At IFA 2023 in Berlin, Samsung announced the local roll-out of its built-in cooking range, available from October. Appliance Retailer spoke to Samsung Electronics Australia vice president of consumer electronics, Jeremy Senior to understand the strategy behind expanding into the cooking category.

“In Australia, Samsung has products in over 70% of consumer homes*. We have mobile phones, tablets, TVs, speakers, laundry appliances, kitchen appliances, air conditioning and floorcare,” Senior said.

“The cooking space is an obvious representation of what was clearly missing from the Samsung portfolio. To allow consumers to bring their complete solution to life – cooking was required. We didn’t want to rush into it and just bring any product to market, we wanted to make sure we brought a product that was going to deliver meaningful benefit to consumers.”

Samsung recognises that cooking is a specific and highly competitive category, so the products are centred on three key areas.

“The first is Bespoke. We wanted to give consumers the chance to bring unique colour and finishes to market, and essentially offer Australians the chance to tailor their appliances to their home aesthetics,” Senior said.

“Secondly, we wanted to make sure that we had state-of-the-art functionality such as steam and air frying. TArue to our DNA, we challenged our Samsung engineering team to develop new functionality benefits. This is why we’re introducing DualCook and Dual Cook Flex on some oven models that can provide great flexibility when cooking.

“Not everyone has the space to install two 60cm ovens or a 90cm oven, so DualCook allows consumers to cook two dishes simultaneously at different temperatures in a single oven. With DualCook Flex, you can steam the whole oven, or you can steam half the oven and cook with convection in the other half.

“Finally, it wouldn’t be a Samsung appliance if it didn’t have smart functionality. With our Bespoke AI cooking, we’re bringing meaningful solutions to Australians that make life easier. For example, we’re utilising AI and an internal camera to detect if a dish is burning and send you an alert. Essentially, our Bespoke Cooking offering can deliver solutions that better intersect and evolve intelligently with Australians daily lives.”

Samsung also allows consumers to select a recipe through the SmartThings app and automatically pre-heat the oven to the required temperature and set a timer for the correct cooking time required.

“We’re also looking to integrate with other products such as the fridge to suggest recipes based on food already inside your fridge. This may extend to sending notifications to other devices in the future like telling dishwashers what has been cooked and telling air purifiers to turn up based on what’s going on the grill.”

This October, Samsung is bringing the Bespoke cooking line-up to market including a range of ovens, dishwashers, cooktops and rangehoods. Until now, Samsung has had a small entry level cooking line-up, but it wasn’t as sophisticated as the Bespoke connected appliances with this range of features.

“We recognise this is a complex category – we’re not expecting domination from day one – we’re focusing on making sure that we bring the right product story to market and help consumers understand the benefits of the features in our products,” Senior said.

That’s why Samsung is working with people like Australian chef and cooking judge, Andy Allen, to ensure he can help communicate and give credibility to consumers that these products are designed in a way that can make their life easier.

“It’s important to note that we’re bringing out a range of products and not just a single series of ovens or cooktops – we have products at multiple price points. From a Bespoke and an AI technology perspective, we’re targeting the mass premium category – which is also where we target other kitchen appliances such as refrigeration,” Senior said.

“Our focus is to help consumers build a smart home solution and we want to ensure that our products are giving them something different and making their life easier. We are a market leader in smart technology and we’re also bringing meaningful innovation with features such Dual Cook Flex and FlexZone Plus that can give consumers unique options.

“We’re also conscious that cooking is ultimately very personal. We’re not trying to outsource everything to technology, but we know Australians love having technology that makes their life easier. The features and functions within our Samsung cooking line-up are not about taking away the passion that people have for cooking but reducing some pain points. We know that in Australia people are spending more time at home, cooking and entertaining, and many of us may overstate our cooking abilities, so technology can help achieve the perfect outcome.

“It’s important to share that we’re working with retailers to build fit-out in the stores in line with refit projects so we’re not going to be at a mass scale of national distribution from day one. We’re launching in a dedicated number of stores agreed upon with the retailers in this calendar year and will expand the rollout from the beginning of 2024.”

*Kantar ComTech, Feb 2022.