Tovala's Smart Oven Tested for Two Weeks: Convenient, but Not a Home-Cooked Meal

Tovala co-founder and CEO David Rabie told TechCrunch the idea came out of his own experience in business school, when he was often busy and wanted something as convenient as takeout or frozen meals while still wanting a dish that was actually cooked fresh at home. He said he realized one afternoon, while preparing a meal with several different appliances, that he was mostly just pressing buttons. That led to the idea of an end-to-end system pairing fresh, mostly prepped meals with a connected oven that cooks them automatically. The challenge, he said, was removing that friction without sacrificing the experience of eating food cooked fresh at home.

The process is straightforward. Tovala ships meals with ingredients already portioned. Users unwrap the components, follow short instructions such as adding packets of seasoning, place everything in the trays provided, scan a QR code with the companion app and let the oven handle the rest. The countertop unit follows the cooking instructions automatically, switching temperatures and cooking modes during the process. It can bake, broil, air fry, toast and reheat. The regular oven costs $299, while the Smart Oven Pro costs $349 and adds a steam function.

On the food side, more than 45 meals are available to choose from each week, including steak with garlic mashed potatoes, salmon with vegetables, butternut squash soup and pasta dishes. Meal plans run from 4 to 16 meals per week, and deliveries can be skipped, paused or cancelled. The meals are not cheap: single-serving meals start at $13.99, and two-serving meals start at about $8.99 per serving, or $17.98 in total, plus a $10.99 shipping fee. Family-sized meals, launched recently, start at $35.96. Unlike meal-delivery rivals such as HelloFresh, Tovala is betting that customers will pay for having most of the cooking done for them.

Taste and texture were the parts the reviewer was most skeptical about beforehand. The biggest downside, the review said, was how meats cooked in the oven and the texture they ended up with. The reviewer finished a steak in a steel pan to get a browned crust; the steak was better for it, but the extra step defeats the purpose of a largely hands-off process. Not every dish had that problem. A pineapple shrimp stir-fry was among the reviewer's favorites, with well-cooked rice and a flavorful sauce — not something to rave about next to a great restaurant meal, but easy, satisfying and requiring very little effort.

The feature the reviewer valued most was grocery-food recognition, which gives the oven a use beyond Tovala-branded meals. The oven can identify certain grocery-store products, so instead of guessing how long frozen waffles need to toast, a user can scan the barcode and let the oven pick the appropriate settings. That, according to the review, is what makes Tovala feel like a genuinely smart oven rather than a machine built to cook its own kits, and it remains usable with compatible grocery products even if a customer stops ordering meals.

Tovala is sold on the company's website and on Amazon. It ships to most U.S. states but does not currently ship to Alaska or Hawaii.

Editor's Summary

Tovala pairs portioned meal kits with a connected countertop oven that cooks them automatically after a QR-code scan, with ovens priced at $299 and $349 and meals starting at $13.99 per single serving. A two-week TechCrunch test concluded the system is a strong option when users are too tired to cook, but that its meat preparation falls short of a good homemade meal. The review also highlighted the oven's ability to recognize grocery-store products, which extends its usefulness beyond Tovala's own meal plans.