Innovative Products: Thermador Connected Kitchen Through Home Connect

Through Home Connect, Thermador has expanded functionality. Homeowners can send recipes to their cooktops, change their dishwasher's hood lighting, and more—all from their smartphones. 

Thermador is taking full advantage of the Internet of Things with its connected kitchen, showcased at this year’s International Builders’ Show. The appliances are all beneficiaries of the Home Connect platform—joined by appliances from brands including Bosch, Gaggenau, Neff, and Siemens—run via an app. 

“Thermador’s coffee maker, fridge, freezer, wine cabinet, range hood—all connected,” says Ruth Prentice, a connected experience manager for BSH Home Appliances, which owns Thermador. “Even our ovens and ranges are connected.” 

Through Home Connect, the company has created a kitchen environment that emphasizes ease and fluidity of use, particularly as it relates to maintenance and customer service. 

“When you call customer service, the app will automatically give your model number and everything else they might need to know,” Prentice says. “From there, they can run remote diagnostics, which are available for every product category except for the ventilation. But you can find instructions for that in the app.” And in fact, in the app you’ll find a wealth of content explaining additional appliance functionality, such as the “Coffee Playlist,” which allows homeowners to remotely make consecutive cups of coffee for guests. 

Through Home Connect, the company has created a kitchen environment that emphasizes ease and fluidity of use, particularly as it relates to maintenance and customer service. 

The app also gives users access to loads of other helpful information, aimed at improving the homeowner’s entertaining and culinary capabilities as well as the overall convenience of life in the kitchen. 

Home Connect is open platform, which means outside developers—“partners,” as Prentice describes them—can add features to the app. Already the partners number in the dozens, including household names Nest, Fitbit, and Amazon, and each brings a unique feature to the homeowner’s connected kitchen. 

“With Amazon Dash, you can have your dishwasher setup so that when the detergent reservoir is nearing empty, the appliance will register it, send that information to Amazon, and you can have more detergent sent to your home without having to go through the trouble of ordering it,” she says, careful to note that the automated purchase would have to be setup by the homeowner. “The appliances won’t just start buying stuff on their own.” 

Home Connect is open platform, which means outside developers can add features to the app.

Through the partnerships, Thermador’s connected kitchen is essentially being dummy-proofed. Features through partners like Innit and Kitchen Stories provide access  to countless easy-to-understand recipes and culinary insights, so homeowners are never without ideas for meals. Through partner SMA, appliance operations can be better managed to save on energy consumption (and ultimately money). For instance, a homeowner could set their dishwasher to start at a time that’s cheapest for them. And speculating on the future, Prentice describes a scenario where Home Connect’s partner EVE, the interface for Tesla vehicles, could be geofenced to turn on, say, the dishwasher as the homeowner pulls away from the garage. 

Thermador’s decisions to invest in connected appliances reflects a broader trend of expectations in customers. Ninety percent of homeowners currently have a connected home device, and of those who don’t, 30% plan on purchasing one within the year, according to a survey from software development company Metova. Accounting for all consumers, three-quarters believe connected home devices are “the wave of the future.”