Brava, an AgeTech Collaborative™ enterprise participant, is on a mission to make cooking simpler and safer for everyone. Its smart countertop oven offers thousands of fully automated recipe programs and unmatched precision. Designed with safety and ease of use in mind, Brava features automated shutoff, remote monitoring via the Brava app and a cool-to-the-touch exterior, empowering users to prepare meals confidently and independently while providing peace of mind to families and caregivers.
We recently spoke with Travis Rea, head of sales and marketing at Brava, and Zac Selmon, head of product at Brava, about the company’s groundbreaking technology, how it evolved to embrace the AgeTech space, and how its one-of-a-kind oven can help older adults prepare meals with ease.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
Please tell us about Brava.
Travis: Brava is the world’s first smart countertop oven that cooks with infrared light. We launched in 2018, with the vision of helping home cooks prepare meals in the kitchen faster and with more convenience than ever before.
Originally, we weren’t focused specifically on helping people who face challenges cooking with traditional methods. But our mission has grown to include helping cooks of all abilities overcome those challenges. Our technology makes cooking incredibly easy; if you can operate a smartphone, load a tray and press a button, then you can have restaurant-quality meals in 15 minutes at home.
Can you say more about the technology?
Travis: Most ovens, including other countertop ovens, use old technology such as heater coils or gas to heat up the oven chamber, and they cook with radiant heat. They’re slow to heat up and slow to cool down. Brava is different because we use halogen lamps, which go to full power instantly; it’s the equivalent of having a 900-degree wood-fired pizza oven in less than a second, but the oven chamber itself doesn't get hot.
Another unique aspect of Brava is that there are three lamps on bottom and three on top, creating independent cooking zones within the chamber. That means you can cook different foods at different rates and temperatures at once, and everything will be done at the same time. For example, you can cook a steak with potatoes and asparagus, and the steak will come out browned or seared and cooked to the level of doneness that you want, but the potatoes will be browned and tender and the asparagus will be bright green and barely cooked through. The technology allows us to be very agile and precise in terms of how much energy we’re putting into the food.
That seems like it would be very easy for older adults to use.
Zac: It’s very simple. There’s no waiting for the oven to preheat, and it shuts down automatically when it’s done cooking, so there’s no worrying about forgetting to turn it off. Plus, the unit remains cool to the touch on the outside, and you don’t have to rush to get the food out before it overcooks.
The ergonomics are better, too. You don’t have to deal with heavy oven doors; you don’t have to bend over to check on food; you don’t even have to flip the food. And because there are no special ventilation or electrical requirements, you can plug it in anywhere, so someone who uses a wheelchair, for example, can put it on a table for easy access.
Travis: We know empirically that when people cook at home, they’re going to be healthier because they have more control over what’s going into their body. It’s also cheaper than fast food or food delivery services: If you order take-out food just two fewer times per month, Brava pays for itself, and we offer options to help make it affordable for everyone.
It sounds like it could be useful for caregivers, too.
Zac: Through the Brava app, caregivers and loved ones can be notified anytime the care recipient starts cooking, so they can keep tabs on them. We actually have a camera inside the oven, so caregivers can literally see what’s going on and even, if necessary, turn the oven off remotely — for example, if the person inadvertently puts a pizza box in the oven. That gives caregivers extra peace of mind.
So it’s really as easy as pushing a button?
Zac: Brava might ask you some questions — for example, the size of a steak you’re cooking, your doneness preference, and whether you have vegetables, too. It might then give you instructions on where to put the food on the tray. Then, you put the tray into the cold oven, and press the button.
Travis: It’s all driven by software that connects Brava to the internet, and this automates the cooking process, whether it’s baking, air frying, searing or other cooking modes. We have 8,500 recipes programmed into the unit, and we’re pushing new recipes to it every week.
Zac: People often cook a revolving list of the same recipes, so we have a favorites list. You can also add your own recipes and even share those with a community of other Brava users.
You mentioned the company has evolved into the AgeTech space. How did that happen?
Zac: When we launched Brava, we weren’t really aware of assistive technology or the world of AgeTech. Then, we learned the story of a couple who had been married for 50 years. The wife had suffered a stroke, and the husband had never cooked, so they began ordering take-out food all the time. Their kids got them Brava, and the husband was able to start cooking, using real ingredients and preparing healthy meals, and they were so happy about that.
That’s when we realized that all these great features that we’d built for everyone took on an elevated level of importance for people who had various challenges in the kitchen. Because we can update Brava’s software, even for ovens that are already in peoples’ homes, we started leaning into that and coming up with new ways that we could improve Brava’s features for different use cases.
What’s on the horizon for Brava?
Travis: We’re looking for testbeds and other partners to help us get the word out about Brava, and also to get it into the hands of people who can benefit from it. For example, we could conceivably coordinate with Meals on Wheels-type programs by pushing recipes to our ovens for the foods they deliver, so that people could pop the food in the oven and press the button.
Zac: We’d also love to work with more care facilities that have staffing issues, where the culinary team might not be on duty when someone wants to eat. In those types of situations, the team can pre-prepare some food so that a resident can simply put it in Brava and push a button, and they’ll get a real meal that’s better than something that’s just been microwaved.
Travis: And we really want to hear from people who understand the particular needs of older adults. That includes people reading this blog post! We’ve been able to solve a lot of problems as we’ve evolved the product, but if we have partners who are more familiar with the kinds of real-world challenges that people experience around cooking, that helps us improve even more.
Even if people contact us and ask, “Can Brava do this? Can Brava do that?” — that helps us. Brava isn’t like other kitchen appliances where, once you get it home and you plug it into the wall, there’s no changing it. Through our software, we can continually improve Brava’s features, and we’re eager to keep doing that.
You can reach out to Travis at travis@brava.com and Zac at zac@brava.com, and you can learn more about Brava at their website.
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