Whether it’s smart locks on our doors, smart lights in the bedroom, or smart set-top boxes in our living rooms, our homes have gotten a whole lot more intelligent in recent years. You know which room hasn’t benefited quite so much? Our kitchens. While there are all manner of new ways for food to be picked, packed, and delivered, the act of actually storing it in our homes hasn’t fundamentally changed in a long time. Perhaps until now.
Newly launched on Kickstarter, Silo is a vacuum storage container that promises to greatly extend the life of your food. Whether it’s for storing your fresh berries, ground coffee beans, raw fish, or mom’s meatloaf, these stackable vacuum boxes use vacuum-packing technology to keep your food fresh for two to five times longer than usual. The boxes are neatly designed, and the vacuuming process takes just 10 seconds.
“I usually describe it to people as Tupperware for the new generation,” Tal Lapidot, founder and CEO of Silo Kitchen, told Digital Trends. “That’s the easiest way to explain what we’ve created. We wanted to bring something new that would provide an enjoyable user experience, while letting people keep their food fresh for longer. It was also important to us that we empower people regarding what is that they have in their own kitchen.”
That goal of empowering people regarding what they have in their kitchen is where the “smart” bit of Silo comes into the picture. Along with being a vacuum box, Silo contains some impressive tech in the form of a built-in Alexa smart speaker. This allows users to automatically track food consumption and inventory, along with receiving spoilage notifications whenever your food is going to go to waste.
“There are lots of smart products out there which do not create benefits for the user,” Lapidot continued. “We actually debated in the office whether we should create a smart product, or a more basic version of Silo. In the end, we felt that we had achieved the right user experience to make this a smart product that people would love.”
As ever, we offer our usual warnings about the risks inherent in crowdfunding campaigns. Nonetheless, if you’re keen to go ahead you can visit the project page to join the other would-be customers who have so far pledged $362,801 (at time of writing) to bring Silo to vacuum-sealed life. Prices for the basic kit of two small containers and two medium containers starts at $175, although other sets are available. Shipping is set to begin in July 2019.
