LAS VEGAS – The 2026 Consumer Electronics Show rebounded to its pre-pandemic attendance levels recently, attracting more than 148,000 attendees from around the globe, with more than 40% traveling to Sin City from overseas to participate in North America’s largest annual trade show.
According to the Consumer Technology Association (CTA), over 4,100 exhibitors, including 1,400 classified as early-stage startups, participated in the event. The 12 official venues spanned a massive footprint of more than 2.5 million net square feet.
With numerous categories of technology on display The Food Institute team focused on covering organizations innovating and iterating around the food, beverage and agtech sectors.
Below are six compelling exhibitors we encountered around the CES trade show floors:
Kara Water
Kara Water offers a unique, self-refilling dispenser that ensures you never run out of clean, mineral rich hydration … because it draws moisture directly from the air.
According to CEO Cody Sodeen, through its process of transforming the invisible to the essential, Kara delivers a continuous supply of premium, alkaline water (up to 10 liters per day), without reliance on plumbing, plastic or refills. We sampled the drinking water – which has a pH value of 9.2+, making it free of bacteria and biological contaminants – and walked away impressed.
The company also manufactures Kara Pod, the world’s first self-refilling coffee machine.
Echo Water
By infusing regular drinking water with molecular hydrogen, Echo Water aims to provide a multitude of health-related benefits (citing over several scientific studies), including improved workout recovery due to lactic buildup prevention, enhanced gut health, mental focus throughout the day and better-quality sleep at night.
The intelligently designed ECHO Flask separates oxygen from hydrogen via a pressure release valve. A BPA-free plastic chamber creates an environmentally sustainable, shatter-resistant product, eliminating concerns about drops and falls. The unit includes a user-friendly touch-screen display to adjust cycle length and provide one-touch self-cleaning.
Instafarm
A CES Innovation Award Winner out of Loveland, Colo., Instafarm brings the farm to your home table, facilitating healthy and delicious tabletop microgreen growth. The simple, three-step cultivation process includes placing organic, pre-seeded trays in your instafarm; allowing the fully automated instafarm to do its thing for a week; allowing users to harvest their own fresh and nutritionally dense, soil-based greens just days later. Microgreen examples include: kale, beets and radishes.
Instafarm president Philip Hartman and his wife both grew up on small family farms, believing in the significance of good soil, hard work and careful cultivation.
wan AIChef
Naturally, since it’s CES, we needed to include at least one AI-powered product to highlight. From Shenzhen, China, the intelligent cooking company proudly made its CES debut this year. wan AIChef features AI precision thermal control, smart ingredient recognition, a global recipe hub (learned from more than 1,000 chefs and trained on millions of data instances) and AI-powered meal plans.
The multifunctional device allows novice users numerous culinary possibilities, all in one unit, transforming them into master chefs in seconds. Cooking modes range from steam, boil, bake, to pan-fry and stir-fry.
SampleFinder
The team at Polaris Brand Promotions is on a mission to #SaveRetail by enhancing user experience at stores and other consumer locations, envisioning these establishments as experiential engagement spaces where shoppers can learn about and interact with a wide array of brands first-hand.
The SampleFinder App, launching early this year, will alert users in advance about where in-store sampling and demos are taking place, rewarding them for participating in these experiences through a gamified points system that includes event check-ins, sampling reviews and badge achievements. SampleFinder will be 100% free to users. During the introductory launch period, brands, staffing agencies, event planners and retailers will be able to post for free.
ICEPLOSION
With a catchy name, this company debuted the first-ever home-use, frozen carbonated slushy machine at CES. ICEPLOSION delivers single-serve frozen fizzy and non-fizzy slushies, plus ice-cold sodas.
The compact machine delivers single portion drinks from flavored syrup capsules. The on-demand beverages are served in approximately 2-4 minutes. Regular drinking water is mixed with the ICEPLOSION flavor capsules (sugar and sugar-free), and CO2 gas. The machine is rather efficient in terms of electricity usage, and also tidies itself via a 1-minute self-cleaning cycle.
The author of this opinion piece, Rob Rinderman, has been an advisor and consultant to senior executives at public and private organizations for more than three decades. He’s a licensed investment banker and founder/president of SMC Consulting, where he advises companies and entrepreneurs on business development, strategic communications, marketing/social media, capital sourcing preparedness and more.
