. It can feel like a festival.

A moment of peace in a playground for all generations.

The onlookers The layout of the park, with its wide French boulevards, facilitates observation. It allows onlookers to watch the activities without feeling intrusive.

The wide boulevards also make it easy for covert behaviour explorers to fall into the crowd.

Organic inspiration

I’ve thought a lot about what opportunities exist in relation to elderly people at home; services that draw inspiration from cohabitation, smart home technology and digital health innovations. But living next to Fuxing Park is helping me understand the importance of community for elderly people outside of the home.

The quality of life that the elderly have cultivated is enviable. The park plays a vital part in people’s sense of worth, shaping the way they choose to spend their days; how they carry themselves; and the confidence within which they interact with each other.

What’s most interesting about this thriving community is that it has grown organically. Surely a ‘bright spot’ for further investigation?³

What’s driving this unique atmosphere?

1. Permission to perform

The ease with which the physical space allows onlookers to amble from one activity to the next can feel reminiscent of people at a zoo. That said, there is an exciting atmosphere of performance in Fuxing Park.

Why are they all facing the same direction and not each other?

At first, I thought that the performers’ awareness of their audience somehow devalued the authenticity of the activities. But looking at these elderly people performing — at the confidence and happiness in evidence — it feels like their awareness of the onlooker is part of their motivation. Anyone who has bowed in front of an applauding audience will know what I’m getting at.

Observing this dynamic got me thinking about how this motivation would translate digitally.

Brands creating health and wellbeing products need to build in mechanisms that keep users engaged and motivated. For younger generations, having a digital audience — no matter who they are or where they are based — might drive participation. But can the same be said for elderly groups, or do they need something more tangible than ‘networked publics’?⁴

2. Focus on the collective

There is a sense of camaraderie in the way people commit to activities in Fuxing Park. The group focus seems to dilute any self-consciousness that exists. It’s liberating to witness people fully committing, without embarrassment — something I feel is rare to come across back in the UK.

It’s the norm for people to commit fully to the task at hand.

Are the elderly people getting more out of the activities because they are putting more in? I’ve observed countless interactions that demonstrate a sense of group achievement: whoops of joy as a dance routine is perfectly in sync; celebratory hugs as friends reach 20 in a badminton rally.

It makes me the consider the relationship between cultures that have collectivist roots and behaviour change initiatives; how the former would shape the recipe for success of the latter.

3. The mobile-first element of daily life

This is not an ancient group cut off from the ways of the modern world. Like everyone else in mobile-first Shanghai, they use the services available to them to facilitate daily life.

The regulars of Fuxing Park seem more confident using technology than people of a similar age in the UK. They order food from mobile delivery services like ele.me (饿了么) and check Group schedules to see what time a class kicks off. If someone is not confident using a smartphone, it’s likely they have a friend who is.

This familiarity with WeChat is bound to shape elderly people’s adoption of emerging digital health services.⁵ But what questions does it raise for people innovating in this space?

One challenge for brands building independent health apps for this market is that they will be competing with services that exist within WeChat.

WeChat enables new services to appear in-app that look and feel like services people already use. This seamless in-app expansion helps people do more with their smartphones without having to master the UI on another single function app.

4. Collective care

The elderly here contribute to the livelihood of the collective in ways they can: physical tasks like wheeling an electric piano round the park; holding court in a circle of afternoon storytelling.

I’ve considered dressing up in disguise to get closer into the circles of storytelling.

This contrasts starkly with the well-documented portrayal of the British elderly, feeling invisible and isolated.⁶ It’s unlikely you would see elderly people existing as a unit in such a way in most urban parks in London.

Mutually caring and being cared for feels golden. But what’s driving it?

It’s possible that this tribalism has developed as elderly people realise their children cannot look after them in the way they looked after their own parents. If daily care from your children is not practically viable, why not care for each other?

This potential clash between Confucian virtues of filial piety and the realities of economic progress is something I intend to explore more. I want to understand what pressures working Chinese adults face when planning their parents’ futures.

There is an opportunity for brands here to anticipate clashes and build solutions that help people bridge the dissonance between their ancient roots and the realities of the modern world.

Categories beyond social care and healthcare would benefit too from understanding this tension: for example, the booming travel and hotel industries that will come into their own as Chinese New Year approaches.

From pure observation to active participation

To date, my thinking is based on pure observation. But I intend to return to the park with a local researcher, to speak with the familiar strangers I’ve come to recognise.

