Recently, TWICE connected with Ralph Newhouse, CEO of CHEFMAN and CHEF iQ, who shared his insights into the state of the appliance industry and the growing focus on autonomous cooking.
TWICE: CHEFMAN has grown into a $420 million business without outside funding. What advantages has remaining bootstrapped given you compared to competitors backed by venture capital or private equity?
Ralph Newhouse (RN): Remaining bootstrapped since day one has forced us to build & continuously maintain a self-sustaining business. It’s kept us nimble, strengthened our core, and ensured we built capabilities in-house where other brands have been forced to outsource. The direct result is our unique success in the connected cooking space – our CHEF iQ ecosystem is engineered end-to-end, both the physical and digital components, directly out of our corporate office. I don’t believe we’d have these advantages if we had accepted outside funding.
TWICE: It’s been suggested that traditional appliance brands are struggling to keep pace with market changes. Where specifically do you see legacy manufacturers falling behind?
RN: The offshoring of engineering knowledge shifted the true value proposition a brand can bring. Those that are doing it well are closely watching the customer at work and building to their needs, but many legacy brands are rebranding the same old product for the modern age & missing the mark. Even when innovation makes its way to the market from these brands, the delivery is often late and outdated.
TWICE: Many consumers still don’t regularly use connected features after purchase. How can manufacturers create experiences that deliver lasting value rather than novelty?
RN: Usage will follow value. How much time is it saving? How many steps? As long as it’s easier to program your oven on the screen than it is to take out your phone, open an app, find the device, and search for the right settings, adoption will never pick up. For us, it comes down to what parts of the cooking process we can solve for the home cook, from picking what to cook to plating the perfect dinner. Our entire brand is predicated on a true need that delivers lasting value, and it’s how we built an experience that our average customer is using multiple times per week.
TWICE: We’ve seen an increase in AI and connected appliances, and have heard “the future of cooking is autonomous rather than simply smart”. How do you define autonomous cooking, and how close are consumers to that reality today?
RN: At the most basic level, it’s here already. It means a cooking process that can take food from raw to finished on its own. That includes handling things like temperature adjustments, timing, and flipping when needed. This is already available in varying forms in the commercial & high-end consumer markets, and to an extent through our MiniOven & iQ Sense.
Over time, that autonomy will expand to include everything from ingredient recognition to prep and other kitchen tasks, with users stepping in only when they want to. The fully autonomous kitchen is still further out, but as robotics becomes a bigger part of everyday life, it’s no longer hard to imagine.
TWICE: In your opinion, what technological breakthroughs still need to happen before fully autonomous cooking becomes mainstream?
RN: Most, if not all, the technology exists already. Visual recognition, automation, robotics, etc. The market just doesn’t – at least not at the cost & counter space it would entail today. There are two likely paths: a) like with many culinary innovations, we’ll see the commercial market, with repeated actions at scale, pave the way & force costing down to a point where it becomes affordable and eventually economically efficient for the average customer; or b) Optimus or the like advances to the point where it’s managing your cooking.
Most likely, what starts as two separate flows (specialized robots for cooking vs. general use for the home) eventually converges to where we have general-use robots using tools designed for their use, rather than humans. What really both excites me and keeps me up at night is imagining the perfectly helpful kitchen. How do we optimize for automation while leaving home chefs the tools to enjoy cooking when they want to, and just show up to dinner done when they don’t? The next 5 years are going to be incredibly transformative.
TWICE: Chefman has brought firmware, UX, and product design in-house. Why was it important to control those functions rather than outsource them?
RN: Everyone is working directly together on the same goals. They sit together all day, every day. That gives us a speed to market which, paired with the institutional knowledge we’ve built, creates an unstoppable force.
TWICE: Looking ahead to 2030, what major changes do you expect to see in the kitchen appliance category, and what role do you expect AI to play in that evolution?
RN: Like we saw with “Smart” appliances, you’ll see it all over the marketing across our category and others, with many making the claim but only a few delivering value that the average customer will appreciate. We were early adopters of AI internally, and so far, the biggest impact has been on our speed and capabilities as a team.
What’s exciting is that we’re now reaching the point where those benefits can be passed directly to consumers. Over the next few years, I expect AI to become a core part of the kitchen experience, helping people make better decisions, avoid mistakes, and achieve more consistent results. You’ll see that reflected in both hardware and software as AI-first features become a bigger part of our roadmap. Our goal from day one has been effortless cooking with world-class results for anyone, and AI opens the doors to a suite of tools that lived only in the imaginations until now.
See also: Beyond the Buzzwords: What “Smart Home” Actually Means In 2026
