The 2026 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) was a somewhat subdued affair — as subdued as could be expected with nearly 150,000 attendees spanning multiple resorts and the entire Las Vegas Convention Center. When it came to food and beverage technology, however, this year’s event left something to be desired.
Perhaps that’s on me. It is a consumer-focused show, after all, and my audience is industry. But the 2025 show left me expecting more. Allow me to put things into perspective with a picture.
The red circle indicates the region of the Venetian Expo Hall reserved for food tech in 2026. Most of the hardware on display was consumer driven, too; although some was innovative, such as a 3D printer that prints with chocolate instead of plastic (from vending machine company Sweet Robo), very little of what I saw was exciting for food industry insiders.
Nonetheless, there were still some good finds, from smart canopies that provide on-demand protection for trellised crops to a portable food allergen detection laboratory. Keep reading for the full rundown of what’s on the horizon for food tech, according to the best and brightest at CES.
Literally everything, now powered by AI
Artificial intelligence (AI) could be found everywhere and inside everything at CES. The coolest AI-powered tech included the wan AIChef Ultra smart microwave, which can simultaneously heat different foods at different temperatures, along with dozens of robots that will plan and cook meals for you. As smart grill maker Brisk It’s booth boldly declared, “Don’t think. Just eat.”
Yet plenty of clever people are still thinking about ways to use AI in food. At the panel titled, “The Food AI Stack,” several experts debated the roles for AI within the global food system, whether it’s accelerating ingredient development or reducing laboratory work. When asked about how these AI tools could potentially harm small startups or reduce the need for a human workforce, however, most dismissed the concern, arguing that you need specialized people to create such specialized data. In other words, AI creates its own job market.
“This is more about what these incredible [large language models] and computing power sources like OpenAI can really do with the data we’ve constructed,” Matias Muchnick, NotCo CEO, said. “[AI models] are not coming for your food. They’re inviting you to lunch.”
Mother-daughter team Bénédicte Astier (left) and Margot Roche, alongside vaguely threatening staring man (right).
Detecting foodborne allergens, sans lab training
Did you know that 250 million people worldwide face food allergies? Testing food for allergens, however, usually requires a lab — or, at least, it used to.
Allergen Alert, a brand out of France, has shifted the testing paradigm by developing a personal food allergen lab that requires zero training and can fit inside a purse or pocket. The idea came to founder Bénédicte Astier when her daughter Margot Roche ended up in the emergency room after eating an allergen-laced school lunch.
“All of what we used to do in a lab, we can do here,” Astier said. “The threshold for detection is very low, 5 ppm (parts per million). So that means it protects against 80-95% of allergies, and below 5 ppm there is no reaction.”
Applications also exist in food development; this portable lab is so easy to use that anyone can spot-check products on an assembly line.
From left to right: Eric Schulze, GoodHumans; Juliana Bernalostos-Boy, Ingredion; Brittany Kovacevic, CuliNEX; Dana McCauley, Canadian Food Innovation Network; and Carolyn O’Neil, ONeil Nutrition Communications.
Conversation points: MAHA, the new dietary guidelines
Walking into the “Red Dye, Good Bye” panel on the morning of Jan. 7 — just one part of The Spoon’s Food Tech Summit — I expected to learn more about how food developers are reformulating to avoid the artificial dyes under siege by the “Make America Healthy Again” (MAHA) movement.
Instead, that same morning, the Trump administration finally released the new dietary guidelines they’ve been hinting at for months. This document introduces a new version of the classic food pyramid, except it’s been turned upside down to indicate flipped recommendations for protein, dairy and grains. The panelists reworked the topic in real time, dedicating almost the entire 40-minute window to these guidelines, which many experts fear will lead to more costly reformulations.
“This is such a dynamic time,” Dana McCauley, CEO of the Canadian Food Innovation Network, said. “Since COVID, the pace of change has accelerated so much, and I don’t think it’s true for just Canadian companies. All of these founders and presidents of companies in that small-to-medium-sized space are just constantly spending all of their time managing change … and that is such a sap on productivity. Because they’re not innovating. They’re spending all their time reformulating to meet the current needs.”
New ag tech innovations shelter crops
Bienesis, another French company, brought a CES Innovation Award-winning smart canopy solution for trellis-grown crops like wine grapes. When cultivated in the open air instead of a greenhouse, such delicate crops require protection from frost, hailstorms, heat waves and more, and this system allows farmers to deploy 6-meter canopies from anywhere using a smartphone.
Pierre Martini, Bienesis’ director of research and wine partnerships, which is a job I’m officially applying for, had this to say about the potential savings enabled by this system.
“The all-in-one protection against extreme climate events, the deployment at distance on demand, the smart algorithms inside our app to help growers target precisely the events [they need to],” Martini explained. “In terms of savings, our value proposition covers 80% of the losses related to those climate events.”
… and water crops more efficiently
Another climate-related challenge facing farmers is the ever-present threat of drought, which steals water from the soil like a Tech Bro Billionaire siphoning off humanity’s last ounce of collective dignity. Now, with BeadRoots, droughts, at least, may become a worry of the past.
“When irrigation or rainfall occurs, BeadRoots absorb excess water and store it within their structure,” CEO Valerio De Luca said, referring to the proprietary creation process, which combines natural raw materials such as algae into a stable, water-absorbing hydrogel. “As the soil dries, the beads gradually release the stored moisture directly into the root zone, ensuring plants have access to water over extended periods. This controlled release mechanism helps stabilize soil moisture and reduce water stress for crops. After several months and multiple cycles, the hydrogels degrade, biostimulating plants and improving soil quality.”
CES 2026 was a reminder that innovation in food technology involves a careful balancing act between what industry insiders find “cool” and what consumers really want. While the event showcased a handful of promising advancements, it also highlighted the challenges of maintaining that balance in a food system beset on all sides by people who want to fix it with varying ideas about how. Still, the seeds of innovation planted at CES hint at a future where advanced technology continues to shape how we grow and consume food.
