Transforming Culinary Education: The AR/VR Journey with Scrappy Meals' Fridgie Smalls

We waste one-third of everything we eat. That’s what the United Nations said in 2020 at the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic, at a time when good food management was key to survival. Even after that, though, in 2022, the U.S. let 38% of its 235 million-ton food supply go uneaten or unsold. There’s a lot of money in managing food the smart way, too. Food management and analytics platforms are at a market value of $1 billion, and have the potential to conserve 571,000 tons of food per year. Empowering consumers to manage their kitchens well with tech like AI and AR/VR can help by opening a symbiotic relationship between people and their kitchens driven by cooking and ingredient guidance. Join me in exploring this fascinating space.

The days of your parents looking over your shoulder at the stove are over, but who’s going to replace them? A survey conducted by the National Restaurant Association reported only 30% of Americans cook dinner at home daily, down from 50% in the 1970s. People aren’t cooking enough, so there’s not a whole lot helping them get better at it. People need to catch up on essential skills and solutions like ingredient selection, personalized recipe recommendations, and kitchen management tech can help them. Yet the tech market needs to catch up, too.

There’s not a lot of opportunity for developing culinary education solutions. The large market gap in funding for immersive cooking experiences limits what developers can build, monetize, and scale for the kitchen. Educational cooking content is what we all need, but not everyone is getting as much as they need, especially on their devices at home. Yet companies developing solutions to this problem now will be market leaders.

Companies developing immersive XR and kitchen resource management technology are solving these problems now. By introducing educational, immersive XR technology along with kitchen management analytics to build food efficiency and sustainability into kitchens, Fridgie Smalls turns them into AR/VR cooking schools for everyone. And the time is ripe: according to a recent MarketsAndMarkets study, the global market for augmented reality (AR) is expected to reach $71.2 billion by 2028.

Scrappy Meals’ Fridgie Smalls app stands out as a great use case here. Founder Damon Versaggi and his team are working with these immersive technologies in a bid to revolutionize the culinary learning experience. Fridgie Smalls’ Web XR technology integrates AR/VR immersion into kitchens, turning them into schools. Using personalized recipe suggestions based on available ingredients, as well as personalized kitchen resource analytics based on existing kitchen inventory, the app can turn anyone into the creative, expert chef of their kitchen using ingredients already available, with an eye toward culinary sustainability and efficient kitchen use. The sustainable aspect makes food waste almost nonexistent while creating meal variety with less.

All of the data is analyzed and recycled to help people find ever-more creative ways to use what they have and build new skills to feed themselves and their loved ones in new and healthy ways.

Scrappy Meals XR’s Fridgie Smalls app solves key problems in cooking and education by leveraging analytics and immersive technology to create and democratize technology-driven cooking experiences for everyone.

Versaggi and his team’s work is grounded in the belief that integrating AI and analytics into everyday activities like cooking can significantly improve efficiency, creativity, and learning outcomes. As a company, Scrappy Meals brings resource allocation technology into the kitchen in a user-friendly way, reshaping culinary interaction and education through an XR paradigm. It transforms cooking into an interactive, tech-enabled, real-time learning experience that decreases cooking time and aids cooks by showing them creative applications of what they already have, using their ingredients more efficiently and reducing food waste.

Anyone who cooks can benefit from the Fridgie Smalls app’s immersive and interactive learning environment, adding a fresh, dynamic approach to their personal home cooking education. Professionals in the culinary and kitchen tech spaces gain a novel application of Web XR and interactive media, merging cutting-edge technology with everyday culinary activities. Fridgie Smalls fulfills the essential need for creative and sustainable cooking solutions, offering users immersive and educational cooking experiences by leveraging technology to improve both cooking and kitchen supply efficiency.

Scrappy Meals’ Fridgie Smalls app is theculmination of a many-year project. The

past year has been particularly transformative with the addition of Yannick James, a UX expert who took Scrappy Meals to the next iteration of company dynamics and real-world application, developing their first App Fridgie Smalls alongside Grace Olson-Davidson, who brings over 15 years of restaurant consulting and a major presence in the e-commerce space to the team. The company is currently in its growth stage, and is even inviting community members to get to know the team! Check out Scrappy Meals to learn more.