This two-stage approach is a deliberate choice designed to make a strength of my key weakness out here, which is that I don’t speak Mandarin.

My main objective is to explore what opportunities might exist for brands creating services for the elderly population. But I’m also hoping to glean some methodological findings as I document the differences between passive observation and active participation.

For now though, it’s back to the park… this time armed with a wingman and a voice-recorder.

Amy Sherman is a global behaviour explorer and design strategist. To follow more posts like this please connect to Medium, Instagram or Twitter.

Footnotes

[1] The United Nations website shares 2017 highlights about the ageing population.

[2] These ambitions certainly speak to the 90% of elderly Chinese people who take care of themselves. The Chinese government often refer to the “90–7–3 model”, whereby 90% of elderly people can take care of themselves, 7% need home-based care services, and the remaining 3% require institutional care. In Shanghai and Beijing, it’s said the model is more like “90–6–4.” See this Sixth Tone article which discusses this in more detail.

[3] The idea of focussing on the ‘bright spots’ when trying to understand and change behaviour was introduced to me in Chip and Dan Heath’s book, Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard.

[4] To learn more about networked publics read Danah Boyd’s work.

[5] See Dionigi (2015) as an example. The paper outlines the positive and negative stereotypes of ageing and summarises the fluctuating definition of what constitutes “good health” means during older age.

[6] See Sun (2016) to get an idea of the current investment landscape into China’s digital health market. In 2016, China accounted for 37% of the mHealth market in Asia.

Welcome everybody to the wild, wild East

What do I want to get out of my time living in China?

I want to help people back home understand this place and the people who live here. Make it feel less alien to my friends and family; less impenetrable to the businesses I work with. I’m keen to get beyond biases about China that I was carrying with me before getting here.

It’s 11am. Delivery men wait for the chaos of a busy lunch time shift to kick off in Nanjing.

In the design and innovation space that I work in, China is often regarded as ‘the future.’ This sound bite is usually inflected with a sense of apprehension. Many Western companies don’t know where to begin trying to make sense of China — or even if it’s worth their effort.

It’s one country but acts like a continent. Its many tiers are complex to understand. Much feels familiar; there are copies everywhere you look. But the differences are huge. And everyone (keeps) talking about the pace of change.

So here we are. In a new place for my partner Dan and I to call home for the next 12 months. Maybe more?

A culture to understand.
A business world to permeate.
A social life to establish and maintain.

I want to make every moment count but I’m already aware there’s a potential end date in place. Where to begin?

Initially, I liked the idea of focusing on a specific topic to study. But I quickly realised a singular focus would narrow my understanding of this vast and complex place. Instead, I’ve tried to tune into the heartbeat of Shanghai as a whole. In doing so, I hope to have a better sense of any subsequent studies’ context.

A man cuts spare keys whilst playing some form of online poker.

For me, this doesn’t just mean food and water. It means optimising my own experience of the city in every way. How can I best connect the different aspects of life here in a way that heightens and facilitates my experience of each of them?

Happily, this is one of the ways I get my kicks in work and life. I love to unpack how people experience and navigate the modern world, and design ways to improve that experience.

It’s the same when you are optimising your own experience; when you are the subject as well as the researcher.

I know this approach will also develop my personal relationship with Shanghai as a city. So far, the plan is working. It’s love.

Urban riding is far superior when the street are clear of autumn leaves.

I have set about grasping the tools and services needed to survive in this buzzing metropolis. I’ve found a place to live. I’ve learnt how to navigate the city; it’s easy to bike everywhere. I’ve set up all sorts of ways to pay and transfer money. I’ve downloaded a thousand new apps, altering my iPhone interface beyond recognition.

I’ve joined a fitness app, which has led me to strange peripheries of the city — and  into some pretty awesome new yoga poses. I’ve been amazed by how much I’ve learnt purely from observing how other people use technology to get things done. Google Translate is a life saver to fill in the gaps.

These are all the aspects of life that one normally takes for granted. When you are in new place, they need to be reinterpreted in a uniquely local way.

Six weeks in, I’ve decided to start writing about some of the experiences I am having here. What follows will be a selection of musings about the highs and lows; the differences and similarities.

It’s also a chance for me to write about the opportunities I feel someone should work on — or at least be thinking about.

Blink and it’s likely someone already is.